Here is a guide to the references in this song.

"Nightfall", by Isaac Asimov (1941)
"Who Goes There?", by John W. Campbell, Jr. (1938)
Xanth: the setting of the seemingly interminable series by Piers Anthony (1984-present)
Pern: the setting of Anne McCaffrey's Dragonrider series (1967-1978)
Dune: also known as Arrakis; the setting of Frank Herbert's spicy epics (1956-1984)
"The Voyage of the Space Beagle", by A.E. van Vogt (1950)
Many SF stories have dealt with mines on the moon...I can't remember the name of the specific one I have in mind at the moment.
Gafka is the main alien character in a story about a society of aliens whose reproductive methodology is tied to music. I don't have the title available at the moment.
"The Cold Equations", by Tom Godwin (1954)
"Microcosmic God", by Theodore Sturgeon (1941)
The Ixchel are beings encountered in A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle (1962).
The Vogons are unavoidable in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams (1979).
Strider is Aragorn's alias in J.R.R.Tolkien's literary Rings cycle (1954).
The Gleep are a species of intelligent mega-whales in Piers Anthony's Prostho Plus (1973).
"The Hurkle is a Happy Beast", by Theodore Sturgeon (1949)
"Farewell to the Master" by Harry Bates (1940), is, possibly, what I was thinking of here, but possibly not. There is a book with aliens actually called "masters", although I haven't read it; this reference could be to them.
"Scanners Live in Vain" and related stories, by Cordwainer Smith (1950)
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, by Philip K. Dick (1968)
"Vintage Season", by Henry Kuttner & C.L. Moore (as Lawrence O'Donnell) (1946)
"Babel II", by Damon Knight (1953).
Myth Conceptions, by Robert Asprin (1980) features such a purchase of a dragon, if memory serves...
"Omnilingual", by H. Beam Piper (1957)
Rhysling is, of course, the Blind Singer of the Spaceways in "The Green Hills of Earth", by Robert A. Heinlein (1947)
"Man in the Jar", by Damon Knight (1957)
In Dragon's Egg and Starquake, by Robert Forward (1980, 1985), humans meet aliens who live on the surface of a neutron star.