I’ve been writing about alien worlds and non-human life for a while, mostly trying to push beyond the usual humanoid tropes.

This week The SETI Institute featured my book in one of their newsletters and described it as
“a creative complement to the science we do every day.”

That caught me off guard, but it also made me think about the overlap between science and speculative fiction when it comes to extraterrestrial life.

Science tells us what kinds of planets exist. Fiction tries to take those conditions and push them through evolution to see what kind of life might grow out of them.

I’m curious how others here see it.

Which sci-fi works come closest to portraying truly alien but still plausible life?