“What we’ve got here is failure to communicate.”

Sometimes aliens are so alien, nothing works. You just never break through.

ETA: “Face Value”, Karen Joy Fowler. Text. 2 humans on a planet with aliens. And no communication. Why do they come into the house and touch everything? Why do they take stuff and then just drop it again? Who knows? One of the humans is much more affected by the situation than the other, why?

ETA: “Bridge of Silence”, George Zebrowski. A human and an alien meet. The human says and does a lot. There’s no way to interpret what the alien does or doesn’t do. The human goes mad?

Solaris, Stanisław Lem. Wikipedia. Apparently this planet is covered with a sentient being. It does stuff, like create a copy of a person. But what does it all mean? Decades of books contain observations, nothing more.

“Spar”, Kij Johnson. Text. She shares a tiny spaceship with an alien. From her point of view, they have s*x, a lot. She has no idea how the alien experiences this. She’s probably close to losing her mind.

“The Dance of the Changer and the Three”, Terry Carr. Text. This very interesting planet is inhabited by energy beings. In 4 years communication hasn’t become perfect. And that’s inconvenient, when they do something inexplicable and dangerous.