I've mentioned in a previous post that Star Trek: the Animated Series has much more visually interesting aliens than the rubber suits and make-up jobs in the original show.  Tonight my son and I were watching these giant red cephalopods as they put the Enterprise bridge crew into a galactic zoo.  His immediate response was to give them Pokemon-style names and laugh raucously.

With no limitations on their special effects budgets, SF books have in general been much more imaginative.  Some entirely fanciful, others at least attempting some scientific accuracy, with varying levels of success.

from Maria Popova's  Twitter feed: http://exp.lore.com/post/32194412896/vintage-science-pulp-fiction-illustrations-from

Barlowe's Guide to Extraterrestrials

26 years of the Contact Conference.  Sooner or later I'll get around to filling in the details on last year's invention, the Graxian shapeshifters.