Humans warned not to venture out -- a premise

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Dave posted:

Humans were contacted by aliens out in the Oort Cloud and told never to come farther. It wasn’t, they told the humans, safe out there.

Humans learn from these aliens that it wasn’t safe because there was another particular alien race that loved to attack races that were just emerging, and would destroy their world and enslave their people — and no one had ever stopped them.

So the humans undertake a massive building program, moving the whole population into habitats built around the solar system, with even more ships for getting back and forth between the habitats, for stopping asteroids, for mining hydrogen from the gas giants and mining water and gases from comets. And since pirates sprang up, the humans built a lot of armed ships to keep the pirates at bay.

Then one day a human ship ventured out past the Oort Cloud. It ventured to visit the Oort Cloud of Alpha Centauri, then went home.

By the time the races who had warned the humans got to the solar system, earth was a ruin, and the system was full of debris, pieces of thousands on thousands of ships. But an observant officer noticed that nearly all the debris she could find was from ships of the killer race, with only a little of human making. Then search and rescue found three survivors — not humans, but members of the killers of race.

Between examining the debris and other evidence, it became clear that the entire effort by the humans had aimed at two goals: first, to draw the attention of the killer race… and defeat them, indeed crush them; second, to take the entire human race out where they weren’t dependent on a planet to live on, to hide and grow until they were ready to come back and reclaim their home with enough strength that no one would ever be able to take it away.

The former killer race had to be protected, they’d been devastated so badly — the defeat was so crushing they couldn’t even count on defending their handful of systems. Their solar system had to be protected from the humans just moving in and taking it. And the aliens who had told the humans the reason they shouldn’t leave their solar system sat up worrying, wondering just how nasty a race they’d helped unleash on an unsuspecting galaxy.

Mike Chapman answered:

Interesting little outline you have there. This is my first response, so hopefully I do the right things. I’ll just list some SF that your premise reminds me of.

Humans being a somehow remarkable race, and to be feared.

The first one that popped into my head was The Road Not Taken by Harry Turtledove. The aliens in this story were not so impressive, but the “What have we done” line really resonated with me.

Another is a bit more fanciful, a story about how humans are not safe to play with, and woe betide those who poke them and awaken their true potential. The story is “Danger, Human” by Gordon Dickson, and the text is here.

Come to think of it, there are a lot more where these came from, everything from the (nicely done) Footfall by Niven and Pournelle, where humans barely conquer the baby elephants, to the classic Asimov story where humans survive the invention of atomic weapons only through the accident of the Cold War, and are to be feared as an intelligent and violent race: The Gentle Vultures.

Assassins

The idea of intelligent races that squash up and coming civilisations — out of… fear? Jealousy? Just plain grumpiness? — is a recurring theme among SF, and a frightening solution to the Fermi Paradox.

Some examples:

  • Frederik Pohl, Gateway
  • Fred Saberhagen, the Berserker stories, novels, etc. Not so targeted as the above, but still scary as hell.
  • Alastair Reynolds writes of the Inhibitors, an alien race who exterminate all competitors who achieve a certain level of technology: Revelation Space universe
  • Greg Bear wrote about an evil (not sure of their motives) race that punks humanity in a very bad way. i don’t want to spoil too much, but you probably get the idea: The Forge of God

Such threats can even come from our own solar system. I really enjoyed John Varley’s Ophiuchi Hotline, where Jovians get upset at the way humans treat whales and magically remove all technology above the level of a spear from Earth, dooming most of humanity to starvation. Ok, that was not the part I liked, it was the rest of humanity living off-planet that I thought was cool.

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