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?
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Little Fuzzy books by H. Beam Piper.
1st one is public domain:
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.
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.
In Excession it felt more like
spoiler
The Culture is a race of intelligent starships that keeps humans as pets.
This is absolutely the right take on The Culture.
"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."
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.
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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).
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.
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
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.
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!
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. :(
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 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.
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).
HFY is a hit-or-miss kinda thing. Some of it feels like a professional book and some of it feels amateur.
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.
Memories of Creature 88 was amazing. It’s one of my favorite stories on HFY.
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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.
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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 :)
No, I think this is one if the best starting points overall. I hope you are going to enjoy it. 😀
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