Just finished reading Adrian Tchaikovsky’s “Alien Clay”.
The alien life has evolved in a modular fashion. That is, more complex creatures are literally symbiotic conglomerations of lesser critters (I guess sort of like jellyfish).
I remember reading a much simpler version of this in Keith Laumer’s “Retief’s Ransom” (1971). Lumbaga is a planet where every being is simply an arbitrary assortment of semi-independent biological parts.
Are there other stories about modular complex alien life?
David Brin’s Traeki/Jophur of his Uplift novels (Amazon.com) are stacks of toruses each of which serve a different role in the stack. For instance, the bottom torus of a stack might have cilia, feet or flippers allowing the stack to move across land slowly, quickly or swim in water.
“In the wild” the toruses can live independently or get together to form a stack.
The Traeki/Jophur don’t really come into play until the second trilogy, and if you want to really understand the universe and what the characters of the second trilogy are doing and why, I would suggest starting with the second book of the first trilogy, “Startide Rising” (Amazon.com). “Sundiver” was Brin’s first published novel, and while good, I don’t know that you really need to read it to understand the universe and characters of the second trilogy.
For that matter, if you’re just interested in getting to the Traeki/Jophur, you can probably skip the third book of the first trilogy, “The Uplift War” (Amazon.com) as none of the major characters of the second trilogy appear in “The Uplift War”.
However, I must write that I really, really, REALLY like “The Uplift War”–I’ve probably read it almost as many times as times as I’ve read “Startide Rising”.
“In a world where the cells that make up our bodies are not committed to any one organism, Marla is confronted by the fickleness of her cytes, and resolves to understand them with help from Ada, a centuries-old Flourisher. Swappers like Ruth embrace fluidity, and meet with others to exchange cytes, seeking the perfect mix.”
From the book itself:
“Marla turned beneath the sheets and began to rise, steadying herself with her right hand on the mattress. As she sat on the edge of the bed, prepared to step off it, she looked down and saw that her left arm was absent from elbow to fingertips, and her left leg had vanished from the knee to the toes.”
Vernor Vinge’s A Fire Upon the Deep has creatures that are not sentient unless at least 4 (and no more than 8) are close enough that sound waves can reach between them, allowing a mind to be built from the interactions between the brains (and sound transmission/receiving organs) of the individual creatures. Adding a new body (or replacing one) in general makes a new “mind” with different skills and without the full memories of the old set.
I’m drawing a blank here, I read this in 1979. It was a bit old even by then. Humans encounter a life form that is a solid. A cube, for instance was a lower life form, a dodecahedron was a complex consciousness. This was a short (185 or so) pages, real pulp type of work. Possibly Ray Harryhausen or Ben Bova. Forgive me, I was small and not well read at the time.
I got curious enough to try searching for the story @retech describes, and I don’t think I’ve turned it up, but I did come across a couple of stories relevant to the challenge:
A Dance to Strange Musics
by Gregory Benford
from the collection: Worlds Vast and Various
While surveying the planet Shiva, the crew of the starship Adventurer discovers a massive lake that appears to be suspended in mid-air. Their investigation leads them to a bizarre race of crab-like polygon-shaped creatures, whose hive-like society defies interpretation.
One of them landed on his finger and Sam looked at it curiously. It was very small and, therefore, hard to see in detail, but it seemed hexagonal, bulging above and concave below. There were many short, small legs so that when it moved it almost seemed to do so on tiny wheels. There were no signs of wings till it suddenly took off, and then four tiny, feathery objects unfurled.
“Not an individual insect by itself, but they fit together when they want to, like little jigsaw pieces. They can do it in any way they want. And when they do, their nervous systems fit together, too, and build up. A lot of them together are intelligent."
I’ll have a dig soon. It was a very '60’s type novel. A bit abstract for the sake of hitting the psychedelic scene. I was 11 at the time, so it’s a bit foggy. I had to look up dodecahedron and they have my science teacher explain it better. That year was also the first time I was actually introduced to novels and I consumed about 15 from June to December. So it may be muddied a bit, it could be a novella in a collection or something like that. I was not a fan of that one since the species was far too abstract for me.