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What are some good stories told from non-human perspectives?
Animals, robots, AIs, aliens, sentient rocks, etc.
Anything counts as long as it's not human! And "stories" can count for novels, short stories, comics, etc.
Watership Down is pretty well known but worth mentioning regardless.
Jonathon Livingstone Seagull is a quick read and admittedly more parable than "non-human perspective" but it's a good story about freedom and inner peace regardless.
Perhaps closer to your brief is Empire of the Ants. Half the book follows a man discovering weird stuff in his late uncle's home, simultaneously there are chapters from an ant's point of view. It's anthropomorphized enough to tell a narrative but Bernard Werber did a good job making the ant sections feel alien. "A Bug's Life" it aint. And then there's two more books if you like this one.
Murderbot by Martha Wells - the story of a SecUnit -a mix of bot and organic, it could kill all the humans, but then who would make the TV shows?
Books of the Raksura, also Martha Wells - a race of winged people. Stuff happens, it's been a while, but I liked them.
The Imperial Radch trilogy (and partially others in the same world), by Anne Leckie - told from the perspective of an AI who used to have not just a ship but many human "ancillary" bodies, and is now stuck in one lone body.
The Galaxy and the Ground Within, by Becky Chambers - part of the Wayfarers anthology, it has connections to the other books, but can be read alone/first. Several aliens are visiting the bubble of a little, hmmm, it's like an RV park/motel on a non-atmospheric rock with amenities and a host? They're just stopping there short term before they travel along, Except a thing happens and they get stuck. But not a human among them, and they all have unique POVs and histories and biological needs and such.
Partial:
Children of Time - first in a series, there are human POVs, but also a lot of spider POVs. Like sentient "uplifted" spiders. It's very interesting if you're not arachnophobic.
I picked up the Murderbot Diaries based on this recommendation and read Ancillary Justice in a day; both great stories/protagonists/perspectives, and Ancillary Justice has one of the most confusing antagonists I've encountered (in a good way [for me]).
Anything else you'd recommend?
Ah so glad you enjoyed!
Are you still looking for unique POVs or just general recs? The rest of the Ancillary series is great as is Translation State which shunts the AI POV to the side for multi POV including very alien thoughts.
Another recent AI* POV is Of Monsters and Mainframes. It's much more lighthearted, even than Murderbot IMO, though it's got some mass murder and such in it still.
A Memory Called Empire is all Human POV (though some very alien aliens show up in book 2), but of a colonial going to be the ambassador to the Aztec and Byzantine inspired Imperial Capital after the sudden death (murder?) of her predecessor.
The Fourth Consort is about a human who is trying to bring other species into the Unity, a collective that's definitely not exploitative! In the process he has to outmaneuver the rival Assembly, and then sort of gets stranded on a planet and consort to their .. Queen? Sort of.... But in a bug sense. Kind of. This is someone having a really bad day... Well longer but it feels like a really bad, long, day.
And for court intrigue and politics and a really nice MC who's an outsider... The Goblin Emperor. Where Maia should not be next in line for the throne, and now is. And he better figure it out before he gets assassinated!
*Actual AI not today's BS
XD I've actually already read The Goblin Emperor for a book club, I really enjoyed that one too. I was thinking more along your general recommendations that are in the same vibe, and I think Goblin Emperor fits! A Memory Called Empire seems interesting, I'll probably check that out next,.
I do kind of wonder about why these stories are so appealing to me; I've heard criticisms that The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet is boring, and I can see how someone might think the same about Ancillary Justice, but it's just nice to see protagonists who aren't total assholes trying to do something to improve the world, rather than the hard-boiled netrunner that gets the girl and accidentally saves the world in spite of himself.
Yeah I mean I do read grittier stuff, and I like a lot of social science fiction or the equivalent in fantasy- give me politics and intrigue and explorations of society through this speculative fiction lens. Like I just finished The Tainted Cup which won the Hugo this year and it's very Sherlockian with an ecological sort of bent and it was super enjoyable but I am sure someone won't like it for its representation.
But I maintain my empathy for "the other," my passion for justice, my refusal to see "bad people" as inhuman or monsters, my desire to help even those folks do better comes from Star Trek and Valdemar and Sherri Tepper (if you want some classic feminist SF that's definitely problematic now The Gate to Women's Country is still probably worth the read) and Octavia Butler (read everything she's ever written, start maybe with Dawn based on your likes) and Atwood, and and and etc.
Blood over Brighthaven was an excellent recent read - First woman ever becomes a High Mage, discovers maybe patriarchal society is also problematic in other ways.
Becky Chambers work makes me all happy inside even through the tears. (Monk and Robot is basically required reading for my team. Not really but also I gave them a copy in May)
After the Flood by Kassandra Montag is another slower book I read about a Waterworld style post apoc. It's... I have complicated feelings. Not the most likeable protagonist but understandable, and it doesn't pull punches.
I've definitely been leaning more "cozy" reads with challenging ones between them and fluffy litrpgs between those. I, Medusa just came up on my holds at Libby and I suspect strongly it's gonna be a rough ride given the lore behind how she becomes a gorgon. (But I've heard good things!) In the meantime I just started The Bee Dungeon - a dungeon core quasi isekai (he becomes the dungeon but it's in his world but he's not where he used to be idk...) so... Im just happy to be here :D
Oh and one I haven't read yet but like the author - Heart of Iron by C M Alongi - she does these skits on youtube and tiktok. Cafae Latte - about a cafe run by the fae and how customers get cursed and how the world works with all of these various mythical creatures running about. (The Yule cat just appeared in the most recent skits.) Anyway, this is the back story of the very powerful fairy sorceress who runs the cafe, but it's intentionally a slightly alternate history than the lore of the videos due to being able to kill people and stuff. She's a great person and I am just trying to stay caught up on library books before I dive in.
Edited for formatting on book titles
Came here to mention that. I really liked the first book and I think about it often. I don’t see spiders hanging out in my home the same way anymore after this book :)
Haha I did like the first one but ran into a wall on the second. Same with the war dogs series. I like his ideas but clearly I'm having an issue with the works. Or it's just been timing and headspace.
I did originally write "media" but decided to be more incorrect. ****
I do love A Closed and Common Orbit but it does have a partial human POV that I think it's entirely flashback or predominantly flashback
The Hobbit. Bilbo might be offended if he was called human!
More seriously there is Verner Vinge's A Fire Upon the Deep. The story flips between humans and mind sharing packs of dogs. There are also sentient palm trees and galaxy sized AI systems battling for the cosmos.
I've heard nothing but praise for A Fire Upon the Deep. I've tried to read it two or three times and bounced off hard. The last time was probably 15-20 years ago, so maybe it's time to give it another shot.
It's not exactly easy reading since it doesn't do much to directly explain what is happening. It has a lot of great sci-fi ideas though if you have the time and energy to process it.
"Animal Farm" is good if not cliche/obvious.
I read The Wild Robot and its sequel to my kids, and found I actually really enjoyed it. I'm planning to read them the third in the series soon.
Haven't read the book, I don't have any kids, but the movie was incredible. I was a little upset when it got beat by Flow for best animated film. I've seen them both, and The Wild Robot absolutely blows it out of the water, no pun intended.
The Road Not Taken by Harry Turtledove is a good short story with a mixed human and non-human perspective.
Raptor Red was pretty good.
Call of the Wild and White Fang by Jack London.
The traveling cat Chronicles.
Tail chasers song.
Black beauty ,
Island of the missing trees by Elif Shafak is narrated by a tree.
The book thief is narrated by death.
Grendel by John Gardner.
The amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents.
I'm a lifelong fan of Watership Down.
I was permanently traumatized by the plague dogs.
Just prepare a (several) box(es) of tissues if you read it.
Children's books I'm aware of are the Redwall series by Brian Jaques and the Warriors series (of which I think there are now many) by Erin Hunter.
I was going to say, if anthropomorphic animals count I recommend Redwall hands down.
The Word for World Is Forest, by Ursula K. Le Guin. Don't want to spoil anything but I liked it quite a lot.
Oh boy, TWFWIF isn't one you see mentioned every day, but it is excellent, good thinking!
Technically, "This is How You Lose the Time War" is from a non-human perspective. Very odd story though.
Holy smokes, I've already responded in this thread, lol.
It was a while ago lol
Xenofiction is the name of the genre FYI if you want a keyword to search for.
I looked through Baen Books because I read a short story like that but can't find it now. Human children, and one adult, crash on an alien planet, and the aliens in question are kind of like cuttlefish with hard shells that flash colours according to their mood. Female aliens are much bigger than males, who either individually or together live inside their mate's shell.
EDIT Found it! Mother of Demons by Eric Flint. No prizes for guessing who the "demons" are.
https://www.baen.com/mother-of-demons.html
Super helpful! I had no idea this had its own genre name.
Feel like we got a lot of responses deep without mentioning Charlotte's Web.
On the same note, "Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH"
Here are some novels I've enjoyed that seem to fit. I've listed what kind of non-human perspective is included, but haven't elaborated further, in case you want to go in with minimal information. I hope you find something you like!
Minor spoilers for everything listed:
Ancillary Justice
(AI)
Translation State (in the same universe as Ancillary Justice and its sequels)
(Aliens)
Children of Time
(Intelligent spiders, ex-human AI, and in the sequels... some others)
All Systems Red
(AI)
Service Model
(AI)
We Are Legion (We Are Bob)
(Ex-human AI)
Ogres
(Ogre)
Thornhedge
(A fairytale creature)
Tree of Aeons - Libro.fm Audio Book I believe you can also find it on Kindle / Amazon.
Reborn as a Demonic Tree - Bookshop.org Paperback and Libro.fm Audio Book
Both books from the perspective (mostly) of a tree. I found these to be enjoyable, but they do have faults. Both sort of fall into the litRPG / GameLit / Cultivation genre.
Chrysalis: The Antventure Begins - Another litRPG from the perspective of someone reincarnated as an ant. The writing on this book is great and it can be pretty funny.
So I'm a Spider, So What? - Wikipedia this is from the perspective of someone reincarnated as a spider. It's more on the anime/manga side. I really enjoyed the spider parts of the story.
Expeditionary Force is a series you might be interested in. It features an AI personality heavily but it isn't really from their perspective most of the time.
Swarm: An Army Building LitRPG - From the perspective of a "hive queen". I didn't find this series particular interesting. This falls into the problem of a non-human entity trying to be a human entity instead of embracing the concept.
Another thought today - there is a whole genre of books called "dungeon core" that is generally from the perspective of a fantasy dungeon.
One of the first books I read when I was a kid was The Hundred and One Dalmatians. It's mostly told from the perspective of the dogs. I'm not sure if I ever watched the Disney cartoon that was adapted from the book.
They're made out of meat is a very short story about how aliens might view us humans. It can also be found on YouTube as a short film.
Dogsbody by Diana Wynn Jones is a sweet little book. It really tries to imagine the experience of being a dog, not just a dog-shaped person.
Dragons egg and Starquake are 2 books where its written from the perspective of tiny lifeforms evolved to live on the surface of a neutron star.
Since nobody has mentioned it yet: The Raven Tower, by Ann Leckie (2019). The primary narrator is an an ancient sentient rock with magical powers.
Not my favorite book of hers, but a very good use of 2nd person for some of the narration and it's a good story. She's quite good at alien perspectives IMO
Not already mentioned:
I'm a little surprised that no one has mentioned Vernor Vinge's Zones of Thought trilogy (A Fire Upon the Deep, A Deepness in the Sky, The Children of the Sky). It's not 100% xenofiction, but there are multiple non-human characters done reasonably well, and the second book's story is almost exclusively alien (the Tines are a great concept, no spoilers).
John Brunner's The Crucible of Time [minor spoilers] is 100% alien perspective. Adrian Tchaikovski's Children of Time may have found some inspiration here, but there's a long genre tradition of millennia-spanning civilizational stories. It's a "fix-up" novel threaded together from magazine short-story releases, so it's pretty digestible if your reading is interrupted.
I have to mention some short stories/novellas that left strong impressions on me as well:
"Love is the Plan, the Plan is Death", by Alice Sheldon (writing as James Tiptree, Jr.). Tragic, creepy, and utterly plausible.
"Eyes of Amber" by Joan D. Vinge (former spouse of Vernor) won a Hugo Award for its characterization of a methane-breathing Machiavellian ruler bent on genocide. Interesting contemporary commentary here (spoilers).
Peter Watts' "Malak" (PDF warning) is another plausible depiction of the inner life of a military machine intelligence (again, no spoilers).
I really struggled with Vinge. I want to give A Fire another shot with a fresh brain. But much like Children of Time it's a good mix of POVs! I'm not sure if I tried that one before this thread came out the first time.
The Judas Collar is quite good; it's a short film about Camels culled in outback Australia. Here's the trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlIpVvOpfAw
The Dalai Lama's Cat and its sequels. Delightful.
A Small and Remarkable Life is primarily from the perspective of an alien foreign to Earth. A portion of chapters are from the perspective of the humans around him but even then it's centered on the non-human and the book is good enough/little known enough that it still feels worth mentioning.
"The Chair" by Jose Saramago is a short story about.... A chair. It's super short, the more I talk about it the more would be ruined.
"EPICAC" by Kurt Vonnegut is another short story about a computer that discovers love. It isn't necessarily from a non-human perspective, but it provides insight into a non-human one.
"The House of Asterion," by Jorge Luis Borges is a super short that isn't about a person, but that's another story that one needs to go blindly into.
Gotta plug "The Things" by Peter Watts.
It's a short story that tells the events of the movie "The Thing" from the alien's (or aliens') perspective.
Remarkably Bright Creatures is a casual read where one of the main characters is a captive octopus. Found it highly entertaining and kept a smile on my face.
The Pride of Chanur by CJ Cherryh.
Hollow Kingdom (and it's follow-up, Feral Creatures) by Kira Jane Buxton is told from the point of view of animals, sometimes involving humans as non-narrator characters. Hilariously funny and dark as well.
Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky is a sci-fi book with perspectives from humans and also jumping spiders. This is the first book in a series and is excellent. Female spiders tend to be larger than males, which lends to further interesting perspectives from within a spider society. This book series has perspectives from AI, as well as alien and other intelligent animals too. I highly recommend the first 2 books! As a bonus, I am less creeped out by spiders and able to appreciate them more after having read them :3
The Gods Themselves by Isaac Asimov. It's one of my favourite sci-fi books on account of the very alien perspective in the middle third. The physics, culture, and biology he describes are all fascinating.
Wings of Fire was a good 'childrens' story. It didn't have any swearing, but what it did have was lots and lots of violence. Still have no clue how they grade these things. Secrets of Stone was a really fun read, and the first in a quartet, with some thought-provoking ideas. The characters in both of these are pretty close to human, though.
Automatic Noodle was a great one about military robots starting a restaurant after the war is over.
Varjak Paw was about a cat who learns martial arts.
Haru was one of my favorite comics, about a young bird, and a boar, who go on an adventure to destroy an evil artifact.
The Underfoot was a comic series about a colony of hamsters surviving after the end of humanity.
Books aren't "graded" or rated for age, they're just marketed in particular categories. Internet suggests they're considered middle-grade but recommended a bit older (10+) due to violence. And young teens will get more from it.
Which tbh sounds like a great series for kids to grow with and get different themes from as they get older.
I know this is an old post but surprised to not see Klara and The Sun mentioned. It's absolutely excellent and a beautiful reflection on human relationships and emotion. Definitely one of the books that has stuck with me since I read it a few years ago.
Been meaning to read The Art of Racing in the Rain, which is narrated by a dog.
A Dog's Purpose is a good one too. It had me in tears several times.
the short story
The Life and Adventure of Shed Number XIIby Victor Pelevin. It's an anthropomorphic story of the perspective of a common shed that can observe, think, feel, and suffer.A psalm for the wild-built and the second book in the series is about a solarpunk nonbinary tea monk. Great little series, highly recommend.
The tea monk is human however, though the robot is not. (◠‿◕)
I love those books though
Not sure how much it counts but-
The Builders by Daniel Polansky
Dirty Dozen meets redwall. Short book, great audiobook, and really well done. Being "just dirty dozen" does mean it's a fairly standard and anthropomorphized story, but the author has some excellent scenes that really use the fact that they're animals as well.
I'll recommend two webnovels
https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/34353/onward-to-providence - a tale of a completely normal trader Pylo and her ship. Dealing with these humans
War queen - an insectoid hivemind gets invaded and conscripted by a human empire
Edit: Three - Emergence in here the human perspective is dominant but the dragon one is fascinating and the worldbuilding is excellent
We3 is a pretty interesting comic miniseries written by Grant Morrison about a cat, a dog, and a rabbit that are converted into military weapons and given limited ability to speak.
Pandora's Star has my favorite antagonist and alien of all time - though saying its name is a minor spoiler.
Peter Hamilton masterfully created the most inhuman thing imaginable. The alien's chapters are magnificently written and perfectly describe how a different intelligence may view the world around it.