Alien Intelligence

[tomBitonti]

Are there any sci-fi (or sci-fantasy) novels where the characters are never actually identified as humans?
Bullgrit

In "The Gods Themselves", Asimov, some of the protagonists are not human. But, a part of the story has humans.

Egan's "Clockwork Universe" novels has only one intelligent species, and they are far from human. To say, these books are somewhat out of the mainstream, and a bit of a chore to read through. I found them more interesting as math/physics intellectual exercises than science fiction novels.

Some of Cherryh's stories are mostly non-human, e.g., the Chanur novels, although, there is a human as one of the main characters.

Hard to find stories which have no human presence at all, or where the aliens are really aliens and not blue colored humans in strange suits.

Forward's "Star Quake", the sequel to Dragon's Egg, is much a story about the inhabitants of the star, although, humans in an orbiting station do have a presence.

Thx!

TomB

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Are there any sci-fi (or sci-fantasy) novels where the characters are never actually identified as humans?

Bullgrit

The completely awesome "Nightfall" short story by Isaac Asimov, expanded into a novel with the help of Robert Silverberg. The opening tells you in no uncertain terms that the characters are NOT human. That didn't stop there from being a "Bollywood" version of it being made. (Not bad, actually.)

Asimov has another novel- the name escapes me at the mo- in which the characters are a species with 3 sexes.

 

[Umbran]

Are there any sci-fi (or sci-fantasy) novels where the characters are never actually identified as humans?

I think some of the Man-Kzin War works include no humans at all.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Definitely- some of the stories are set entirely within the realms of the Kzinti. Other Known Universe stuff goes back further in history, and focuses on Slaver/tnuctipun stories.

 

[Bullgrit]

Star Wars. The word is never used.

On screen, the characters are human. And I've read SW novels where characters are referred to as human. Plus the RPG.

Bullgrit

 

[Ryujin]

There's a couple of reasons for that:

1) There's no actual purpose to invoking multiple galaxies. Having multiple galaxies doesn't get you things you don't already have in a single galaxy. You get all the types of stars and planets you need in one galaxy, or even a subset of one galaxy. You have huge spaces, and huge numbers of possible worlds, and total population sizes impossible for the human mind to really grasp, all within the one galaxy.

2) The scales of distances involved. Our galaxy is 100K to 180K light years across. The *nearest* major galaxy (Andromeda) is 2,500,000 million light years away - an order of magnitude and more farther away. The ability to travel between galaxies in anything like a reasonable time (from a human perspective) implies near-teleportation within our own galaxy. If it takes a week to get to Andromeda, you can get across our galaxy in 8 hours, and getting to Alpha Centauri takes about one second. That wreaks havoc with some of your worldbuilding, or requires you to start imposing some pretty arbitrary limitations on the travel methods to support the society you're trying to represent.

One of the more interesting books I can remember reading, that took in the entirety of our galaxy, was Vinge's "A Fire Upon the Deep." Galactic geography either dictated, or was dictated by, intelligence and technology. Even physical laws appeared to be different. (I think it was the former, rather than the latter). Earth was in "the slow zone" in which basic intelligences, like ourselves, could exist.

Somewhat further toward the galactic core you could only get minimal intelligences, if any at all.

A step outward from us was where real intelligence could exist, along with things like FTL travel.

Then, out in the galactic halo, was an area called "The Transcend" in which "Powers" (essentially godlike intelligences, biological or artificial) existed.

It was an interesting way to use geography in the story. How, for example, does a "Power" find out what's going on in the Slow Zone, if it had any interest at all? It would have to 'build' a creature using suitable lower technology and intelligence, then drop it downhill where it wanted it, after which point it would be stuck there.

 

[Morrus]

On screen, the characters are human. And I've read SW novels where characters are referred to as human. Plus the RPG.

Ok. I've only seen the films.

 

[Morrus]

2) The scales of distances involved. Our galaxy is 100K to 180K light years across. The *nearest* major galaxy (Andromeda) is 2,500,000 million light years away - an order of magnitude and more farther away. The ability to travel between galaxies in anything like a reasonable time (from a human perspective) implies near-teleportation within our own galaxy. If it takes a week to get to Andromeda, you can get across our galaxy in 8 hours, and getting to Alpha Centauri takes about one second. That wreaks havoc with some of your worldbuilding, or requires you to start imposing some pretty arbitrary limitations on the travel methods to support the society you're trying to represent.

That's not really an issue with sci-fi. You invent whatever fictional tech you want. A TARDIS does what it wants, basically. It's magic. You just remove "travel" as an obstacle.

That probably works better for an episodic TV show than a simulationist RPG.

 

[Bullgrit]

Traveling at the Speed of Plot

Bullgrit

 

[Umbran]

Oh, non-human characters:

Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - all but two of the characters are not human.

And, for a terribly relevant item - Terry Bisson's short story, "They're Made Out of Meat"

http://www.terrybisson.com/page6/page6.html