There was a time in my life where Douglas Adams’ Hitch-Hiker’s Guide books were incredibly important to me. Thirty years on, I mostly remember them with a generalized sense of affection, with a touch of “I feel like they haven’t aged well.” Still, Ford Prefect remains one of my favorite characters in fiction, a completely useless hedonist who writes about the things that interest him and who has no real desire to change that. He’s a fun inversion of the usual science fiction protagonists, standing out even among the alien weirdos of science fiction. Indeed, there aren’t a lot of characters on his level, leading to today’s hoopy frood query…
The MS-QOTD (pronounced, as always, “misquoted”) enjoys a truly alien alien, like Tellus from the Legion of Super-Heroes or Elu of the Omega Men, asking: What extraterrestrial being is the most likeably bizarre of the various fictional alien weirdos?
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probably The Thing. ya never know what you’re gonna get with that guy! total wild card
I also grew up with Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy books and loved them, but I didn’t have any favorite characters from it. I just liked the satire. This is going to be a weird, almost alien, answer, but the Zerg race from fictional Starcraft lore are one of my favorite aliens, and within it, I would have to say in particular the infestor is my favorite subspecies. But they’re all adorable!
Grogu. He’ll eat your children, and is clearly on the path to the Dark Side, but dang if he isn’t adorable!
I always liked Jawas. They are mischievous and will take anything that’s not bolted on (and even that, given little time) in seconds and then try to sell it back to you. Yet, they kind of have to be, when you look where and with who they live in. And nobody knows what they really look like, a rare exception of enduring mystery in Star Wars universe.