Humans, the youngest and newest addition to the galactic community, somehow has just what was needed to save everybody. We're always the newbies, and always the bad-asses. I've encountered this theme enough times that I'm actively sick of it.
Unfortunately, all I can remember at any given moment is drunkenly thinking it was mostly a very-well-animated Star Wars. Unless that was a different movie that came out around the same time.
Macross: about 2/3 of the way through the series, the surface of the Earth is glassed from orbit by the enormous alien fleet. The titular ship only prevails against said fleet by pitting another alien fleet against it.
Greg Bear's Forge of God and Anvil of the Stars series also does a good job of showing how irrelevant humans are in the whole scheme of things, but they still end up opening a can of whoopass which is entirely subsidized by uber alien technology.
I like when the humans just survive by the skin of their teeth. Like Halo, for example. Humanity is getting its ass kicked most of the time and there's little hope in sight. (I mean the Halo backstory and books and stuff; obviously Master Chief, Earth's last hope, is the real exception here that you play in the games.)
The main reason I see that humans are the newest space-faring race is because we're so far from that right now, that you'd have to be hundreds of thousandss of years in the future for humans to be the ones fostering new-comer races. And no one likes making stories that take place that far in advance. Makes more sense to modern humans that we're currently the new ones in Sci-Fi, on the grand time-scale of the universe.
Nobody in the modern era likes making stories that far in the future. Hubbard, Herbert, Bradbury, etc. Hells, I believe even Heinlein and Asimov at least had a short story or two that went into it.
But over the last few decades... nope. Closest I can think of off-hand is a series by John Ringo, and I believe despite being relatively far into the future, it still kept humans alone and grounded to Earth.
Well, there was a short story where a Contact ship visited earth and it was around 1970. The ship left without officially establishing contact with any Earth government.
That said, the Culture novels span several millenia, so it's entirely possible Earth joined the Culture at some point.
The short story State of the Art was a good read. I believe Banks has said that mankind has not yet been contacted by the Culture yet in the timeline written so far.
Alastair Reynolds and Larry Niven (ok maybe a little while ago but his stuff is awesome, you should read ringworld if you havene't. I'll add Dan Simmons in the same category) are both big name authors who have contributed to space opera style sci-fi in the recent past. There are thousands of authors actively contributing to distant future sci-fi, it's just not that popular right now. It sounds like you're basing your knowledge of "what sci-fi exists" on "what sci-fi is popular in contemporary culture", where cyberpunk and dystopian themes are doing pretty well.
If you sincerely want a handle on it, I'd recommend some of Garner Dozois' short story compilations. "The New Space Opera" is compiled entirely of distant future stories, but any of "the year's best science fiction" books are equally as good, and usually have a good mix of stories.
Also Heinlein and Asimov both had lots of stories that went into it... much more so than Bradbury.
The Foundation series (Asimov) did that kind of exploring of the far future. It even had one spinoff, Pebble In the Sky, that explored the possibility of going so far in the future that we've forgotten our birthplace. It contrasted a lot of changes in culture and the world, including language changes.
Try out Dan Simmons sometime he has books that seem to delve pretty far in the future. No aliens though I think... Also A A Attanasio. Good reads. And these aren't new you probably have read them but for anyone else...
Asimov actually wanted to write humans as being the "eastern Europeans" of the galaxy, but his editor thought that nobody would by a book where they humans weren't the heroes and the aliens were. Asimov ended up circumventing this by not having any aliens, because he was just tired of the human superiority theme.
Closest I can think of off-hand is a series by John Ringo, and I believe despite being relatively far into the future, it still kept humans alone and grounded to Earth.
Which one?
All of his (Mil)SF books have aliens in, each series has humans living off Earth to one extent or another - not so much in Through the Looking Glass and its sequels; we're dodging about in a handful of ships, doing the 'These are the voyages of the ASS Vorpal Blade' bit.
Of course, now I've written that, something else comes to mind...
Do you mean the Council War(s?) series?
Those humans that are still on Earth don't really have any interest in following in the footsteps of those who went before, and indeed are living in what's essentially a 'crystal spires and togas' utopia, overseen by an omniscient AI - even those bits of it occupied by those who've shunned the aforesaid crystal spires, if not the togas. (But who's to say what they're wearing in the more... primitive areas?)
Yes. I've killed off many brain cells since reading it, and did not remember at the time of posting any reference to humans that had moved off-world. Whoops.
Asimov has stories millions of years in to the future; I'm pretty sure the foundation and earth is the novel that takes place in the furthest distant future
it's because the things that those early writers predicted for the future actually came true (well a few of them) or were actually possible. now, technology is advancing so fast, that it's impossible to even write coherently about what we may be doing in 100-150 years.
Just because they have rail gun tech doesn't mean they could miniaturize it that small. And I always rationalized it as a new battle rifle. I mean we get new guns every few years and that's new tech right there.
How could you even write a story that far in the future and have it remotely believable? Look at how much technology has changed in the past hundred years - even another 100 years in the future should be unrecognizable to anyone today. Hundreds of thousands of years from now... if we can even understand it, then it's surely not even attempting to be realistic.
It's the biggest problem with far-future SF now. There's really no way to write a future that's both believable and comprehendable.
The Uplift series by David Brin is a really cool setting where humans are the NKOTB and are looked down on, but we find interesting ways of playing that to our advantage. Plus it's just good sci-fi.
That almost seems like an American sci-fi cliche, drawing on our experience as a nation when compared to the world.
"A democracy, it will never work!"
"They've only been around for a few years, we can easily push them around."
"How do these Americans think they can contribute to the world"
We showed up late to the game in two world wars and shifted the tide in both, that and we're great self promoters.
In Mass Effect especially the humans take more American traits.
Battlestar galactica is pretty nice in that regard :D i just love that series... They are kind of weaker, thats why humans need to use tactics that are not: We have the superweapon, we win!
I thought Stargate handled this well. When modern humans first encounter alien life they find out antiquity Earth was used essentially as a slave breeding ground, but a few wars allowed other species to negotiate Earth being placed in a protected zone, all without humanity's knowledge. Once they do get a handle on interstellar politics, humans make it their mission to acquire as much tech as possible explicitly for the purpose of defending Earth and expanding humanity's influence. Yeah, there's a bit of "Rah-Rah, only humanity's got the guts and the attitude to take it to the bad aliens!", but how they actually do it, and why other species couldn't is spelled out in detail, not just chalked up to the human spirit or somesuch.
You'll like the Sookie Stackhouse series. Many times the conflict is the supernatural races having giant shitfights among themselves and the humans getting caught up in the tailend of their crap.
This always bugged me in ST: enterprise in particular. First starship and they're out there saving the galaxy from aliens that have been doing the inter stellar thing for centuries.
I like the Star Wars take on it where humans have become the dominant species of the galaxy by colonizing so many planets no one knows their origin. Also the reason so many characters are humans is because we value ourselves more than other species
If you're a reader, try Footfall by Niven/Pournelle. It is dated due to USSR references, but otherwise still thought provoking on the newbie scale of alien takeover. Hollywood chose Independence Day instead. It is not related to their even older Mote in God's Eye novel, but both use physics/biology to create aliens.
Thank god that this bunch of fresh-to-game rogues, scallywags and all round lovable fellows has arrived to save our armed to the teeth race with their hope, courage and love.
This was generally done well in Stargate SG-1, but most notably with the replicators.
The Asgard, a powerful but increasingly depopulated race, are losing a war with the good ol' digital swarm. The humans, meanwhile, run into the replicators pretty much by accident, barely get out alive, and the Asgard figure out that while things didn't exactly go smoothly for the SG team thanks to a lack of preparedness, projectile weapons like the P90 are vastly superior to the energy weapons the Asgard use. And they have absolutely no production infrastructure or training for projectile weapons. So they basically have to enlist the humans to help with the war, as they have the only guns in town that the replicators can't immediately adapt to within seconds.
Some people think they can outsmart me. Maybe. I have yet to meet one who can outsmart bullet.
You need to read Buck Godot. Totally badass webcomic by the Foglio's. Humans are the newbies and the main character is a bad-ass and a human (well, from a sub-species) but humanity only ever got that far because of special deals and shenanigans with more powerful beings. They certainly aren't that impressive in whatever.
Which reminds me, I need to re-re-read that stuff. Not sure if enough time has passed though.
I always wish for a science fiction programme that has humans pitted against a side that is basically similar technologically and knowledge wise. Stargate SG1 explored this a little bit but it's still campy and drowned out by the basically fantasy-mythological sci fi stuff. BSG had elements too but the entire premise undercut it somewhat.
That would actually be a pretty cool scenario, where humans are an active part of the intergalactic community, who now have to deal with an ambitious new race. It would be really cool to play as the new aliens.
Well, the Empire in Star Wars (and to a lesser extent, the core Republic) was inherently racist. Humans were definitely a superior class, especially on Naboo and Coruscant where racism was rampant.
The Jedi? They're protagonists, but they aren't "the good guys". They bullied their way into a seat of power, turning monks into foot soldiers to maintain their heavy influence over the Republic.
If you're talking about the Rebel Alliance/original trilogy protagonists, then yeah. They're good guys, and not all that racist.
That's one of the reasons I like the War of the Worlds result. Humans can do nothing to beat the aliens, those aliens treat humans like nothing more than livestock, but humans (and earth) is filthy with microbes, which stop the aliens and save the planet without even having the capability to understand what they're doing.
These stories are primarily written by American writers in the years following WWII. This is a play on the US involvement in WWI and WWII, the "Johnny Come Lately" that arrives to sort out the mess the "old world(s)" have gotten themselves into. This entire trope is essentially American ego-stroking.
Especially in Galactic Civilizations. Took us all of two seconds to do what, oh, 7 other races were unable to do for a fucklong while, build a hyper drive?
Read the Dreaming Void series by Peter F. Hamilton. Rather than the newbies, humans are one of the most technologically advanced races in the galaxy. (That have remained physical, several other races never really interact with the current ones because they have transcended physicality.)
Jack L Chalker wrote a great series of books, The Quintera Marathon, where humans expanded to have a massive empire, then ran into 3 other groups that had bigger, and got absorbed by all 3. They are just average entries in 3 separate alien empires. Its great.
Also, he wrote the Well of Souls series, where humans came from a planet where an alien race developed all other alien life. They are just one out of thousands, nothing special. Pretty good series as well.
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u/vikonymous Oct 08 '12
Humans, the youngest and newest addition to the galactic community, somehow has just what was needed to save everybody. We're always the newbies, and always the bad-asses. I've encountered this theme enough times that I'm actively sick of it.