10 More Alien Books

For five years, the people of the U.S. Virgin Islands have lived an uneasy sort of truce with the Ynaa, aliens who have come to Earth on an undisclosed research mission. Their presence isn’t by invitation; people on the mainland are enjoying the gifts from the Ynaa while entirely avoiding their seemingly capricious moods and violent reactions. After a young boy is killed by one of the Ynaa, tensions mount. A year later, they can no longer be contained, and the Ynaa conclude that they will teach the residents of Water Island an indelible lesson.

Alien Satraps rule an empire of 48 worlds that spans thousands of wormholes across the galaxy. Humanity lives at the fringes, nominally “free” while barely surviving. And among these survivors are the Ragamuffins, descended from islanders of a long-lost planet, pirates and smugglers that have eked out a living by being ignored by everyone. But now the Satraps have decided to wipe them out, and one woman, so cybernetically enhanced that she is more machine than flesh, can save them.

The motley, multi-species crew of the Wayfairer is a strange kind of family, but one knit tightly together. Their close bonds are very necessary, considering their work takes them out into deep space for extended periods of time, tunneling wormholes through space to knit the intergalactic community together. This is comforting, light-hearted space opera at its best, focused on relationships and people — whether those people are human or not.

A collection of six of Octavia Butler’s short stories, not all of which are about aliens. The title story, however, Bloodchild, is such a remarkable and difficult work that it deserves a place on this list. The story imagines a world where humans coexist with the alien Tlic, who depend upon humans to be hosts for their offspring. Often, the human host survives just fine…but sometimes they don’t. It’s a story that asks deep questions about autonomy and consent.

I generally don’t like putting books that aren’t the first of a series in a list like this, but this one is so good, I’m making an exception. You’ll need to read A Memory Called Empire first, which does not have aliens, but in this second book we get into the juicy goodness of a first contact story. An alien armada has begun to gnaw at the edges of the Teixcalaanli empire, and Mahit Dzmare and Three Seagrass are dispatched to try to find a way of communicating with these aliens. This involves unraveling their language and trying to understand minds that are totally unlike those of humans.

The first book in an ongoing, 21-book series, Foreigner is about human colonists stranded on a world and an alien species called the Atevi finding ways to coexist and work together, navigating first contact and successive culture clashes. Don’t let the length of the series scare you — it’s mostly divided into three-book arcs that you can pick and choose between. The Atevi are also an absolute delight to read about.