That reminds me of one reviewer who described the weirdest aliens in any science fiction novel as the human characters in a particular Robert L. Forward novel....
That sounds tantalizing. I tried googling around but couldn't figure out which book that might be. Can you try to dig up the name? The only Robert Forward I've read is Dragon's Egg, which was great. I should read more by him.
So my current favourite is Fiasco by Lem. The physics at least sounds convincing and the characters are all too human.