I was merely ranting at an idea and snatched at whatever was available.

The earliest known sci-fi writer, I believe (not counting Homeresque god-inventors), was Cyrano de Bergerac, with his posthumously published Voyage Dans la Lune (Journey to the Moon) (1657) and l'Histoire des États et Empires du Soleil (The History of the States and Empires of the Sun) (1662), both of which were peopled by -- basically people. Like Edgar Rice Burroughs works:

Cheap, downloadable books:
* A Princess of Mars
* The Gods of Mars
* The Warlord of Mars
* Thuvia, Maid of Mars

...These people were only subtly different for us (including his tyrants on Jupiter) -- except, of course, that, according to Burroughs -- Martian women lay eggs...

Ray Bradbury gave us a kind of family atmosphere for Martians in his work, The Martian Chronicles (1950).

Herbert George Wells, on the other hand, showed their true Hollywood potential for annihilation in his The War of the Worlds.

Gene Roddenberry, I think, found himself trapped with his story-line. He had discovered that sentient life on other planets should turn out to be grossly different from sentient life as we knew it, but by then the books were already out, contracts were already signed, and the USS Enterprise was launched. I'm sure he received a lot of mail concerning the "coincidental" similarities between his main antagonists/protagonists, but c'mon. Hollywood makeup can only do so much. After introducing other stranger intelligences to the series, the idea that Humans, Klingons, Romulans and Volcans were all somehow related didn't seem so far-fetched. It would be interesting to have a new, far-futured series built on this concept and actually encounter "those who came before."

Dan
--ps--
Funny how the idea of "Intelligent Design" brings out the sci-fi in people.