Human exceptionalism in science fiction

January 8, 2008 11:54 PM

I'm looking for examples of how humanity is depicted as "exceptional" in science fiction - like how in Saberhagen's Berzerker books, humans are seen as uniquely ferocious and warlike, or how in Star Trek they seem to have a talent for diplomacy, or how in David Brin's uplift novels humans alone possess scientific curiousity. Anyone got more examples?
posted by nicolas léonard sadi carnot to media & arts (48 comments total)

In Carl Sagan's contact, the aliens decide earth is a civilization worth meeting on account of our music, and because of our dreams.
posted by BuddhaInABucket at 12:55 AM on January 9, 2008

A few short stories come to mind -

Christopher Anvil, Pandora's Planet - humans are exceptionally smart. I think this is the closest to what you're looking for.

Isaac Asimov, The Hazing/What Is This Thing Called Love - humans are exceptionally smart/horny.

Harlan Ellison, S.R.O. - humans are exceptionally... well, I won't spoil that for you.

-Bletch, wondering if there's any SF where we're the bad guys, as seems more likely
posted by Bletch at 1:04 AM on January 9, 2008

Also, I recall a story, possibly by Asimov, in which it turns out humans have a huge advantage over some alien invaders because of our ability to lie. Anyone recall this?
posted by nicolas léonard sadi carnot at 1:11 AM on January 9, 2008

Apparently they make the best batteries for the Matrix.

And I've heard that Earth girls are easy. I have no evidence of this however.
posted by fleacircus at 1:53 AM on January 9, 2008 [3 favorites]

In Babylon 5 humans have a special ability for diplomacy, specifically a supposed political neutrality. The [race with the funny hair] admire their capacity for hope even in the most hopeless situations and their tenacity when under siege. The Mimbari think their souls are funneled to earth and there is a special spiritual relationship.

In the movie Contact the alien says that humans are an interesting race with "capacity for such horror and yet such beauty".
posted by BAKERSFIELD! at 2:07 AM on January 9, 2008

-Bletch, wondering if there's any SF where we're the bad guys, as seems more likely

Humans are pretty naughty in Stanislav Lem's Fiasco.
posted by uandt at 2:37 AM on January 9, 2008

Can anyone think of the short story where humans are advantaged because of the way we percieve time in relation to space?
posted by biffa at 3:16 AM on January 9, 2008

In the CS Lewis sci-fi trilogy, humans are the only beings in the solar system who have fallen to evil.
posted by ubiquity at 3:28 AM on January 9, 2008

Does comic book science fiction count for you? It has become much more muddied up since then, but there was a point where the DC Comics superhero stories made explicit the idea that humans had such a staggering proportion of them because their genetic make-up was uniquely prone among all know species to instant mutations triggering powers after shocking experiences. Lamarckian as hell, I know. This was pretty central to the Invasion crossover, when an alien alliance decided on a preemptive invation and enslaving of Earth before -all- of us got the damn powers.
posted by Iosephus at 3:40 AM on January 9, 2008

One of the more annoying things about the new Doctor Who series is that the Doctor will not shut up about how special humans are.
posted by grouse at 3:51 AM on January 9, 2008

A Call To Arms by Alan Dean Foster is a good example. A war is raging between two huge empires - the Amplitur Purpose, who are horrible brainwashers and genetic engineers, and the Weave, who are rather more likeable. The Weave discover Earth, which is a huge breakthough for them as humanity is unlike any other sentient race - we have many languages, many cultures, and we fight wars against ourselves. We are exceptionally aggressive, fierce and strong by alien standards - during the very first "first contact", a human accidentally breaks the arm of one of the Weave explorers with no effort at all. We cheat, lie, steal, betray, traits that are almost unknown. Plus, and this is the big bonus to the Weave, we're immune to Amplitur mind control - any psychic contact with a human sends the Amplitur attempting it gibbering mad with the horror of the contents of our heads.

Naturally, we rapidly turn the war to the advantage of the Weave. But the Weave isn't exactly reassured by us - there's no way of dealing with us. It's an interesting book. The first of a trilogy, and I haven;t read the other two.
posted by WPW at 4:12 AM on January 9, 2008 [2 favorites]

Isn't there a scene in "The Empty Child" where he says (by way of explaining Captain Jack) that humans are basically the galaxy's tarts.
posted by crocomancer at 4:15 AM on January 9, 2008

Sorry, "he" being the Doctor.
posted by crocomancer at 4:16 AM on January 9, 2008

In Julian May's long series of novels (Saga of Pliocene Exiles, Intervention, Galactic Milieu Trilogy) humans are widely regarded as having the capacity for the most powerful metafaculties (sort of like psychic powers) as well as the greatest capacity for good or evil among all the races. And - bit of a spoiler here - the god-like race that sort of shepherds all the other races turns out to have a connection to humanity in the end of one of the series.
posted by elendil71 at 4:24 AM on January 9, 2008

The classic Lensman (wp, plot spoilers) series by EE Doc Smith. It portrays humanity as race bred by advanced beings to oppose a threat from an interloper from another galaxy. They are ultimately intended to surpass their mentor race in physical and psychic abilities.
posted by Jakey at 4:50 AM on January 9, 2008

Back in the Old Days of D&D, only humans could reach level 20 - all the other races would cap out in the teens somewhere. While this is in a fantasy, not scifi setting, I think it draws on the same fantasy tropes (Tolkien, Howard, etc) that later science fiction would draw on. That trope is "humanity has limitless potential" and we still see it in scifi stories (Mass Effect, for example).

In Dune, Ender's Game, and a few other classic scifi stories humanity is pretty much the only game in town. In Warhammer 40,000 humans are the most prosperous of the species (and until the Tau were the only ones that were not a dying/static race).
posted by robocop is bleeding at 5:17 AM on January 9, 2008

I think you've misread the Warhammer 40000 background, robocop. Humanity is decaying - the Adeptus Mechanicus worship technology, rather than understand it; the Emperor is a broken husk; and the species is beset from both within (Chaos) and without (various aliens). The "exceptional" traits of humanity in the setting are probably that they're breathtakingly xenophobic and recklessly, dangerously psychic.
posted by nicolas léonard sadi carnot at 5:28 AM on January 9, 2008

A little silly, but here's what sprang to mind:

When Humanity joined the Gallimaufry, the first impressions of established idea sifters were rather disappointing. Yes, they were entertainingly crazy, but their quirks were mere amplifications of other neuroses and psychoses that had been in and out of vogue for millennia.

Then it was revealed that humans froze liquids. No big news there. The concept that electrified the Gallimaufry was that Humans stuck a handle into the frozen liquid and ate it! Still frozen!

Shockwaves of tsunami-like proportion ran through the culinary schools of the galaxy. Entire industries were spawned and fought over, and at least two desert dwelling races were saved from extinction.

posted by Johnny Assay at 5:48 AM on January 9, 2008 [1 favorite]

In the 1987 Showtime movie Penn and Teller's Invisible Thread, humanity is saved from being obliterated because of our unique quality:

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(rot13 to avoid complaints from the one or two members who are sure to be pissed about a spoiler from a 20 year old made for TV movie)
posted by TedW at 6:02 AM on January 9, 2008

Penn & Teller had a TV short called Invisible Thread. It was printed in their Cruel Tricks for Dear Friends.

Aliens (presumably galactic efficiency experts) appear to two guys (P&T) and demand that humanity show something unique to prove they are not redundant (and thus marked for destruction). After trying and failing with things like "We have Elvis!"...they tell the aliens that humanity has developed 100% utterly Invisible Thread (in ANY wavelength). And they demonstrate this impossibility for them.

The aliens spare us! Because only Humanity would have the huevos to lie about something as stupid as Invisible Thread.
posted by Wink Ricketts at 6:14 AM on January 9, 2008

*Darn you to Heck Ted W!* Not just for beating me, but for making me feel like a heel for spoilering!
posted by Wink Ricketts at 6:15 AM on January 9, 2008

Heh; I'm just glad I wasn't the only one who saw that movie, because it was hilarious but now seems to have all but disappeared.
posted by TedW at 6:25 AM on January 9, 2008

oh, and I almost forgot - the much MeFi'd They're Made Out of Meat.
posted by Jakey at 6:38 AM on January 9, 2008

-Bletch, wondering if there's any SF where we're the bad guys, as seems more likely

What do you expect from human writers? Clearly biased.

There was a short story I once read, where the aliens made contact and decided that the earth would be represented by a human, a dolphin, some kind of plant and a bug (?). The human had a bit of a problem understanding why he didn't represent the earth on his own i.e. he was exceptionally dense. I don't remember the name of the story or the writer.
posted by ersatz at 6:44 AM on January 9, 2008

Arther C. Clarke's "Rescue Party" (link is to full text of the short story).
posted by Partial Law at 7:00 AM on January 9, 2008

In the Ringworld universe, humans are known for their exceptional luck.
posted by backseatpilot at 7:18 AM on January 9, 2008

Humans as fast technological adapters is a fairly common trope. In Turtledove's World War series a 1943 alien invasion stalls because, based on initial contact, the invasion planners extrapolated that Earth technology should have reached about the early medieval stage. In Chalker's Run to Chaos Keep, humanity ends up divided amongst three rival empires because they were the only race in millenia to build up a sizable space empire before the real galactic powers noticed they were sentient.

(Note: I like these ideas, not necessarily the books they're embedded in.)
posted by ormondsacker at 8:06 AM on January 9, 2008

In Martin Amis' hilarious story, "The Janitor on Mars," humanity is depicted as uniquely backward and technologically underdeveloped, in part because of our interest in the arts. Other races? "Nobody's interested in art...They're interested in what everybody else is interested in: the superimposition of will."
posted by googly at 8:28 AM on January 9, 2008

Can anyone think of the short story where humans are advantaged because of the way we percieve time in relation to space?

The Farscape series comes immediately to mind, although the ability to understand wormholes was supposedly planted by a superior being.

Although a comedic sci-fi film, Galaxy Quest had a lot of examples where humans had the upper hand (lies, imagination, bluffing, etc). Along the lines of comedies, Futurama also pins a certain advantage on being human (well a present day poorly motivated human that lives in the future...).

Robocop (an expansion on Azimov's laws of robotics). Also I would think the alien creators of the monolith from 2001 had seen humanity's curiosity as their means of evolution.
posted by samsara at 8:40 AM on January 9, 2008

Kind of a silly one, but in the Harry Turtledove short stories "Herbig-Haro" and "The Road Not Taken", Humanity is the only race with things like atomic power, airplanes, and other beyond 16th-century technology, because we missed a couple obvious experiments that could have given us Antigravity and FTL as early as the bronze age. 99.9% of other races discover these early on, and become space conquistadors.
posted by fings at 8:41 AM on January 9, 2008

I can think of at least one short story told from the point of view of an alien after human has (literally) been bombed back into the stone age because we had managed to conquer and pillage most of the universe before the other races teamed up against us.

In the posleen series humanity is used as a warrior race but we didn't learn to travel through space on our own. The aliens make a point of mentioning that there have been other warlike races but they all wiped themselves out before they got to space travel, like we would most likely have done.

As someone mentioned, in the game Mass Effect, humanity is identified as being a more adaptable and fast learning species than most of the others.
posted by KirTakat at 8:52 AM on January 9, 2008

Oh my God, fings, I'd forgotten all about those stories. Awesome.
posted by nicolas léonard sadi carnot at 8:54 AM on January 9, 2008

See Humans Are Special over at the TV Tropes Wiki (which, despite the name, is not limited to TV).
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 9:03 AM on January 9, 2008 [1 favorite]

Learning the World, by Ken MacLeod, begins with humans who see themselves as the unique sentient species and eventually reveals them as exceptional in an entirely different sense.
posted by topynate at 9:08 AM on January 9, 2008

In Orson Scott Card's Xenocide, humans baffle the alien species with their dreaming and storytelling. Thoughts that are not direct expressions of fact are completely foreign to the other species. (This isn't really key to the book, just something a couple aliens discuss at one point.)
posted by vytae at 10:07 AM on January 9, 2008

In the Ringworld universe, humans are known for their exceptional luck.

That's not quite it. The Puppeteers manipulated the Birthright Lottery in order to breed a lucky human (Teela Brown). I think it's the structure of the lottery, rather than any inherent human quality, that's the important factor.
posted by Chrysostom at 10:21 AM on January 9, 2008

Gordon R. Dickson's collection The Man From Earth was made up of "humans are unique" stories.
posted by Chrysostom at 10:24 AM on January 9, 2008

In Babylon 5, it's not just that humans are diplomatic, it's that humans build communities. Delenn, in "Lines of Communication":

"[...] so I began studying your history. I came to the conclusion that of all the races we had encountered humans were the most dangerous. Because humans form communities, and from that diversity comes a strength no single race can withstand. That is your strength and it is *that* which makes you dangerous."

In a number of Philip K. Dick books (I'm thinking in particular of The Zap Gun), what makes humanity unique is empathy. That's what the Voight-Kampff test in Bladerunner is for -- an authentic human will feel empathy for a turtle on its back, and that emotion will be visible in the movement of the eye. Then again, empathy as the special sauce isn't unique to PKD; Dan Simmons is a big fan of it too (Hyperion, the Void Which Binds, etc).
posted by jbrjake at 10:42 AM on January 9, 2008

Stephen Baxter: Manifold Time (could have been Manifold Space) Humans, out of a galaxy teaming with intelligent species, are the only race that has 'faith'. Hmm. Perhaps that wasn't quite it. Humans are the only race that can devote themselves an idea, cause, person, what-have-you to such a self-sacrificing extent.
posted by Barmecide at 10:49 AM on January 9, 2008

Ah. Stranger in a Strange Land: Unique in having two sexes. Similarly, sentient vs non-sentient females (See Niven's Kzinti.)

Any number of novels use individuality as our 'uniqueness.' See Haldman's Forever War for a clone species counter example, or Card's Ender's Game for hive-minds.
posted by Barmecide at 10:56 AM on January 9, 2008

That's not quite it. The Puppeteers manipulated the Birthright Lottery in order to breed a lucky human (Teela Brown). I think it's the structure of the lottery, rather than any inherent human quality, that's the important factor.

But the reason they established the program to breed luck was because they believed that all of human history was one lucky escape after another. So they weren't trying to breed lucky humans from scratch, just intensify the luck that was already there.
posted by happyturtle at 11:15 AM on January 9, 2008

In Sturgeon's To Marry Medusa we're unique for being intelligent without being a hive-mind.

Humanity being a precious unique snowflake is a common theme in sf (especially what quick learners and technology adopters we are, as ormondsacker says.) It'd be much harder to come up with sf that explicitly portrays humans as unexceptional.
posted by Zed_Lopez at 11:15 AM on January 9, 2008

It'd be much harder to come up with sf that explicitly portrays humans as unexceptional.

The State of the Art by Iain M Banks portrays Earth, and humanity, as just another bog-standard sentient species in a galaxy teeming with far more interestin intelligent life. The story/novella centres on the decision not to contact us for the time being, and leave us be until we grow up a bit. The entire story is a discussion of whether we have any interesting features, and the case for the defence is not very convincingly made.
posted by WPW at 12:10 PM on January 9, 2008 [1 favorite]

In Damon Knight's short story (later a Twilight Zone episode) To Serve Man, Mankind is portrayed as absolutely delicious!
posted by MiamiDave at 6:04 PM on January 9, 2008 [1 favorite]

In Tiptree's "And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hillside", humans (or at least men) are exceptionally... um... exopromiscuous.
posted by Zed_Lopez at 9:36 AM on January 10, 2008

In Stargate they're meant to be especially creative/resourceful, according to the more advanced races. Also, immature.
posted by Salamandrous at 12:50 PM on January 10, 2008

I think in some Turtledove short story, warlike aliens travel across space using their FTL hyperdrive engine and invade Earth, only to be shot to pieces because their matchlock muskets proved to be no match compared to, hmm, M-16s.

It turned out that humanity was unique because we had someone missed the obvious-in-hindsight design FTL space travel, and, instead, went on to develop all sorts of other technologies, like modern firearms, etc.
posted by chengjih at 1:36 PM on January 10, 2008

Turtledove stories previously mentioned upthread.

Related: "Something obvious is missed" is also the plot of David Brin's short story, "Just a Hint."
posted by Chrysostom at 10:00 PM on January 10, 2008