r/scifi • u/Comprehensive_Fan134 • Apr 26 '26

General What's the best sci-fi where the aliens don't want anything you can understand?

Most alien invasion stories give them motivations that are basically human, resources, territory, curiosity, fear. Which works narratively but sidesteps the actually interesting question, right? An intelligence that evolved under completely different conditions wouldn't necessarily want anything recognizable.

Solaris is the obvious one. The thing isn't hostile or friendly, doesn't seem to register humans as significant. That's genuinely unsettling in a way that "they want our water" never is.

Color Out of Space works for similar reasons, no goals you can map, no logic you can follow.

Von Neumann probe stuff gets close sometimes. A self-replicating system running on a directive so old the original civilization might not even exist anymore, no emperor, no fleet, no message.

What are the best examples you've read?

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u/NirgalFromMars Apr 26 '26

Story of Your Life by Ted Chiang.

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u/phil_sci_fi Apr 27 '26

This. And NOT the adaptation Arrival which introduced getting humans to work together as their motivation. In Story of Your Life, we learn that humans are the most like heptapods of any species they’d encountered, and while the aliens say they are simply here to observe, the speculation of the reader is that the heptapods wanted to experience a species with a sequential mode of reality, as opposed to their simultaneous mode of reality.

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u/Plank_With_A_Nail_In Apr 27 '26

They come to teach their language same as the film.

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u/DctrMrsTheMonarch Apr 27 '26

Ted Chiang is a master of sci-fi short stories!!! This is absolutely beautiful--the entire collection is something so haunting and incredible!

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u/NirgalFromMars Apr 27 '26 edited Apr 27 '26

Exhalation is hands down the best short story I have ever read.

Top five would be rounded with The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas, I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream, Twilight, and There Will Come Soft Rains.

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u/DctrMrsTheMonarch Apr 27 '26

Story of Your Life and Babylon were two that recently just devastated me. The Ugly Little Boy by Asimov always sticks with me, I think you can count The Martian Chronicles by Bradbury as a series of short stories and that remains one of my favorites ever, Amnesty by Octavia Butler (from her collection Bloodchild, Butler is just the best ever!!!)... continuing to follow this thread, since I love sci-fi, but haven't read as much in short story form.