Basic Trope: Creatures that are based on silicon instead of carbon.
- Straight:
- The Cshorkians are silicon-based.
- The Ptorkians use ammonia as a solvent.
- The Aworkians use arsenic instead of phosphorous.
- Exaggerated: The Yborkian biochemistry violates several laws of chemistry and physics.
- Downplayed: The Gcorkians have alternative-chirality biomolecules.
- Justified:
- Life finds a way, even in environments that are absurdly hostile for carbon-based, water-drinking life.
- The creatures in question are artificially made and thus something other than carbon as a result.
- Inverted: Human Aliens
- Subverted: Aliens arrive, and appear to be carbon-based.
- Double Subverted: They are revealed to use ammonia as a solvent.
- Parodied: See Exaggerated.
- Two Zorgians are relaxing on a beach next to an ocean of molten lava, under 100 bars worth of sulfuric acid, one of them asks if it's possible that carbon-based life using H20 as a solvant could exist, and the other laughs and tells him he watched too many stupid sci-fi movies.
- There is silicon-based life, and there is also silicon-cringe life.
- Zig-Zagged: The aliens are silicon-based, but use water as a solvent. However, their DNA contains arsenic instead of phosphorous.
- Averted: All aliens are carbon-based.
- Enforced: The writer wants to show how great the diversity of life is in his universe.
- Lampshaded: "Now I haven't seen that kind of biochemistry before..."
- Invoked: Humans create life with a variant biochemistry on some distant world For Science!
- Exploited: A farmer herds animals with specific biochemistries to farm rare materials produced inside them.
- Defied: The work only visits planets with carbon-based life.
- Discussed: "Oh look, a new planet found with ammonia-based life!"
- Conversed: "I wonder if they get drunk on ethamine..."
- Deconstructed: Silicon-based life is so strange that it can't be recognized as alive by "regular" aliens, and the incredible silicon-based ecosystem on its Death World goes unnoticed by scientists. Even if they do notice, they are so alien to each other that communication is virtually impossible.
- Implied: The Bporkians explode violently in Earth's air.
- Played for Laughs: Two humans discuss the possibility of alternate biochemistries. Cue two silicon-based homnids on another planet having the same conversation.
- Played for Drama: Biochemical discrimination arises at the galactic stage.
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