Any sci-fi with aliens where humans are not the less advanced race?
Any sci-fi with aliens where humans are not the less advanced race?
What the title says, I'm tired of the trope where humans are the least advanced in the universe.
I'd like to read something different where we're the more advanced ones (not necessarily the most advanced). As an example I quite enjoyed the Ender's Game sequels and the angle of us being the more advanced ones was quite interesting.
Do you have any recommendations?
Project hail Mary was cool in the fact that it was just so... Different. Won't say too much to avoid spoilers, but I think it'll tick your boxes.
Was just going to suggest this same book! Very interesting take on what makes for a "more advanced" species.
Loved that book.
I highly recommend this book.
The culture series? It's not outright said they're human, but they're clearly human. And they outscale basically every single thing in the universe. Or at least in the first few books. Might change later.
In Excession it felt more like
spoiler
The Culture is a race of intelligent starships that keeps humans as pets.
"Never forget I am not
this silver body, Mahrai. I am not an animal brain, I am not even some attempt to produce an AI through software running on a computer. I am a Culture Mind. We are close to gods, and on the far side."
This is absolutely the right take on The Culture.
They are explicitly referred to as humans and pan-humans.
But the term doesn't mean "primates evolved on earth", it essentially means what "humanoid" does in other franchises. There's several references to the fact that by far the most common body form evolved for higher intelligences is essentially the same. All of the rubber ear and forehead aliens from Trek would just be called humans.
The "standard" Culture human is extensively engineered to be able to interbreed with any other pan-human they want to, as well as modify their own body at least to the extent of strength, density and gender over a few months time. More extreme modifications are easily available via artificial means including to distinctly non-human forms like floating jellyfish.
Thanks, will check it out.
If you haven’t read The Culture by Iain Banks, it’s among the best and most enjoyable sci-fi ever, in my opinion. The humans of the culture are quite near the most advanced in the universe, but there are entities more advanced, their own AI ships, prominently, but other species too that chose to “sublime” and exist outside of the normal universe, but because of that such ones are ever barely around. The humans of the culture could evolve that far too, but didn’t choose to do so yet in the series.
The Culture novels by Iain M. Banks are my favorite book series of all time. Amazing stuff. Pity the author died young.
My understanding is that the 'humans' of The Culture are a genetic melange of several different, but similar species who decided to merge with one another. They essentially chose the best genetic traits of each species and ran with those. It should be noted that Earth is not a part of The Culture, if it matters to OP that the humans in the story are Earthlings or not.
The Bobiverse series eventually features some aliens. I don't think that's a spoiler at all... But they aren't space-faring, so I dunno if that counts for what you're looking for.
The Bobiverse series is amazing, really fun and well written.
I highly recommend the Bobiverse series as well, and feel free to join us over at lemmy.world/c/Bobiverse too!
I have a question about this series; I read maybe a third of the first book and so far it has felt a bit..i dunno, corny? So far the humor feels a little like low-hanging fruit and I have a hard time connecting with the main character because he's just a mind and doesn't seem to have much agency at this point. The larger world seems interesting and there's plenty of mystery still but should I keep going or is it kinda more of the same?
Not trying to shit on it, I know a lot of people love it and I see it recommended all the time, and likewise it took me some getting used to the kind of goofiness of other series like Expeditionary Force, but just wondering if anyone else felt the same as me at first.
How you are viewing the book is incredibly valid.
The one way that I have come up with to describe a potential reason for the way the story is portrayed is this:
The ENTIRE series is from the perspective of a die hard semi-introverted software engineer and HUGE NERD who has this deep-seated need of just wanting to help and make things better.
Taking that into account everything written kind of states to make sense.
I love the series and it goes to some VERY interesting places.
There is one warning to give. At a certain point the book starts to suffer from scale creep. The characters are already able to do "X" so we need an enemy that can do "X+Y+Z" so now character learns to do "X+Y+Z TIME 10²“. At a certain point it's best to just stop worrying about the explanations and just enjoy the story.
Highly recommend.
I just downloaded the 2nd audiobook and plan to start tomorrow. This series is really nice. The narrator is one of my favorite after hearing him narrate Project Hail Mary.
Starship Troopers by Heinlein. Not at all like the movie. Pretty restrained, thoughtful, even meditative on war, fascism, military. One of my favorites.
Let’s be frank, the book was pro-fascism, and Heinlein was at the time himself pro-fascism. It’s still a good book, but calling it meditations on fascism sells it short.
Seconded. In @davidbrin@mastodon.social Brin's series humans are basically the only race that managed to uplift themselves making them a galactic oddball.
I inspired myself to reread it. So far, I'm pleased with my own recommendation
Sounds interesting, will check it out. Thanks.
No sweat!
Old Man's War series by John Scalzi. Humans are one of the newer space faring species but we are quickly becoming the most dominant group. Genetic engineering being a specialty. There are a few ascended species who are more advanced but they don't really interact with the general galaxy anymore.
+1 for that series.
I love John Scalzi's writing. And old man's war is great fun. Finished the entire series in a single big binge over a few weeks.
It's criminal that no one has mentioned District 9 yet.
I would understand people ignoring it because of the fact that there is a space ship and they have tech, but the setting is ultimately about how the aliens completely need humanity's help. There is a certain pairity in the movie since they are refugees with some better technology.
But anyway, it has a tremendous story, great action, pulls on the heart strings, super imaginitive idea of aliens being stuck on earth.
I agree, and I'm still waiting for a follow up...
We all are. :(
The Road Not Taken by Harry Turtledove, about aliens trying to invade Earth and finding out there the less advanced race here
A fun little short story.
Joe Haldeman - The Forever War
Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card The Noon series by the Strugatsky brothers The Culture series by Iain M Banks (the protagonists are not humans, but a multi-species civilisation that includes humans) Strata by Terry Pratchett
The Mote in God's Eye is an interesting first contact story where humans are the ones making contact
One of my favorite Sci-fi series books is the Ender's game saga. I think this might meet your specifications. Don't watch the movie! The book, as is often the case, is way better.
I'm glad I got to enjoy Ender's Game before I learned about the author. I remember enjoying it, but teeth-grinding rage at the aims the author supports is going to prevent me from enjoying rereading it, or recommending it to anyone.
I am glad I don't know about any of the authors politics. Now I will actively avoid information about him so as not to tarnish a good memory.
A Fire Upon the Deep
Good recommendation indeed, the zones of thought are awesome. One of my all time favourites!
Will check it out, thanks!
Speaker For the Dead is one of my favorite books of all time, which is exactly this concept.
I highly recommend reading Ender's Game first, which is also an easy read.
The author won two Hugo awards for two books in a row (I think the first ever), but only wrote Ender's Game to flesh out the backstory for Speaker for the Dead.
Both excellent books with the latter particularly so.
Yep, that was the book I had in mind for such a sub-genre (I mention it in the original post).
Children of Time sort of fits in. Also if you liked the Ender's Game sequels and how he handled how aliens can truly be alien and the difficulty of aliens to communicate to each other you'll most likely like the whole series by Adrian Tchaikovksy, and most likely some of his other sci-fi books.
I know referring people to Reddit is generally considered bad form around here, but check out reddit's r/hfy. It's mostly amateur stuff, but the subreddit centers around people writing stories about humans being good at something. I haven't taken a look at it in a while, but some of the series I used to enjoy are: First Contact (the ralts_bloodthorne one), the Deathworlders (spawned the Deathworlders trope on TV tropes), Debris (ausnerd), Transcripts (squiggle story studios), They Are Smol (this is a god-tier scifi shitpost series by tinypracinghorse) along with its companion series The Smol Detective (frank leroux), and anything by regallegaleagle like Memories of Creature 88, Billy-Bob Space Trucker and Material Differences.
Memories of Creature 88 was amazing. It's one of my favorite stories on HFY.
Thanks, will check it out when I have time, though I'm really looking for professional books (though I'm sure at least some of those you mentioned are definitely better than one of the worst sci-fi/fantasy books I ever read).
I say "amateur" in the sense that they're free, tend to be released a chapter at a time (which means sometimes series go unfinished if the writer gets bored), and typically aren't connected to a publisher. The writing quality itself can vary significantly with experience though, ranging from beginner to expert. Tbh, the ones I've listed are a lot better than 90% of the "professional" books I've read.
First Contact (by ralts_bloodthorne) and The Deathworlders are absurdly long at this point, so if you're wanting something to keep you occupied for a long time, check those out.
Transcripts is very unique, and while the writing isn't the best, it's very wholesome. I don't know how much I want to reveal, except that the differences between aliens and humans are "all in your head". It brings up a number of subjects I haven't really seen pondered in scifi, like how would an alien society with a significant empath/telepath population (significant enough to require telepathic translators) handle emotional outbursts? What are the moral issues of using cloning and gene editing to create individuals for a specific purpose in a society that is highly advanced in biotech but never figured out silicon? What if the society no longer has the base gene code for their member species because their previous masters destroyed it all in an act of spite? Are living machines morally acceptable?
Like I previously stated, They Are Smol is a shitpost and a good one at that. The first book is a little rough and the second one (the prequel aka the invasion of earth) has some serious emotional whiplash. However both are worth reading and written fairly well, just don't expect 10/10 writing. The companion series, The Smol Detective, is a bit more serious but still kinda silly. It spoofs a lot of detective stories like Columbo, Sherlock Holmes, etc.
Regal Legal Eagle's stuff is stellar, on par or better than pretty much any scifi I've read or watched. That said, Billy-Bob Space Trucker is his first book and is a bit rocky, especially at the beginning. However, it's still worth reading for going full 'MURICA (written when "'murica" was a funny meme and not, "oh god what is going on").
Debris is good and uses scifi as a lens for our current political climate (a human testing the first ftl capable ship experiences unexpected speeds and finds himself hundreds, if not thousands, of light-years from earth. He's rescued by an alien freighter along with the debris of his craft, which is where the story starts). I wouldn't say it's really treading any new ground, but I'd say it's still worth reading.
I can provide links if you'd like!
Edit: I also wanna say that /r/hfy stories (the good ones a least) tend to be a lot more... Colorful? Like, First Contact for an example, plays with the idea that humans, having become incredibly technologically advanced, only die if they have to. So stuff like Star Trek, Star Wars, Warhammer40k, Bolos, etc, are all semi-canon within the First Contact universe because different communities have reserved planets, stars, sometimes entire stellar clusters, for the purpose of LARPing these series with real weapons, full governmental systems, etc.
Like, something about a lot of hfy series tends to make them feel more real and engaging, whereas I've found a lot of published sci-fi works tend to end up feeling a little dry and humorless. Like, scifi is super serious business and we can't discuss serious topics with a humorous tone.
HFY is a hit-or-miss kinda thing. Some of it feels like a professional book and some of it feels amateur.
In “The Gods Themselves” by Isaac Asimov humans and the aliens are about equal (at least for the purposes of the story), though they don’t share the same universe. I find the idea he explores interesting, but if you’re looking for a story on how humans treat ‘lesser’ beings, this isn’t for you.
Thanks, will check it out!
if you’re looking for a story on how humans treat ‘lesser’ beings
Not really, equal sounds great as well, I'm just tired of reading about the oh-so-powerful aliens which we manage to beat not because we're better but because of our unbreakable spirit. Same deal with elves in fantasy literature, who are just oh-so-perfect that they care more about being perfect than survival of their own race. It just reeks of bad writing to me at this point.
I think Mars Attacks counts, although perhaps the humans and aliens were portrayed as being equally stupid 😄
EDIT: did not realise I was posting in a books group. Just came up in my main feed. Anyway Ima leave Mars Attacks here in case anybody forgot about this excellent film.
Ack ack ack ack....
In most any Star Trek episode where the Prime Directive is relevant, the humans have encountered primitive (pre-warp) aliens. Usually, some disastrous problem has befallen the aliens that the humans' technology can easily solve, and the humans must struggle to decide whether to help and bear the consequences (both legal and practical) of intervening, or leave the aliens to their fate as the Directive demands.
Speaker for the dead
r/HFY has a plethora of such (short) stories. HFY stands for Humanity Fuck Yeah. Sadly I am yet to find an active HFY community/magazine on lemmy/kbin
If you is talking about the intellectual aspect The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams is a good one. The only thing that aliens are more developed than humans are in the technology, but their smartness are kinda average and similar to human standards. Sometimes they're even stupid.
@rikudou
For a deeper philosophical spin on the idea, you might try "The Mote In God's Eye" by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle.Thanks, will check it out!
Fuzzy Nation by John Scalzi.
Terran Republic series by Charles Gannon has humans more advanced than one or two, but definitely not at the top of the pack.
Sector General by James White has humans as part of the large alliance of races. The alliance is more advanced than some of the races they encounter.
Foreigner series by C J Cherryh has humans far more technologically advanced, however the small number that reach the alien world have to learn to live peacefully with the aliens.
Most of the Stars wars books have humans as very advanced.
Fuzzy Nations is a retelling of Little Fuzzy by H. Beam Piper. Having read both, I can report that I liked Fuzzy Nation 300% more. But if someone likes one they may as well try the other.
Little Fuzzy is kind of hilariously western, with everyone smoking and gun-toting :P it's also decidedly more sexist and less interesting in the way it handles the aliens and the legal fight around them. Very dated. But it can be fun anyways.
The 'known space' universe by Larry niven has humans at least as sort of equal. Lower than some life forms, but on par or higher than some.
I recommend starting with the ringworld series.
Warhammer 40k also has humans as a dominant species from what I've gathered. I've tried to get into the lore, but it's massive amounts and no clear "start here" so Iv'e just picked up snippets.
The Horus Heresy cycle is a good way to start. It is 10 000 years before the "current" events in 40k and explains a lot. But it is in of itself a big pile of books. I would say, read the first 3 and then pick whichever book interests you next.
Looks like I can pick up a Boxset at my "local" comic book store. So in gonna do that on the weekend.
Is this a prequel that relies on any sort of knowledge before going in?
Forexample; in the known space universe the "juggler of worlds" is set before the events of the ringworld series. But it relies on previous knowledge about races and spaces, for it to be enjoyable :)
I recently read the short story The Long Game by Ann Leckie - it presents quite a large gap in capability between species.
The Damned Trilogy for sure!
Basically humans are stumbled upon during a long intergalactic war and end up being the entire key to winning it. Really no way else to describe it without giving things away.
Hyperion by Dan Simmons
If you are willing to venture into fanfiction, there are some tags on archiveofourown.org - like "humans are space orcs", " earth is a deathworld", "earth is space australia" - for fics that feature overpowered humans relative to the aliens. Most of these are so AU that you don't need any knowledge of the ostensible source material. The trope seems popular particularly with My Hero Academia and Minecraft youtuber fandoms, for whatever reason.
Generally, the scifi worldbuilding is usually really light, including names "made alien" by adding apostrophes and that kind of thing - but they scratch and itch that almost nothing else does. And they're free! So maybe worth a try at least. Just make sure to filter by kudos.
If you like things that are on the less serious side, the Humans Are Weird series by Betty Adams is hilarious, adorable, lighthearted, and fun. Usually written from the perspective of the various aliens, and she does a damn good job of it too. Been reading I Have the Data with friends, and it's been a grand time
Hmm, that's an interesting perspective I never heard about. Bump.
It's YA but Sandersons Skyward series has humans basically at the bottom of the tech totem pole
The galaxies edge series is not bad. Lots of military porn though if that's not your thing.
It's kind of star wars ish with the alien races all living together with humans, but humans overall are the ruling force.
There's this RTS game where humanity is the top dog, having conquered the actual, literal universe using biological, living star ships.
Its... Not that great admittedly, but it's such an interesting concept with strong enough art design and a batshit storyline that it might be worth checking out. Here's MandaloreGaming's video about it.
Little Fuzzy books by H. Beam Piper.
1st one is public domain:
Alien.
Yeah, sorry for promoting reddit here, but this subreddit is exactly what you are looking for. And I mean exactly. It is a collection of stories about humans being awesome, usually in a fantasy or sci-fi setting.
If you do not have a life I can recommend The Deathworlders, which was started there and is also available as an ebook on https://deathworlders.com/ . A personal favorite of mine is "Amelia's Last Battle" and "Humanities Debt", which are two short stories and do not take a year of dedicated reading to complete. I have also read "Bought and Sold", "sexy space babes" (contains nsfw), "Chrysalis", and more.
I can also recommend going through their wiki, which has a list of all completed stories. This is probably the best page to start: https://old.reddit.com/r/HFY/wiki/ref/must_read
The only caveat is that people there are amateur writers. Some stories are never completed and the quality differs between "well, at least they're learning how to write" to godlike (e.g. the Deathworlders)
Edit: I see plenty of people already recommended the subreddit XD
I hope mentioning some of the stories I enjoyed does add value here.I saw you mentioning that you want professional books. I can understand that the format (reddit posts) is not suited for offline reading or printing. This can be very annoying, I agree. But in terms of quality: there are some really good writers there. Buying the book in a physical store or on the internet doesn't change the words that are written.
Academy series, by Jack McDevitt. Although there are more advanced species mentioned, they've all died off.
Alex Benedict series, by Jack McDevitt again. There's only two species of intelligences in this series, and they're of roughly equal status.
I know it's not exactly what you asked but "To sleep in a sea of stars" by Christopher Paolini has humans at almost comparable with the aliens they interact with. Humans are slightly outclassed by the aliens in ship speed but the rest of the technology seems roughly comparable, with humans having better missile tech. It feels more like humans will lose a war of attrition if something major isn't done, not being completely outclassed.
I just enjoyed the book so much I'm recommending it regardless of the tech differences not quite aligning to the question.
I just finished this book the other day.
I found it about 400 pages too long, but the aspect of the humans being at least on par with the jellies was refreshing.Funny thing, this is the book which prompted me to write the original post. I'm halfway through, but:
spoiler
there are the ancient ones which so far seem to be basically god-like and the jelly ones are better than humans as well, though not by that much.
A few that I can recommend are:
- Angel Station by Walter Jon Williams
- Dragon's Egg by Robert L. Forward
- Blindsight by Peter Watts
- Schild's Ladder by Greg Egan