The Slylandro are a fictional race of beings featured in the sci-fi Star Control computer game series.

The Slylandro are a race of ancient and friendly gas bag people that inhabit a gas giant planet. They are ancient and long-lived enough to have records of contact with the Precursors prior to their disappearance.

Since they cannot create tools, much less spaceships, they purchased a model 2418-B self-replicating probe from the Melnorme using data about their own unique biology to pay for it. Their intent was to use the probe to peacefully explore the universe. They made an error programming it, however, setting the priority of the self-replication activity too high in an attempt to maximize their return on investment. As a result the probes would seek out alien spacecraft (their highest priority target for exploration), transmit a standard greeting declaring their peaceful intent, and then immediately switch to replication mode instead of trying to collect data. The first stage of this involved attempting to break down the nearest source of raw materials (the alien spacecraft) for use in the process.

The seemingly schizophrenic probes spread rapidly and terrorize the quadrant until the protagonist contacts the Slylandro homeworld and explains their mistake to them, at which point the deeply apologetic Slylandro provide a self-destruct code for the probes to make dealing with them easier. They also reprogram returning probes with instructions to transmit the code to any of the misprogrammed probes they encounter.

See also

• Berserker probe