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?
Farscape (tv show) is a great example of this. Sabacians are basically human cousins that developed outside earth and are nearly identical in appearance and even genetically compatible to humans. They are also one of the most dominant races of the universe and often the antagonists on that show. I loved Farscape.
The Three Body Problem - Humans and aliens engage in a technological arms race for survival. There are times where the humans are a weaker feeble species, but there are also times where humans one up the aliens in ways they couldn't have forseen. It's a great back and forth that puts humanity on a path for stellar exploration and survival all in one moment.
You may enjoy "A Call to Arms" by Alan Dean Foster (The Damned Series)
The short of it, humans are an uncontacted race in the path of an alien empire "The Amplitur" that is co-opting all of the galaxy. So the resistance forces, (aka "The Weave") decide they might as well reach out to us, since having unassimilated allies is now far more important than their first-contact rules.
Foster takes the basic premise that humans are unlike any other animal on earth, and so by that same token unlike any other species in the galaxy. This means our abilities in creativity, adaptation, survival and our predilection for violence (something every other civilized race evolved to avoid at all costs) all become keystones of how The Weave accept us as members of their alliance.
Ender's Game may fit this, but the sequel Speaker for the Dead definitely does. Not to give away too many details, but it's basically about a space anthropologist making second contact with an alien race still confined to its own planet. I'd say the first book has humans and aliens more or less at parity, but in the second the humans are more technologically advanced. Both are more meditations on otherness more than anything.
Umm, Alien?
Avatar?
- Proxima by Stephen Baxter
- The Long Earth by Terry Pratchett & Stephen Baxter
- Mission of Gravity by Hal Clement
A classic: Downbelow Station by C.J. Cherryh. In it, the planet known to humans as Pell’s World is populated by the gentle, sentient but technologically naive Hisa. The Hisa are exploited by humans as a manual labor force. Some humans decry this exploitation and work to establish a more compassionate, cooperative relationship with the Hisa.
How about The Road Not Taken by Harry Turtledove, kind of?
A lot of the aliens encountered in Rick and Morty are quite dumb. Then again so are most of the humans. It’s a tossup.
James Cameron's Avatar comes to mind
HFY fare is a coin toss.
The Jenkinsverse rapidly goes from humans being assumed nonsentient (because our planet is a deathtrap) to cheating our asses off with galactic-standard technology. For example: teleportation is possible, but only between pre-set endpoints, and with a lengthy charge-up. So humans crammed obscenely large capacitors into standard hulls and instantly bip between microsatellites. Our ships have no staying power, but they're absolutely infuriating to fight.
Our main problem is being 99% confined to one vulnerable rock.
Avatar
The video game X3. Of the races in the game, two of them are human. One is the Argon, descendants of a group of humans flung across the galaxy hundreds of years ago and developed into their own little niche. And then the actual Terrans, who somehow managed to develop technology much more advanced than the Commonwealth (what the collection of Argon, Split, Paranid and Teladi are called, since they mostly all work together peacefully) without even having the ability for warp travel, only making contact with the rest of populated space because of a disaster that linked one of their catapults with the network of ancient gates that have been the primary means of exploration.
While they have better shielding, faster thrusters, and devastating weaponry, they are completely lacking in economy, having control of just a single star system against factions that have control of most of known space. The game's actual economy ends up reflecting this quite hard, and the terrans are usually bankrupt super quickly unless you mod the game to give them some support.
Stanislav lem has a couple books about it.
I have seen some recommending Star Trek but you should know that the humans there have about as much in common with modern humanity as the other races. I wouldn't count it even though I love Star Trek and watched all of it.
There are quite a few series where humans are on about the same level as most of the other aliens except for one specific race that's way more advanced but driven by some weird internal logic that keeps them from lording it over everyone - John Scalzi's "Old Man's War" and Adrian Tchaikovsky's "Architects" e.g.
In Strata Humans are basically god level advanced.
All humans are immortal and they terraform planets, and entire star systems, on an industrial scale.
Stargate, earth humans are not the least advanced, but there are humans on other planets that are less advanced.
I’m reading Embassytown by China Mieville right now and it’s very much that. It’s also really good so far, but I’m only half way through.
Damocles by SG Redling.
Basically, humans make first contact by going elsewhere.
The polity series, I mean I suppose we're the less advanced race if you count our AI, but it basically dominates all species except every now and then some retro species that makes a comeback.
The short story Three worlds collide (read for free at https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/HawFh7RvDM4RyoJ2d/three-worlds-collide-0-8 ) has humanity at the middle of an interspecies first-contact triangle with a more and a less advanced race.
Children of time, kind of
David Weber’s Honorverse and Mother of Demons by Eric Flint both come to mind. There is also the Little Fuzzy series by H. Beam Piper.
Edit: Also, The Legacy of Heorot by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle.
Honorable mention also to Dragons Egg by Robert L. Forward (humans start out more advanced in the beginning but get surpassed) and the Uplift Storm trilogy omnibus (or books 4-6) from David Brin (humans aren’t the most advanced in the entire universe but are in the planet that the stories take place on).
I think that I've checked all the comments but I didn't see any sign of Jack Vance's "Planet of Adventure"
Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card (the sequel to Ender's Game)
The Forever Wars, maybe. There are aliens but they're not really the focus of the book.
We Are Legion, We Are Bob has less advanced alien races but also a more advanced race. The more advanced race doesn't show up in the first book IIRC.
Damocles by SG Redling.
Basically, humans make first contact by going elsewhere.
Slight caveat, i haven't read the book yet but from what I've heard The Culture fits that description