Alien Ecosystems in science fiction

[Zor]

One thing i liked about Avatar was the setting of Pandora, with a wide variety of creatures which were well designed and were in general beleivable. Having a beleivable set of alien creatures is in my opinion an very nice touch, and if you are a good enough writer and are either a good enough artist (like Wayne Barlowe or nemoramjet) or have a decent creative team, you can make a book or TV special about ecologies.

Can anyone list any series/books/comics/whatever with good descriptions of the ecosystems of other planets with decently designed aliens with creative but logical body structures?

Zor

[Shroom Man 777]

Evolution, that movie with David Duchovny. The infested alien mining shaft sure had a whole buncha weirdo creatures, up to and including man-eating gorillas! Sure, it had bullshit science, but still... whatever. Giant amoebas getting defeated by shampoos up its ass.

[Lord of the Abyss]

Mirabile by Janet Kagen has some of that. It's a collection of short stories set on a colony world. The stories are biologically/ecologically themed, although most of the odd lifeforms are derived from Earth critters ( a complicated result of genetic engineering ). There's a fair amount about the local lifeforms and ecology, though. For example, popcorn trees which have flowers that make an audible sound when they bloom to attract pollinators. Or the fuzzwillies which roll their eggs out of their nests in trees to crack the overly thick shells ( "egg rolling season" is dangerous ), and exactly how they ended up with such an apparent evolutionary mistake.

[Coalition]

Would the "War against the Chtorr" series by David Gerrold count? Essentially Earth gets hit with a series of plagues, killing off ~3/4 of humanity. After that, the critters of the Chtorr ecology start popping out. Everything about them is hungrier and more efficient than relative Earth critters. Their grass is more efficient at spreading out and converting sunlight, ther rabbit equivalents eat more and reproduce more, etc. The whole Chtorr ecology is more advanced than ours, and it is spreading over Earth.

The fun part is that the lower level ecological critters are present, but then there is a gap between them and the worms. The Chtorran worms are giant omnivores, and the smaller ones are capable of going up against a full-grown grizzly bear. Not defeating it, but at least making a fight. They als get very big, and can charge at people at over forty miles per hour. Their bodies are somehow resitant to injuries from bullets, their skin is coverd in a pink fur that lets them sense the ground like all five senses at once, and they are very strong (the medium ones can pull open a car roof to get the juicy humans inside).

Even worse is that when a certain trophic level in Earth's ecology is replaced by Chtorr critters, the Earth ecology now needs that Chtorr critter to survive. So if the Earth grass was killed off, and replaced by Chtorran grass equivalent, then the Earth rabbits now need the Chtorran grass to eat.

From the stories, you are told of various plants that show up exactly when needed for the next stage of the infestation. An initial groundcover shows up to prevent wind and water erosion. When the goundcover is established, the next set of seeds arrive and begin growing to provide mulching material. The next plant then arrives to improve the mulching, etc., until the whole area is Chtorr-formed.

The worst part of all is that the remaining scientists think that what they have met so far is only the first wave of the invasion, and the actual Chtorrans (the sentient beings behind the invasion) haven't arrived yet. In short, humanity is fighting (and losing) against the dumb critters, rather than an intelligent alien force.

[Lord of the Abyss]

Their bodies are somehow resitant to injuries from bullets,

As I recall, that's mainly because they don't seem to have any centralized organs/system for the bullets to damage. The bullets tear into them just fine, but that doesn't stop them. You need to shred* or burn them to stop them.

*So bullets can work; you just need to use lots of them.

[Shroom Man 777]

Late reply, but Stephen King's The Mist has a movie adaptation that portrays very alien creatures, fucking grotesque ones, that besiege a shopping market. They were very well done and very creepifying.

[Imperial Overlord]

Their bodies are somehow resitant to injuries from bullets,

As I recall, that's mainly because they don't seem to have any centralized organs/system for the bullets to damage. The bullets tear into them just fine, but that doesn't stop them. You need to shred* or burn them to stop them.

*So bullets can work; you just need to use lots of them.

Bullets can and will do the job, but you do need a lot of them. One man can do the job if he's got one of those high tech bullet hose guns (series takes place in the mid 21st century) and he keeps it on the Chtorr for long enough.