Author: Louis Phillips

Length: short story

First Publication: fantastic metropolis, 2002

What the Story is About: A surreal freshman Biology class in the form of a play.

Biology is where the real action is. Everybody wants to see naked animals We’re just voyeurs at heart… Please, take a seat. And please take out your gum . Just because the human jaw moves up and down there’s no need to turn it into a saliva-making elevator.

Consider the lobster…

Author: Daniel Pearlman

Length: short story

First Publication: REAL XIX/, 1993

What the Story is About: Young Cheri loves endangered species just as much as her parents love Cheri.

Author: Marissa Lingen

Length: short story

First Publication: Clarkesworld, 2009

What the Story is About: A biologist and her granddaughter try to find evidence that squid-like aliens are intelligent.

Author: Julie Jansen

Length: short short story

First Publication: Nature Futures, 2008 doi:10.1038/453696a;

What the Story is About: Some invasive species are both beautiful and deadly.

Author: G. A. Morris (Katherine MacLean)

Length: short story

First Publication: Galaxy Science Fiction, 1953

What the Story is About: Is man the last carnivore in the galaxy?

Author: Noel Miller Loomis

Length: short story

First Publication: Planet Stories, 1952

What the Story is About: A treasure hunter learns to use the wild resources in the swamps of Venus to keep himself alive. It’s a not scientifically accurate in any way, but it’s not a bad adventure tale.

Author: Ted Kosmatka & Michael Poore

Length: short story

First Publication: Asimov’s Science Fiction, 2009

Awards: Selected for the 2009 Locus Recommended Reading List

What the Story is About: “The animals hate you. You get used to that, working at a zoo. Over time, it becomes a thing you can respect. ”

Note: this is only the first part of the story. You’ll have to purchase a copy of the magazine to read the rest.

Author: H. Beam Piper with introduction by John D. Clark

Length: novel

First Publication: 1952

What the Story is About: What is particularly interesting about this novel isn’t so much the story, but the introduction by chemist Dr. John D. Clark. In it Clark describes in detail the novel’s “Silicone World” and “Fluorine Planet”, including plant and animal life.

Uller Uprising based on the Indian Rebellion of 1857, also known as the Sepoy Mutiny.

Alernate story link at ManyBooks, which includes Audiobook format.

Author: Jim Harmon

Length: short story

First Publication: If: Worlds of Science Fiction, 1961

What the Story is About: “The creatures on the little planet were real bafflers. The first puzzler about them was that they died so easily. The second was that they didn’t die at all.”

Author: Simon Ings

Length: short story

First Publication: When It Changed anthology, 2009

What the Story is About: The story “gets inside the restless, curious (some might say troubled) mind of a scientist.”

Be sure to read the afterword by Matthew Cobb, Programme Director Biology, the University of Manchester, which describes the work in his lab that inspired the story.

Author: Kay Kenyon

Length: short story

First Publication: I, Alien Anthology, 2005

What the Story is About: “They think I’m some kind of fish. But if they ever caught me, the DNA analysis would give them a bit of a jolt.”

(Audio version only)

Author: Steven Utley

Length: short story

First Publication: Cosmos Magazine, 2007

What the Story is About: “Trilobites died out 250 million years ago. Or so we thought. But now they’ve washed up on a Texas beach. Has a relic population clung on somewhere, away from human attention? Or is there a far stranger explanation…”

Related Biology in Science Fiction blog post: Silurian Tales