#9 in Individual artists
Use arrows to jump to the previous/next product
Reddit mentions of Barlowe's Guide to Extraterrestrials: Great Aliens from Science Fiction Literature
Sentiment score: 5
Reddit mentions: 14
We found 14 Reddit mentions of Barlowe's Guide to Extraterrestrials: Great Aliens from Science Fiction Literature. Here are the top ones.
or
- Used Book in Good Condition
Features:
Specs:
| Height | 9.99998 Inches |
| Length | 6.999986 Inches |
| Number of items | 1 |
| Weight | 1.01192178258 Pounds |
| Width | 0.35999928 Inches |
I want to see less sexual dimorphism in all theses fantasy/sci-fi races. How about some tri-morphism? Or no sexes at all? It's speculative fiction; I want more speculation. Not just "this species is HUMAN-BUT-X". More writers need to pick up Barlowe's Guide to Extraterrestrials.
Barlowe's Guide to Extraterrestrials is your friend.
Anatomy.
Take a look at some of Wayne Barlowe's alien designs, or the stuff from Inferno. He makes them seem believable by having a working understanding of the underlying physiognomy that allows for his concept.
For instance, with your design, how are the heads attached to the body? Is it one neck with three heads, fused at the rears of the skulls? Do they share one esophagus? Is it one freakish, non-symmetrical skull with three faces? How thick would the vertebrae need to be to support that weight on a single neck? How much bigger would the neck and shoulder muscles have to be to move it? Etc.
For pure worldbuilding stuff, there's several things out there. Try the Orion's Arm fictional universe encyclopedia galactica.
It's huge. Or try reading wikis of fictional universes. The big ones are obviously Star Wars (wookiepedia) and Star Trek (memory alpha). You'll have to file the serial numbers off stuff unless it's really obscure, but could still be useful. There are less well known ones out there too, like the traveller wiki or the encyclopedia of known space.
For aliens you've got contacting aliens and barlowe's guide to extraterrestrials
When I was in high school, oh, so many years ago, we played a game that we called Star Discoveries. It was a generic D20 sci-fi game, with each player playing a different alien species.
Our character generation bible was Barlowe's Guide to Extraterrestrials. Each player picked an alien from the book, and their player class was based on the traits described about that race, ie. big tough furry beast with claws made for a good fighter, little spindly insectoid alien with a big brain made a scientist, etc.. Was quite fun, and Barlowe's illustrations are based on scifi literature so it's a good springboard into excellent reading.
Oh my god.
I had this book as a kid growing up.
Really creepy and unsettling as fuck for a young kid, but I loved it to death. I lost track of it decades ago and totally forgot what it was called and who illustrated it. You just solved that puzzle for me!
Barlowe's Guide to Etraterrestrials is a coffee-table book with illustrations of aliens from a variety of classic science fiction books.
​
https://www.amazon.com/Barlowes-Guide-Extraterrestrials-Science-Literature/dp/0894803247
Barlowe's Guide to Extraterrestrials?
Was the illustrated book Barlowe's Guide to Extraterrestrials?
When I was a kid I used to own this book. It's not really what you're looking for with respect to taxonomy, but it's a guide to the extraterrestrials of sci-fi literature. Might give you some inspiration?
RIFTS doesn't have a bestiary book per se, but you might find inspiration in their conversion books. or in the Phase World setting books, all of which are packed with aliens. Likewise, Aliens Unlimited for Heroes Unlimited may also have some good inspiration (and to be honest it shouldn't be that hard to convert from Palladium to D20 or OSR).
Uncle Ernie's Minions of Doom (no, really that's what it's called) for Battlelords of the 23rd century. Most of these monsters are stupendously deadly even in the already Brutally deadly Battlelords setting. http://index.rpg.net/display-entry.phtml?mainid=3073
Paizo just published their Iron Gods adventure path which is science fantasy, they've statted up robots and androids and other sci fi monstrosities in the Inner sea bestiary, and in the AP itself and some of the books they published last year to support it. Some if not all of that should be statted up on the http://www.d20pfsrd.com site and being d20 should be easy to convert to SWN.
The other suggestions here are good, especially the Numenera bestiary and alien anthology. You might consider Barlowe's guide to extra-terrestrials which is a non-gaming book but is really good, I'm gonna put it to use for Numenera myself:
http://www.amazon.com/Barlowes-Guide-Extraterrestrials-Science-Literature/dp/0894803247
Guardians of order did a bunch of scifi d20 stuff back in the day, not sure if they had a bestiary but if you just want cool robots, you can't go wrong with d20 mecha. http://www.together.net/~tjoneslo/MechaD20%20SRD.pdf
Fantasy flight back before they published licensed games had their own d20 d&d in space setting: Dragonstar. https://fantasyflightgames.com/en/products/dragonstar/
That's Wayne Barlowe of Barlowe's Guide to Extraterrestrials, right?
I've seen most of his stuff (at least, I thought I had), but none of it looks anything like Dixon's books. How on Earth did he manage to convince anyone of that?
See Barlowe's guide it has an entry for Old Ones - not dissected though
http://www.amazon.com/Barlowes-Guide-Extraterrestrials-Science-Literature/dp/0894803247
I like that book but I also recommend this http://www.amazon.com/Barlowes-Guide-Extraterrestrials-Science-Literature/dp/0894803247 Barlowe's Guide to Extraterrestrials: Great Aliens from Science Fiction Literature. This book is literally the most accurate depictions of aliens in my opinion. This will get you hype for the creatures in NMS.