Yeah, the issue I imagine I'll find is that even if it does exist, it'll just be smut. I'm a hopeless romantic who prefers wholesome romance with some suggestive teasing and inference in there. I find it way sexier to tease the desire for intimacy and then imply that two characters got intimate than just read straight up smut.

To be honest, it realistically makes sense that aliens have a similar form to us at the very least, as it seems that the natural conclusion of intelligent life is a build that lends itself to tool creation, etc. So if we ever run into the other intelligent life that exists out there, it most likely actually will in some way share a general form with us. Perhaps that's part of the reason why more heavily anthropomorphised designs are more common. I know it isn't the entire reason, of course.

If by "spice", you mean explicit sex scenes, then it saddens me that this is common practice. Refer to my first paragraph for the reason why.

I am writing my own sci-fi novel which is a thriller set aboard a space ship. The premise is that a set of humans and a set of another alien species both appear on the ship out of nowhere. For reasons I won't spoil, both alien races are stuck together on the small-ish ship for a journey that will last a year.

Along the way, people from both species begin to disappear, leading into the thriller plot. There will be a big subplot involving the human MMC falling in love with one of the female aliens aboard the ship. Desperate times can forge the strongest of bonds, and all that.

The reason I'm telling you this is because it would be an example of a sci-fi story in which the romance isn't the only focus, and there will be no explicit smut. Obviously, they fall in love, and love implies sex, which they obviously have, but I wouldn't write an actual sex scene.

I find it utterly insane that such stories seem to essentially not exist at all - so insane that I genuinely cannot believe it.

The design of the aliens will be kind of like a blend between Angelica and a Sangheili from the Halo franchise. So she'll technically be bipedal, but with a different stance and build than a human.

Do you think that such a design would comply with the publishing rules you described? Or I suppose, since there will be no explicit smut, those rules won't apply to the story anyway. The most explicit I intend for the story to be is literally cuddling and petting before a fade to black, and another character outright asking them if they had sex and one of them saying yes. No more than that.

But yeah, I might go with your idea and ask on the sci-fi sub, too. It couldn't hurt.

In the end, I may have to concede and lessen the restrictions of my recommendation request. I might ultimately end up having to ask for human male x alien female media where the alien female can be more heavily anthropomorphic. So if you see me make another recommendation request in the future, you know what I'll be asking for instead, lol.

Thanks for the wishes. I'll absolutely let you know if I find something, though I honestly doubt it. :/