How Aliens "Do It"

In the popular imagination, highly intelligent aliens from other planets are either saintly and eager to help us, or diabolical and intent upon destroying us. Then again, suppose neither of those is true. Maybe they can travel through space over light distances, but don't have TV; Perhaps they're telepsychics who can read and manipulate minds, but fight each other with swords instead of guns; or have fantastic engineering skills, but no comparative biology or genetic science. In short, they are more advanced than we in some ways, less in others. Let us abandon our assumptions in reading about the inhabitants of Nettara...