History Main / Xenofiction

* {{Toys/Bionicle}}: Though humanlike in some ways, the principal cast are first and foremost biomechanical beings originally built to maintain the planet-hopping HumongousMecha [[PhysicalGod Mata Nui]]—who they see as a patron deity in all but name, and needs them to work [[GodsNeedPrayerBadly lest he fall weak]]—and some attention is paid to their differing psychology and cultural values, with strong emphasis on the 'three virtues' of Unity, Duty, and Destiny, which are implied to have been programmed directives.
** Meant to essentially be maintenance nanotech analogous to blood cells, it's only due to the actions of one of their creators gone rogue that they're even ''sapient.''
*** They still possess some hallmarks of this. Being built, they don't reproduce biologically and thus have no desire for it, altogether lacking any cultural notion of romance, in addition to being sexless and with largely superficial notions of gender.
** Being largely mechanical, they're fully capable of [[EasilyDetachableRobotParts rebuilding]] [[PullingThemselvesTogether and repairing themselves,]] if the individual possesses the knowledge. The franchise even starts off with our Toa heroes doing just that.

* {{Toys/Bionicle}}: Though humanlike in some ways, the principal cast are first and foremost biomechanical beings originally built to maintain the planet-hopping HumungousMecha [[PhysicalGod Mata Nui]]—who they see as a patron deity in all but name, and needs them to work [[GodsNeedPrayerBadly lest he fall weak]]—and some attention is paid to their differing psychology and cultural values, with strong emphasis on the 'three virtues' of Unity, Duty, and Destiny, which are implied to have been programmed directives.

* ''WesternAnimation/SimbaENatoUnRe'' starts out as this, an Italian series about orphaned lion cubs raised by wolves after their father is shot by humans. It gets [[WidgetSeries weird]].

* ''WebOriginal/OrionsArm'' can be this at times, given that even the average Joe is a {{transhuman}}, godlike {{Artificial Intelligence}}s are commonplace, and you have sapient animals, robots, plants and every manner of combination thereof, people who have experienced TheSingularity several times, sapient clouds of {{nanomachines}}, StarfishAliens with truly [[BizarreAlienBiology bizarre biologies]] and sometimes [[BlueAndOrangeMorality incomprehensible psychologies]], sapient computer programs who live exclusively in virtual simulations, and even lifeforms based on magnetic monopoles or nuclear reactions as commonplace citizens of various states.

* ''ComicBook/{{Aquaman}} Secret Files #1'' includes a story about a curious fish who's never heard of Aquaman trying to find him. He learns that to dolphins he has a weird fungus on his head, to an octopus he's an ungainly creature with only four stiff limbs, a manta ray sees his hook hand "barb" as unnatural, to a whale he's small and to a starfish he's huge, to a crab he's horrifically ugly, and to sharks he has one long tooth. Cue the little fish running into Aquaman to warn him about the terrible creature he's heard of, belatedly realizing that the "weird fish" he saw might help him find Aquaman.

* ''Literature/{{Stray}}'' by A.N. Wilson is from the POV of an old stray tabby as he tells his often-unfortunate life to his grandson. Pufftail has been abused, mistreated, and abandoned during his life.

* ''WebOriginal/HamstersParadise'' is normally presented in a nature guide-style format, focusing on maps, species and biomes at intervals of 5-10 million years. An example of Xenofiction happens, however, when the AlwaysChaoticEvil harmsters arise, and very quickly eradicate themselves. The trope is much stronger with the Calliducyonidae, a family arising 45 million years after the harmsters, containing two genera of dog-like sophonts, the wolf-like southhounds and the fox-like northhounds, which are depicted from the stories they tell and their perspectives on life.

* ''WebOriginal/{{Serina}}'' started off as a speculative evolution exercise on canaries being itnroduced to another planet and the subsequent adaptive radiation. But by the Ultimocene section (circa 250 million years after the fact, and five-six real life years after the project's inception) has shifted into focusing primarily on sapient species and their narratives, thus becoming Redwall-esque xenofiction with fantasy elements.

* ''Whalesong'', ''The White Whale'' ([[Literature/MobyDick not that one]], though he '''did''' exist in the books' setting.) and ''The Ice at the End of the World'' are primarily told from the POV of an albino humpback whale (there are some chapters from the POV of a major human character though)

* ''Ka: Dar Oakley in the Ruin of Ymr'' is an unusually literary and [[MindScrew dreamlike]] example of this trope. The titular [[CleverCrows crow]] learns to speak with humans, discovers the concept of a name, which he introduces to the rest of crowkind, and becomes immortal after a trip to a magical underworld. The titular "Ka" and "Ymr" are the "realms" of crows and humanity, and Dar Oakley finds himself thinking more like a human when he is around them for longer.

* ''Metamorphoses'' (also known as ''The Golden Ass''), written in the 2nd century AD, is narrated by a man who was changed into a donkey. His experiences cover the whole spectrum of an animal's life.

* Creator/OlafStapledon's ''Sirius'' was one of the first works to combine this with UpliftedAnimal, imagining what it might be like to be inside the head of a dog that had deliberately been given intelligence comparable to that of a human.

* Margaret Bechard's middle-grade novel ''Star Hatchling'' concerns a pair of alien siblings from a primitive tribal society discovering a crashed human girl. They believe her to be male [[BizarreSexualDimorphism because she lacks a head crest]] and think she [[LimbRegeneration regenerated her head]] when her space helmet comes off (their planet's atmosphere is breathable, but not ideal, for humans). [[BlueAndOrangeMorality The concept of friendship is foreign to them]].

* Creator/DickKingSmith's fiction sometimes has elements of this. For instance, ''The Foxbusters'' notes that chickens don't celebrate anniversaries of events, because they don't remember that far back.

* ''The Guardian Herd'' is a young-adult fantasy series about [[{{Pegasus}} pegasi]].

* ''Halic: The Story of a Gray Seal'' by Ewan Clarkson follows the life of gray seals living at the coast of Wales from the point of view of a male gray seal named Halic. The book was very fact based about the life of seals and it didn't have much of a plot: It followed Halic's life from his birth to his death.

* Andrea I. Alton's ''Demon of Undoing'' features a race of cat-like aliens, the Imkairans. When one of them meets a human, it is he who is presented as the alien - the Imkairans are baffled by his lack of interest in rank, and cannot understand why he does things his hair colour suggests he can't (the Imkairans have a caste system based on the colour of their head-crests).

* ''Cat House'' is a [[SoBadItsGood very strange]] example about cats that seems to have taken some clumsy inspiration from ''Literature/TailchasersSong'' [[{{Squick}} while simultaneously trying to make this, of all genres,]] HotterAndSexier. Just read this [[https://smartbitchestrashybooks.com/reviews/guest-review-cat-house-michael-peak/ review]].

* ''[[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6600888-beak-of-the-moon Beak of the Moon]]'' by Philip Temple is entirely from the perspective of keas, a species of parrot native to New Zealand.

* ''[[http://strangestoriesaboutsadpeople.blogspot.com/2016/08/rooms-full-of-me.html/ Rooms Full of Me]]'': A self aware virus searches for meaning in a hostile world.

* ''Webcomic/{{Freefall}}'' stars an uplifted Red Wolf, an alien whose species' [[PlanetOfHats hat]] is apparently that of the LovableRogue, and a robot {{Cloudcuckoolander}}. The supporting cast is dominated by robots, with only a smattering of humans.

** Several books are told from alien points of view. Some are just from the perspective of Ax, the team's TokenNonHuman, and often involve him trying to understand humanity; we also have the ''Chronicles,'' prequel books focused on other alien characters. ''The Hork-Bajir Chronciles'' and the quite trippy ''[[SufficientlyAdvancedAlien Ellimist]] Chronicles'' are especially notable, having no humans outside of the FramingDevice. Meanwhile ''The Andalite Chronicles'' tells [[IAmDyingPleaseTakeMyMacGuffin Elfangor]]'s backstory, beginning when he rescued a pair of humans from AlienAbduction by TheGreys, while ''Visser'' is a VillainEpisode about [[PredecessorVillain Visser One]]'s [[HumanityIsInfectious initial encounters with humanity]].

* ''VideoGame/{{Shelter}}'' is a short survival/adventure game played from the POV of a mother badger, struggling to feed her just-weaned offspring and shepherd them to safety across challenging terrain.

* ''WesternAnimation/SpiritStallionOfTheCimarron'' is about the relationship among horses, white settlers, and the Lakota people of the American West during the Nineteenth Century. The story is told from the point of view of the title horse, who is, aside from his [[UncannyValley frighteningly human eyebrows]] and sapience, a fairly natural depiction of a horse. He doesn't even talk except for the occasional narration.