I want to write a "humans are space orcs" story that's actually decent. I really like the idea, but I haven't found anything except tumblr posts and tumblr-esque short stories. What are some "space orc" qualities that you can think of?
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Write it from aliens pov and since the aliens don't know human languages they can't understand the humans
yes, obviously. if I wrote it from the perspective of humans, there wouldn't be a point to the story. I've already designed some funky little alien fellas.
It doesn't make any sense to do that
Humans love organisation and as far as humanity is vile you need an organisation directing that activity
Look to World War 2 era Germany
what?
Do you mean to say humans go to space and become orc-like, or that humans go to space and find other races that are as weak and peaceful to humans are humans are to orcs?
Well, the idea is that humans are just so weird that we appear to aliens as orcs appear to humans. We can survive a ridiculous amount of physical trauma, we live in all kinds of dangerous climates and places, we are especially violent and invent ways to be more violent, we do wildly dangerous things for fun and profit. The fun is in imagining aliens reacting to humans doing something we think is normal, but they think is just insane. Human's eating super hot chili-peppers despite capsicum being a poison and obviously painful is a tame example.
These aren't really things that contribute to a narrative well. You might be better off writing a fake travel log or fake research paper by an alien covering all these points.
This is just Deathworlders.
don't know that one
Do you remember a short story about a nameless human that saves an alien spaceship, and the aliens come back years later and worship him as a hero? It might have been a IQfy post. Deathworlders reminded me of it.
I think the best way to portray this concept is by first introducing the reader to a culture derived from very different planetary conditions than ours. A nonviolent species would likely be a lot more collectivist than we are. What kind of environmental conditions could produce such collectivism?
>nonviolent species would be more collectivist
are you high? the collectivists are the most violent people around
Those are collectivist HUMANS with human features and emotions developed over millions of years of evolution on a planet with harsh environments and scarcity of resources.
I was talking about a hypothetical species that would evolve in such conditions that foster collectivism naturally (as opposed to earth where competition is heavily fostered by our planetary conditions; do not mistake cooperation for collectivism). Try to think beyond a single degree of abstraction; I get that it's difficult to conceive of ideas and perceptions beyond human.
how would you depict a collectivist society?
I'm not creative enough to create a new species that is fully logically consistent with its alien environment. But there are a few features I'd probably think about:
1. Slow evolution due to less external pressure and scarcity.
2. No opposable thumbs, so the development and use of tools is not as emphasized as they are in humans.
3. Communication through vibrations like dolphins. Imagine how socially advanced dolphins could be in 20 million years. Imagine a species that can convey complex ideas and emotions through precise frequencies.
4. Some sort of catalyst for philosophy. What could make such a species without a lot of external pressures, think about the meaning of life?
Another path you could take is imagining an intelligent species of plants. Perhaps one that has developed conscious awareness of self and other members of their species. They would be able to transmit ideas efficiently and biologically, but are extremely limited in movement. Thus, their conscious experience is not one centered around sensation (like ours), but rather one centered on thoughts, ideas and philosophical discourse. Imagine how a species like this would perceive the violent behavior of humans.
or like ants
We already have quite good examples of civilizations growing an aversion to militarism(sweden or germany come to mind). If you expand that mindset to a global scale and give it a millenia it could form a convincing pacifist culture. Geographical factors and world war II^10 trauma could help. Planet with a single small supercontinent making war way too costly and close to every nation participating might be a good setting. Other route might be the exact opposite with a spread out archipelago world with smallish island nations making the logistics of invasions near impossible before technological leaps.
The problem is that even a human culture with an aversion to militarism is still extremely prone to violence, because they are humans. What would happen in Sweden or Germany if there was a global famine and economic collapse? Violence would instantaneously become the norm.
On a cosmic scale between pure pacifism and extreme violence, the difference between ALL human cultures would be negligible.
Compare that to the plant example. Violence is basically impossible to fathom for such a species for a number of reasons:
1. They have no pain receptors, so the entire concept of using pain or the threat of pain to get what you want doesn't exist.
2. They do not experience physical sensation, so the concept of desire is greatly minimized compared to us.
3. They can't move because they're plants, so the action of violence is impossible.
4. Their only experience with death is when an animal dies and decomposes into the soil; all they know is that some life form went from being to non-being and its "life force" is now being reintegrated with the planet. To such a species, life and death is a simple cycle.
5. Their only conception of death when it comes to self is that certain conditions (like a forest fire) can cause the self to transform from being to non-being. But to them, being has no malice. The state of being is only good; all they do is think and share ideas. Why the hell would someone want to intentionally take that away? What could a plant have possibly done to make someone or something want to terminate their being? Thus, the behavior of violence is truly inconceivable to such a species.
Moderately disagree on humans being "extremely prone" to violence. Many megadeath famines have been experienced with only a tiny subset of people starting to behave violently(at least while the state somewhat exists). Human like beings with 1-20k years of pacifism would be even harder to corrupt, but of course it would be inevitable given enough threats and time. In terms of the threads subject similar pacifism might work for a story, and it gives a chance for the "civilized beings starting slowly sliding into barbarism after encountering brutes and acting shocked about it" cliche.
But yeah if you want the pacifism to last unchanged after hard aggression or threat from humans you'd have to envision fantastical beings more pussified than the avg tree. Not to start an useless debate too much but plants do compete fiercely(if you count shading other plants fierce lol) for sunlight and resources, form alliances within and between species, react chemically aggressively to damage, kill/parasitize each other etc. The thinking part could of course be decoupled from said acts but the explanation for said intelligence would have to be magical and not evolutional in that case. I like the concept though but it's more fitting for a fable/fantasy than a grim scifi.
How are you able to afford humans such a colossal benefit of the doubt, yet hold plants to such strict standards of violence?
My hypothetical scenario was just that, hypothetical. That's what scifi is.
In your human scenario, how is pacifism enforced? What conditions could be maintained over 1-20k years that would remove the human nature of competition and ego? And how would those conditions be maintained and enforced?
NTA but a toxoplasmosis infection is known to have that effect on rodents. cats carry that parasite and pass it on to rodents, who are then easier to catch and kill. There are some "conspiracy theories" that say it has that effect on humans. So there's one possibility.
>There are some "conspiracy theories" that say it has that effect on humans.
eh, I've always been skeptical of that. One of the side effects is being attracted to cat urine, and I've never met a human who didn't think cat urine was absolutely rancid. I guess we can't be sure it just doesn't present in humans like that, but still.
A parasite or infection that could turn humans pacifist would be an interesting concept, but it doesn't really fulfill OP's request of being able to describe human bellicosity from an alien perspective.
I responded in a hurry and forgot major clarifications:
I just think that humans are less cruel than the avg person thinks if they're among a well defined in-group. Between group violence obviously exists on a large scale. At the same time people are surprisingly civilized when starving to death.
Human like being = social intelligent land animal with tools and technology.
I hold plants to such a degree since I think plants are genetically selfish and their apparent peacefulness(excluding some australian/topical frickers) stems from lack of weapons and brains and not out of being so chill. If a spruce could convince a larvae laying beetle to land on a nearby pine instead of itself it would do so in an instant. OR... we play the scenario that trees are intelligent and yet don't do anything with it except chit chat. They'd be near indistinguashible from telepathic rocks at that point, but arguably better in aesthetics.
>In your human scenario, how is pacifism enforced?
Human like beings yet moderately more peaceful to begin with live on a planet that has some major limiting factor when it comes to aggression. Archipelago/pockets of livable area type world makes most sense to me. Have small enough islands to not host nation worthy populations and make the areas between too treacherous to make war campaigns but encage in small trade occasionally. Also make them really dumb so they just slowly creep towards tech and don't go crazy about it as we did. 1k years seems doable to near humans in good conditions and small populations since places with ~200 year internal peace(Swizerland and sweden) exist.
Paradoxically less social animals might be actually capable of being even more peaceful since deadly conflict only makes sense when you have group selection in prosess. Really intelligent birds that don't live in communes and settle mating scuffles by dancing might make it to 20k years or to infinity.
Again, you are affording your human scenario an incredible leniency in conditions, but affording literally zero leniency in conditions to the plant example. You're somehow able to imagine vast changes to human culture that you insist will turn humans into a passive species (as if self interest and scarcity of resources doesn't exist, but you still fail to explain how these could be removed), but cannot imagine even the most marginal tweaks in environmental conditions for the plant example.
The point of the plant example is that OP is asking how he could write about the bellicosity of human behavior from the perspective of an alien species that doesn't have violence. It's extremely shallow to suggest writing from the perspective of a species that is just humans, but magically without violence, which gives 0 consideration to the conditions that could possibly foster such pacifism on a fundamental or intrinsic level. The conditions you speak of could certainly lead to societies with little violence, but it's light years away from explaining how such non-violence could become so intrinsic to the species that they view violence as incomprehensible (as OP requested). Again, who is enforcing pacifism?
If you go the route of formulating a very specific set of social conditions (e.g. a society in which acts of violence can never be in the interests (even emotional) of an individual, and also enforced without violence), then their pacifism would be reliant on those social conditions, but would not be intrinsic to the degree of making violence incomprehensible.
>We already have quite good examples of civilizations growing an aversion to militarism(sweden or germany come to mind).
>an aversion to militarism
>germany
Ah yes, the nation whose intense militarism was the direct cause of the two largest wars in the history of the human race.
Reddittor forgets we're not living in 1942 anymore.
Take the plant idea further. Plants don't eat and thus the very idea of humans killing and devouring other living plants and animals would be alien and maybe horrifying to them.
Plants very much try to compete with other plants for root spread and sunlight. Some are even parasitic. Ever hear of mistletoe?
That isn't eating. It'd basically be the same horror we have from cannibalism.
>Plants very much try to compete with other plants for root spread and sunlight
Sure, but we're talking about an alien species.
I mean, some plants eat. Pitcher plants, sundew, flytraps...
>waah waah chili peppers are too hot
wuss
I prefer a pleasant burn, not horrific agony, thank you very much
me too. you're just a wuss
>What are some "space orc" qualities that you can think of?
You're asking the wrong questions.
You should be looking at how alien psychology differs from human psychology and use that as a lense to define humans as "space orcs", whatever that's supposed to actually mean.
I remember reading some stories about how a pacifistic council of aliens had to recruit humans to wage war against a more aggressive threat because they had lived so long in peace they had forgotten about violence altogether. They were a lot a funny episodes about the aliens being horrified by humans propensity for violence.
I think it was from Niven's Known Space, but there are tons of stories in this setting and I recall the ones that were specifically about the aliens recruiting the human armies.
*I can't recall
OP id you've already written stories and want them published on my website, feel free to send me the best ones.
Contact info is in the "about" page.
https://sfss.space
>BRO HUMANS ARE SO HARDCORE THEY EAT CHILI PEPPERS AND DRINK ALCOHOL (LITERAL POISON!!!!) I WISH I COULD SUCK A HUMAN'S DICK
HFY is a dumpster bin of literary exercises. I am being 100% honest when I say to not bother with this genre.
>I haven't found anything except tumblr posts and tumblr-esque short stories
There's a reason why that is.
you're no fun
He's not wrong, there's little interesting to be said by going
>human beings (or any fictional species for that matter) are the bestest!
It ultimately boils down to whitewashing out negative aspects you don't like and hyperfocusing only on aspects you like with scenarios that allow only their expression.
Ultimately any species that achieved space travel is going to be a lot closer to us mentally because of the many, many great filters in life. Evolution doesn't take losers whether they're too passive to defend themselves or too aggressive to stop killing each other. The only reason why they would be completely foreign to our mentality, or mentalities human cultures have espoused in other places and times, is if they weren't subject to any evolutionary pressures that would actually incentivize them to advance to space travel or other aspects of civilization.
It's why so much warrior race shit is just masturbation, duels fricking kill their participants, human or animal, all the fricking time and there is no such thing as civilization without both parent and child living long enough together to pass down information.
>It ultimately boils down to whitewashing out negative aspects you don't like and hyperfocusing only on aspects you like with scenarios that allow only their expression.
then it's the job of the author to not fall into that trap, and to depict the bad along with the good, or entertaining.
There was one short story that left a mark. About how humans were the only species to understand superstition and vengeance. It was good because humans were only mentioned in passing.