cross-posted from: https://lemmings.world/post/759157

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?

  • BrgorEnglish
    11·
    1 year ago

    Check out the Culture series by Iain M Banks

  • jet@hackertalks.comEnglish
    7·
    1 year ago

    Protector by Larry Niven… I promise you it fits your requirements. But I don’t want to spoil it

  • Janvier@literature.cafeEnglish
    6·
    1 year ago

    I love the short story The Road Not Taken by Harry Turtledove. There’s of course the alien invasion trope, where aliens are space conquistadors pillaging the earth with their extra-terrestrial powers, and its complement, the Star Trek trope, where humans are culturally and technologically superior secular humanists descended to a backwards planet. And then there’s this story.

  • Alendi@lemmy.world
    6·
    1 year ago

    The whole Hainish Cycle from Ursula K Le Guin may fit here, in the sense that all human-like ‘aliens’ are the offsprings of the colonies planted by a primitive human civilization.

  • CheddahBiscuit@lemmy.worldEnglish
    5·
    1 year ago

    The Bobiverse Series involves humanity (in a fashion) exploring the stars and occasionally meeting less advanced species.

  • Saganaki@lemmy.one
    3·
    1 year ago

    This isn’t quite what you’re looking for, but it may scratch the itch: Deathworlders. Effectively, humans aren’t the most technically advanced at all, but our evolution (because we live on a “death world” or a normally “inhospital planet”) has lead us to be effectively unstoppable in comparison to all other intelligent life forms. It’s definitely a cool take, IMO. Read until you get to the hockey game before making your decision.

    The story is free: https://deathworlders.com/

    This “genre” is called “humans fuck yea” for reference.

    • MikeyMongol@literature.cafe
      1·
      1 year ago

      It starts off good but gets really bogged down in its own waste after a while, IMO.

      Alan Dean Foster wrote a series with basically the same premise in the 90s, where evil mind control telepath aliens were waging a war against a bunch of free alien species, and the free alien species were hampered by the fact that very few aliens were capable of fighting at all, let alone effectively, but the evil telepath aliens could mind control their conquered subjects into fighting anyway. And then the losing free aliens find humans, who are basically xenomorphs crossed with hannibal lecter compared to the aliens and conveniently immune to telepathy, and they realize that humans will fight to the death for dumb shit like precious metals.

    • MikeyMongol@literature.cafe
      2·
      1 year ago

      The first one, Little Fuzzy, is one of my favorite books of all time. The rest are less good? but still decent? Steer clear of Scalzi’s “remake” though, it’s trash.

  • Nath@aussie.zone
    2·
    1 year ago

    Brandon Sanderson’s Starsight series might be worth a look in. It seems like the Humans are not advanced at the start, but there’s more to it than that.

    I’m sure you’ll be familiar with Star Trek and Star Wars universes they both have a lot of books. I haven’t read any Trek novels, but on the Star Wars front, I’d recommend the XWing Series.

    John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War should also be on this list. A fantastic little series.

    Hmm, looking back at these, they’re all pretty light reading/a little YA. I wonder whether there’s some harder Science Fiction that’d fit these criteria that I haven’t thought of?