The Alien Design Bibliography

Last update 12th July 1997

"There are only two kinds of science: physics and stamp collecting"
Ernest Rutherford
"Biology is physics"
Del Cotter

When science fiction writers set out to design a world, they usually take care that their physics and astronomy conforms to known science by reading a few physics and astronomy books. But when designing aliens, anything goes, it seems! The problem appears to be that the literature of biology is simply unknown in the SF world. Mention Freeman Dyson or Robert Forward, and most hard SF readers and writers will know who you are talking about. But mention Steven Vogel or Colin Pennycuick, and you are likely to be rewarded with polite bafflement.

For a look at a different approach, try Contact, a group bringing together anthropologists, SF writers and a host of other fields to create worlds populated with believable aliens, such as Epona. (See also Gert van Dijk's Furaha, and William Briggs' Semele). World Builders, a course run at California State University by Elizabeth Ann Viau is also well worth checking out.

To help introduce people to the literature out there, I have listed below some of the books which have helped me as I try to design creatures which could walk on other worlds, and look up at other skies.