Sci-Fi/Fantasy stories without human characters

[AE35Unit]

Ahem, hieroglyphs...

 

[Montero]

So not pure alien at all, but would like to highlight Tanya Huff's military sf confedation series, because of how well done all the aliens are, and how integral to the story the different behaviours and biologies are.
Premise is three "junior races" making up a marine corp, and going out on behalf of the more refined and pacificist "senior races" to kick butt. The junior races in the marines are human, a humanoid arboreal omnivore (who really stretch the definition of omnivore) and a race with frond receptors on their heads and serious pheromones that can affect other species. And then there are the senior races in the background and the new races that they meet. Good fun stuff and she puts a lot of effort into making her aliens genuinely alien (as well as marines in the caseof the three junior races).

Julie Czerneda - all her aliens are well done and alien while also being relatable - not pure alien, lots of humans - but think that getting different motivators and behaviours invented and consistent is important.

 

[paranoid marvin]

Ahem, hieroglyphs...

I didn't know there was a difference, I was just surprised that I actually managed to spell it correctly!

Tbh having had a quick browse online line, I'm still none the wiser to the difference between hieroglyphs and hieroglyphics!

 

[AE35Unit]

I didn't know there was a difference, I was just surprised that I actually managed to spell it correctly!

Tbh having had a quick browse online line, I'm still none the wiser to the difference between hieroglyphs and hieroglyphics!

Hieroglyphics is the study of hieroglyphs

 

[bobbo19]

The SF books with utterly no Humans seem to come in two branches ' those where humans once existed and are now extinct, or gone away, or legend, (example City, by Simak, or a number of works where it is robots, mankind's direct creations, that inherit the Earth, or Empire, or whatever. Just occasionally mutated exhumans get a look in, or the stories where humans have no part in creation at all - I'll cite John Brunner's 'The Crucible of Time', which I liked but nobody else seems to have read, or Robert Sawyer's Quintaglio (Far-seer) series.

The books with one or very few humans they are frequently used as comparison references references, making the aliens more alien (except maybe Cherryh's 'Chanur' series where Tully is stranger than his captors or saviours), a little like Lemuel Gulliver and his hominid/equoid contacts).

Most of these unbalanced contrast stories are comparing societies, rather than species.

Read - Sea of Rust by C Robert Cargill recently.

Full mech book with Robots only. Albeit very human like with flashbacks to a time when humans did exist.

Did read The Crucible of Time - John Brunner partly just because it has no humans and i thought it was pretty good in fairness.