this post was submitted on 28 Aug 2023
131 points (95.8% liked)

Books

10369 readers
9 users here now

Book reader community.

founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
 

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?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Firipu@startrek.website 20 points 1 year ago (5 children)

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.

[–] emr@lemmy.sdf.org 10 points 1 year ago (2 children)

In Excession it felt more like

spoilerThe Culture is a race of intelligent starships that keeps humans as pets.

[–] Magnetar@feddit.de 4 points 1 year ago

"Never forget I am notthis 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."

[–] that_one_guy@beehaw.org 2 points 1 year ago

This is absolutely the right take on The Culture.

[–] rikudou@lemmings.world 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] Max_UL@lemmy.pro 6 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] that_one_guy@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago

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.