"Project Hail Mary" really pushes the limit when it comes to non-humanoid aliens. But researchers posit that real aliens could be even stranger than that.

For generations, humans have imagined what it would be like to discover life beyond Earth. Would alien beings look anything ...

Alien first-contact stories are a classic of science fiction, and they’re all the more fascinating because they can feel like predictions of a possible future. This is the book that made me fall in ...

The moment of first contact with extraterrestrials is a staple of science fiction. It usually involves a frantic scientist having a Eureka moment, realising in a single dramatic instant that Earth is ...

In these science fiction books, extraterrestrial beings are sympathetic, horrifying and everything in between. By James S.A. Corey James S.A. Corey is the pen name of Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck, the ...

With the release of Disclosure Day, Steven Spielberg’s new film about aliens, a question as old as science fiction itself resurfaces: if aliens were to arrive on Earth, would they come to conquer us, ...

With 'Disclosure Day,' the director returns to a longtime preoccupation. Two Times staffers explore his ongoing fascination with extraterrestrials.

Originally conceived in the 1980s as a high-concept sci-fi film of ideas crossed with a police procedural, 1995's Specieseventually took shape as a cheesy and sleazy erotic thriller crossed with a ...

There’s no data to suggest that aliens exist. However, if we believed they existed and came to Earth, our planet would offer them a somewhat risky buffet. There is liquid water, as well as salts, ...