From: cicero@hotcity.COM (Andreas Locicero)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: SUMMARY: Books From Alien Perspective.
Date: 22 Jul 92 09:42:46 GMT
Organization: BBS


          A couple of weeks ago I posted an inquiry about the titles of
          books written from an alien perspective.  Here is a summary of
          the results:

               _Nor Crystal Tears_  by Alan Dean Foster.  "The story deals
          with a human-alien first contact from the perspective of the
          alien Thranx."  "It's not particuarly 'hard SF', and the aliens,
          while looking funny, are actually quite human, [However, it] is
          an interesting and entertaining (if less than realistic) view of
          first contact from the eyes of an insectoid alien..."


               _Protector_  by Larry Niven.  (first part)  Some may think
          that the last part counts also (I do!).

               _World of Ptavvs_ by Larry Niven (alien & human viewpoint)

               _The Pride of Chanur_ (and sequals) by C. J. Cherryh.
          "[These books are] all about a collection of alien races, some
          of which are -very- alien, who encounter humanity for the first
          time, and all hell breaks loose with the treaties and
          agreements between the races. They're told from the viewpoint of
          the female feline captain of a trading ship."

                _Cuckoo's Egg_ by C. J. Cherryh. (Is this one of the above
          sequals?)

               Parts of _Startide Rising_ and _The Uplift War_ by David
          Brin.
                
               The "Sime/Gen" books by Jean Lorrah and Jacqueline
          Lichtenberg.
                         
               _Iceworld_ by Hal Clement.

                _Needle_ by Hal Clement (only in parts alien perspective)

               _Mission of Gravity_ by Hal Clement.  (There are also
          several stories among his shorter works).  "Much of [the book]
          is told from the point of view of the alien inhabitants of [an]
          oddly shaped world.  Mr. Clement is more interested in working
          out the implications of this world than in things like character
          development, so it is no surprise that his aliens are very human
          in most respects, even though they look like heavily armored 15-
          inch cockroaches."

               _Soldiers of Paradise_ by Paul Park.

               _Voyager_In_Night_ (by C.J. Cherryh perhaps?)

               _The Alien Dark_ by Diana G. Gallagher (TSR Books, 1990).
          "It's about a group of aliens that discover a dead civilization
          on a planet that they are planning to colonize that turns out to
          be humanity."

               _The Einstein Intersection_ by Samuel Delany.  [This book]
          is written from the point of view of a being that is apparently
          descended from the human species but is far enough down the
          evolutionary road as to be alien.

               "A.E. Van Vogt's shorter pieces (like some parts of War
          Against the Ruul) are told from the point of view of some alien
          or another, but Mr. Van Vogt had a limited grasp of the unitary
          point of view and could often change points of view within a
          single sentence.  The reader never knows whether this is
          accidental.

               _Up the Walls of the World_ by James Tiptree Jr.  "[This
          book is partly from a human, partly from an alien p.o.v.
          (Actually, two alien p.o.v.'s)."

               _The Sun Destroyers_ by Ross Rocklyne.  "A classic,
          and one of the first... A novel consisting of four short
          stories, the first of which, 'Into the Darkness', was published
          in ASF in 1940.  It aroused considerable controversy
          at the time, as to whether you could write a story
          with such alien characters -- sentient suns, with nothing
          on a human scale at all.  It was reprinted as half an Ace
          double in 1973."

               _Farseer_ (Author?).  "[This is] a story
          about intelligent lizards, that is very poor.  It is an
          attempt at a hard science fiction story, and the science
          collapses half way through."

               _His Majestie's Bucketteers_ by L. Niel Smith.  "a
          humorous novel, but the aliens, despite having three legs,
          could just as easily be human.

          Thanks to everyone who contributed! :>

A.J. LoCicero >> cicero@hotcity.com

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