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.
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.
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.
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
