Planet of the Birds?

October 4, 2016 6:49 PM

I really want to read some fiction/watch some films that deal with avian aliens (or just hyperintelligent Earth birds) and their society. I've read about a lot of bug people and lizard people, so why not bird people?

So far the best/only examples I can think of are Howard the Duck and I guess the DuckTales universe, but I'm interested in slightly more serious stuff. I'm open to really any medium, and I can't say I care much about quality. (A bad 1950's pulp novel about first contact with the bird people would be awesome.)

posted by lemonadeheretic to Media & Arts (30 answers total)

Best answer: One race of aliens in Brin's _The Uplift War_ are avian-ish.

Avians, of a sort, also feature in in Sean McMullen's post-weird-apocalypse books that start with _Souls in the Great Machine_. But only of a sort.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 7:00 PM on October 4, 2016

The Dinosaur Planet series has, I think, some intelligent pterosaurs.
posted by bq at 7:02 PM on October 4, 2016

Also Perdido Street Station features a member of an intelligent avian race.
posted by bq at 7:04 PM on October 4, 2016 [2 favorites]

A Martian Odyssey by Stanley G. Weinbaum features a very bird-like alien named Tweel, who is used to explore the idea of meeting a very alien intelligence.
posted by ejs at 7:30 PM on October 4, 2016

Rick and Morty has a few scenes with Bird Person, who may be a parody of the bird person in Perdido Street Station but might also not be.

Flash Gordon (the movie) has the Hawkmen, who are awesome.

DC Comics has Hawkman and Hawkgirl - I don't know if there's a 'definitive' run, as they get rebooted a bunch, but they are avian aliens (except when they're reincarnated Egyptian gods). The version of Hawkgirl in the Justice League Unlimited cartoon is fun.

I think Hawklords show up in some Micheal Moorcock stories.

Star Fox, the videogame series, has Falco, a space eagle.

I think Jupiter Ascending has at least one bird person in it.

Throw in Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law and listen to some Radio Birdman in the background.

Angry Birds Space and Angry Birds Star Wars are both fun, cheap games about birds in space.
posted by Charlemagne In Sweatpants at 7:31 PM on October 4, 2016 [2 favorites]

Best answer: I haven't played it myself, but the visual novel / dating sim Hatoful Boyfriend is supposed to be really good.
posted by spelunkingplato at 7:31 PM on October 4, 2016 [2 favorites]

Adventure Time's god is the Cosmic Owl.

If you want to see pigeons reenact Goodfellas and West Side Story, the Goodpigeon segments in Animaniacs has that.
posted by Charlemagne In Sweatpants at 7:34 PM on October 4, 2016

Best answer: The short story "The Flyers of Gy" in Ursula K. LeGuin's Changing Planes is about bird people. Only a few of them have wings though.
posted by vogon_poet at 7:35 PM on October 4, 2016 [2 favorites]

Best answer: I remember The Iron Thorn by Algis Budrys as being pretty good, and it centers around a race of intelligent birds interacting with humans on the birds' home planet.

Apparently there's a Kindle edition of the 1967 original, but watch out for the spoilers on the linked page; for this one, knowing too much would diminish your enjoyment a bit, in my opinion.
posted by jamjam at 7:43 PM on October 4, 2016

In the entire second season of the TV series Buck Rodgers, Thom Christopher plays Hawk, a bird alien character sidekick to Buck. His introductory episode to the series was memorable and it might be your jam.
posted by jbenben at 7:52 PM on October 4, 2016 [2 favorites]

Best answer: Revelation Space by Alastair Reynolds is set in part on a planet where human archaeologists are trying to figure out the bird-like culture that lived there.
posted by nickggully at 8:13 PM on October 4, 2016 [1 favorite]

(Incidentally, Bird Person from Rick & Morty is a parody of Hawk from Buck Rogers)
posted by ejs at 8:22 PM on October 4, 2016 [4 favorites]

Best answer: Cliffs, in the "Flinger" series by Kevin O'Donnell Jr., is part of a series but you don't really need to have read all the others to enjoy the birds in that one. And it's a really interesting look at an avian society, and how their culture works.
posted by The otter lady at 8:46 PM on October 4, 2016

The Golden Acorn by Catherine Cooper. It's a fantasy novel for kids, but I really enjoyed it too. Looking it up to link here, I've just realized that it's the first in a series of five books (The Adventures of Jack Brenin), so if you like this one you can follow up with four more.
posted by petitemom at 8:56 PM on October 4, 2016

Best answer: Learning the World, by Ken MacLeod, is a first-contact novel between future humans and a race of intelligent avians. It's written from the perspective of both groups. It's pretty good, and serious.
posted by Pink Frost at 9:00 PM on October 4, 2016

The Voyage of the Space Beagle by A.E. van Vogt features the Riim, a telepathic hive-mind race of bipedal, humanoid birds with vestigial wings. (I've never read it, I only know about the Riim from my old copy of Barlowe's Guide to Extraterrestrials.)
posted by ejs at 9:10 PM on October 4, 2016

Swordbird by the 12yo author Nancy Yi Fan was also a fun read, and aligns with your criteria for a well developed anthropomorphic avian society. Granted, this targets a young audience like my earlier suggestion, but that doesn't mean you won't enjoy it. Btw, I read a lot, and my selections straddle many genres so it's not that I only read children's books... but my usual fare is historical fiction or suspense written for adult readers, so the main characters there tend to be strictly human.
posted by petitemom at 9:16 PM on October 4, 2016

Best answer: Oh, and how could I forget Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children?! I've read and enjoyed the entire series (3 books). They've tapped Tim Burton to do a movie based on the first book. Ok, so this one is for younger readers too, but of all my suggestions I think this definitely has the most crossover appeal for adult readers. Best with an actual book rather than on a Kindle, because the bizarre vintage photos throughout are a huge part of the storytelling.

Amazon also sells a boxed set.
posted by petitemom at 9:34 PM on October 4, 2016

Bit of a stretch here, but one of the plotlines of the Ian M. Banks Culture novel Look to Windward includes a Culture citizen, a human scholar, is living on/in a Mega Fauna, a sentient giant lighter-than-air fleshy blimp, basically. The Mega Fauna, specifically the dirigible behemothaur Yoleus, is serviced by a number of "slaved organisms, symbiotes, parasites and guests" that live on, around, in, and under its body, as it floats around the Oskandari Airsphere (a pretty original take on a natural-or-is-it ecosphere that isn't a planet, space station, or other artificial construction. Since a human can't really directly engage either the thoughts or the whole attention of a blimp-sized being like Yoleus, one or more of the symbiotes contributes its support of the behemothaur in the form of being a translator and speaking face of Yoleus.

Still with me? The translator is Interpreter 974 Praf, an avian who is linked by some mental means to Yoleus the behemothaur.
posted by Sunburnt at 9:34 PM on October 4, 2016 [1 favorite]

(sorry, technical difficulties posting my last)
posted by petitemom at 9:34 PM on October 4, 2016

A friend suggests Midsummer Century, and I think Someplace to be Flying might arguably count too, although it's kind of an edge case.
posted by wanderingmind at 9:36 PM on October 4, 2016

Best answer: Different medium, but the second series of the original Hitch-hiker's Guide to the Galaxy radio show featured a long stay on a planet of bird people. It wasn't Adams' best work and he knew it; none of that stuff survived into any of the many adaptations of the show into books, games, TV, etc. It's radio and it's comedy, but if you're looking for a sci-fi thing about a planet full of intelligent bird people it certainly qualifies.

Here's a couple of links I got by Googling "sci-fi bird people". Anything?
posted by Ursula Hitler at 12:23 AM on October 5, 2016 [1 favorite]

Rachel Bach's wonderful space opera trilogy has some alien bird characters, one is a crew member on the protagonist's ship. The first book is Fortune's Pawn.
posted by Coaticass at 3:32 AM on October 5, 2016 [2 favorites]

YA fantasy author Tamora Pearce has crows who can turn into people- minor characters in Trickster's Choice, Trickster's Queen and the main character of the short story Nawat (also wizards and shape-changing humans, I'm guessing they won't fit the bill so much).
posted by Coaticass at 3:39 AM on October 5, 2016

Best answer: Hellspark, by Janet Kagan, is a sci fi mystery about anthropologists on a planet of bird people trying to figure out if they're sapient.
posted by gideonfrog at 4:22 AM on October 5, 2016

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, by Becky Chambers, has a major avian character with a really interesting cultural history.
posted by bookdragoness at 9:46 AM on October 5, 2016

> Rick and Morty has a few scenes with Bird Person, who may be a parody of the bird person in Perdido Street Station but might also not be.

He's a parody of Hawk, of the 1980s Buck Rogers TV series mentioned above, according to the Season 1 DVD commentary. He appears in 3 episodes: Season 1's "Ricksy Business," and Season 2's "Get Schwifty," and "The Wedding Squanchers." One could probably watch all of his scenes in about 5 minutes on youtube, but that would show you the major, awful reveal seen in "The Wedding Squanchers."
posted by Sunburnt at 10:00 AM on October 5, 2016 [1 favorite]

This Twine adventure, Birdland, features some wacky intelligent bird-beings.
posted by ikahime at 10:06 AM on October 5, 2016

The Old Man's War series of books by Mefi's own John Scalzi features a species of aggressive, intelligent, bird-like creatures called the Rraey.

By features, I mean that they play a part in some of the books. It is not, most definitely, a series about the Rraey.
posted by bluejayway at 12:45 PM on October 5, 2016

Best answer: Rebecca Ore's Becoming Alien books have unusually well fleshed-out alien birds as significant characters, though they're not the focus of any particular plot.
posted by eotvos at 5:49 PM on October 5, 2016