Books SFF Bestiary Jellyfish in Space! — Aliette de Bodard’s Navigational Entanglements Jellyfish are profoundly alien to our human biology and psychology — so they make sense as space aliens By Judith Tarr | Published on December 15, 2025 Comment 0 Share New Share Aliette de Bodard is on my shortlist of “auto-preorder” authors: writers whose works I order as soon as they become available (remember: preorders are love). I first encountered her through fantasy, the marvelous The House of Shattered Wings and its sequels and tie-ins. (Purely coincidentally, the core trilogy has just been released in a shiny new edition.) Thanks to commenter Khryss for reminding me that I had an unread De Bodard in my TBR pile, and for pointing out that it features jellyfish aliens. Naturally I leaped to move it to the top of the pile. Buy the Book Navigational Entanglements Aliette de Bodard Buy Book Navigational Entanglements Aliette de Bodard Buy this book from: AmazonBarnes and NobleiBooksIndieBoundTarget Navigational Entanglements’ title works on multiple levels. It’s about four junior navigators in a Vietnamese-inspired science-fictional universe, confronted with a near-impossible task. This universe has an unusual take on star travel: navigators use their own energy, called Shadow, to open gates and navigate ships through the weird continuum called the Hollows. The Hollows are inhabited, and the inhabitants are deadly dangerous. They’re called Tanglers. What they are, almost point for point, are spacefaring jellyfish. Bell, tentacles, stingers, the whole package. Tanglers’ effect on humans is less about physical stingers and more about psychic damage. When their tendrils escape the Hollows into human space, navigators can track them with Shadow—and by following trails of humans whose minds have been bent or broken. A Tangler in human space is a serious threat to the humans in its path. Much of the story revolves around the social, emotional, and political lives of the four young navigators, but the nature and biology of Tanglers is crucial to both the conflict and the resolution. The navigators are sent by their elders to find and capture a Tangler that has escaped (or so they’re told) from the Hollows. It has to be captured and presumably killed before it drifts into inhabited space. If they can’t stop it in time, the death toll will be enormous. We’ve been learning about the life cycle of the jellyfish, and we’ve seen what happens when a bloom of giant jellyfish shows up along the coast of Japan. Both of these things are relevant to the story. The average Tangler is about human-sized, but its tendrils trail far from the main body. The tendrils are the deadly part. What we learn along with the characters is that a Tangler can grow very, very, very big. The more it eats, the bigger it gets. We don’t learn how long it lives, but that’s not really relevant. What is relevant is that a Tangler can breed in human space, and it reproduces in jellyfish fashion, seeding an area with polyps that develop into miniature Tanglers. The process seems to be fairly rapid, at least in space outside of the Hollows. The result, if it’s not checked or destroyed, is a bloom of Tanglers, and that is very bad. Unlike terrestrial jellyfish (at least as far as we know), Tanglers appear to be sentient. They feel emotions (fear, loneliness, longing to go home). They seem to have a language. They’re not mindless monsters. There’s no malice in them. They are what they are; they’re psychic predators, and they prey on humans who invade the Hollows. Outside of the Hollows, they hunt whatever they can eat, which would be the inhabitants of any habitat (from ship to planet) they encounter. Whether it’s possible to communicate with them, or to persuade them to go back to the Hollows, is one of the problems the navigators have to solve. Can they settle this without violence, or without being killed themselves? In light of the political situation, should they even try? And what will the consequences be? Is it worth the cost? I love that Tanglers are pretty much straightforward jellyfish with a couple of extra space powers. Jellies are profoundly alien to our human biology and psychology. They make sense as space aliens. Now, a question for you all. What are your favorite book or film aliens based on terrestrial animals? That’s where I’m headed in the next chapter. I have my eye on Pride of Chanur to start (lions! in space!), and several others are on my radar. What would you like me to look at? It doesn’t have to be fully sentient aliens; it can be unique life forms that are critical to the development of the story, as Tanglers are here. What’s out there, especially in the last decade or so? What shouldn’t I miss?[end-mark] The post Jellyfish in Space! — Aliette de Bodard’s <i>Navigational Entanglements</i> appeared first on Reactor.