Message-ID: <936@dciem.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 24-May-84 12:29:07 EDT
Article-I.D.: dciem.936
Posted: Thu May 24 12:29:07 1984
Date-Received: Thu, 24-May-84 14:08:34 EDT
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A very non-human alien was the title character of "The Black Cloud",
by Fred Hoyle.  (I don't think much of Hoyle's SF generally, but I did
like that one.  He wrote that one with a collaborator.)

Actually, I think aliens that are human-like in some behavior patterns
but not in others are probably more interesting.  And the first one of
those that comes to mind is Larry Niven's "puppeteers".  ["But so what
if the two of us had remained in stasis for 50,000 years?  Don't you see,
we would not have had to leave the safety of the ship!" -- paraphrase from
one of the two Ringworld books]

Mark Brader