Yep, pretty much agreed!





Another classic is Hal Clement's "Mission of gravity". This is another great hard SF classic with a non-humanoid alien a one of the main characters.


"The story is set on a highly oblate planet named Mesklin, which has surface gravity that varies between 700 g at the poles and 3 g at the equator. The story is told from the points of view of one of the local intelligent life forms and a human explorer. The locals are centipede-like, in order to withstand the enormous gravity, and terrified of even small heights (because in 700 g even a tiny fall is fatal)."

[url]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission_of_Gravity[/url]

The science is focussed on the concept of an oblate planet and the lifeforms on it. I like weird sci-fi planets and intelligent alien centipedes are cool. This is one I'd love to see made into a movie. There is a human explorer to bridge the gap.