alt Hacker NewsAdrian Tchaikovsky is really good at these alien ecosystems kind of thing (his Children of * range being quite good). This was a terrific short story. One thing I am curious about is whether there is a different kind of science fiction out there. The driving thread through all of modern English sci-fi is "we shouldn't go out there and do anything; we are the bad that ruins a delicate thing". That's a cool story but somewhat overly tropey at this point I think. This short story, the Avatar series, they have this ecological moralizing. AT is creative enough that the novel ideas (single species life-cycle planet) carry the tale even though the moral thread is the same as the Avatar movie: corporations destroy ecosystems they don't understand in the resource pursuit.
I enjoy the "what if we're the baddies" just as much as anyone else. But are there big stories with these exciting concepts where we aren't the baddies in the Anglosphere?
A thing I enjoy about other cultures is seeing what is unusually different about them. In the Three Body Problem, spoilers to follow for the series, humanity aren't The Bad Guys With Agency. We aren't even The Big Bad or The Big Good. We're sort of just other participants in this universe. The dual vector foil is employed by someone else, the guys who want space back from the pocket dimension to reboot the universe are just someone else, everything is someone else. We are bit part players in this play.
This goes on even to a few movies. The Wandering Earth movie (somewhat different from the short story) has this part at the end (obvious spoilers to follow) where the heroes accomplish the task and reboot their Earth Engine after conquering all odds - only for the camera to zoom out and show numerous other teams also having done the same. This wasn't the only struggle won. Cool alternative tale where it isn't so much One Team Saves The World or One Team Ruins The World.
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> I enjoy the "what if we're the baddies" just as much as anyone else. But are there big stories with these exciting concepts where we aren't the baddies in the Anglosphere?
That's my problem with horror media as well. They all eventually devolve into the "humans were the real monsters all along" cliché.
> I enjoy the "what if we're the baddies" just as much as anyone else. But are there big stories with these exciting concepts where we aren't the baddies in the Anglosphere?
Was about to post some examples that I liked, but then realized that anything from the previous century (1900's) probably can't be called "modern" any more. And after that, realized that I don't think I've read any "modern" corporate-published SF by that standard. I'm getting old.
If fanfiction counts, I'm enjoying this: https://archiveofourown.org/series/3516793
Alastair Reynold's Revelation Space series is modern and without humans as the bad guys. And highly recommended too. The books are also more standalone than calling it a series would suggest, but he also has lots of other one-shot books, and a few trilogies, if that would be a better way for you to try him out. I got into him via the standalone Pushing Ice.
Blindsight by Peter Watts
Pushing Ice by Alastair Reynolds
Startide Rising by David Brin
A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge
The Algebraist by Iain M. Banks
Semiosis by Sue Burke
Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir
Dragon's Egg by Robert L. Forward
Solaris by Stanisław Lem
The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler
The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers
Translation State by Ann Leckie
Pandora's Star by Peter F. Hamilton
The Mote in God's Eye by Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle
House of Suns by Alastair Reynolds
This is what sprang to mind as answering that sort of brief off the top of my head.
> One thing I am curious about is whether there is a different kind of science fiction out there.
One recommendation: Kim Stanley Robinson, Aurora: We went there. It didn't work. We came back. We did good and bad things to each other along the way. It was beautiful and painful.
> A thing I enjoy about other cultures is seeing what is unusually different about them.
This is a very strong theme throughout Ursula Le Guin’s books and short stories; perhaps you might find those interesting.
You might enjoy Beckey Chamber's Galactic Commons series. She does a great job of creating all kinds of interesting characters and exploring them and what makes them unique.
The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell is very compelling.
And I seconded it below but I'll mention it again - the Bobiverse series is excellent with amazing exploration.
Reviewing Hugos last 20 years or so:
Ann Leckie is great, Tamsyn Muir is gothic horror lesbian necromancer-ish and super cool, Andy Weir is a full humanist in the best sense, Arkady Martine is a thoughtful writer I enjoy, Yoon Ha Lee was a fresh voice at time of pub, and worth reading, Cixin Liu fits your request, I love me some Stephenson novels, in your request category I recommend Anathem, Kim Stanley Robinson can be tiring, but is also pretty great, everything China Mieville has written is worth reading, full stop, Paolo Bacigalupi's adult fiction is fucking great, although I sort of bounced off his YA stuff, Vernor Vinge will read like near-history reportage, but was way ahead of its time when published, if you haven't read Iain M. Banks (also goes by Iain Banks for non-genre), you have 10-20 novels that are just fantastic waiting for you, Dan Simmons Hyperion is excellent, Bruce Sterling is worth reading.. Let me know if you get through this list.
There’s a subreddit called HFY which stands for “humanity, fuck yeah!” Which has little short stories about humanity being badass normally in a scifi setting in one way or another. https://old.reddit.com/r/HFY (I have Reddit blocked so can’t verify that’s the correct link)
Try some CJ Cherryh. Her science fiction touches on many ethically-tricky concepts and difficult situations and explores different styles of alien interaction without a lot of the satirizing/politicking/moralizing that many use scifi and fantasy settings for.
Schild's ladder by Greg Egan is a pretty good novel for this. You have groups of people vying to collapse and try to coexist with a new but threatening form of nature, and I think both are treated as reasonable actors.
The Hyperion Cantos hits this topic. We're the good guys and we're the bad guys. And sometimes we're the bad guys through no malicious intent, just volume and social norms (the consul's tale in the first book). Other times we're the bad guys to do good things (Lamia's tale).
The first book is really good by itself. The others are just as good but very different and way more political (meaning covering the politics of that universe, not political like involving current day politics).
In the sci-fi film Arrival (also based on a short story), humanity are kind of like irresponsible young students. If we get past our focus on war/conflict/us vs them perhaps we can learn new things from the aliens.
I think that breaks the style a little of 'humans bad for aliens' enough, right?
Either way I enjoyed Arrival (and the short story).
Give short story anthologies (like the "Best of Year" type) a look. The late great Garder Dozois was always my favorite, but I personally also get good hit rates from Neil Clarke and Jonathan Strahan, among others. There's a lot of good stuff in there... and bad stuff... and forgettable stuff. But that's part of the draw of short fiction.
Personally, a story where there’s any clear-cut “baddies” at this point would violate immersion. We can realistically and objectively classify a given person as a psychopath, an egomaniac, etc. (and such a person can end up having a disproportionate influence over some part of history), but things are a little more nuanced when larger societies are concerned.
I think the Culture series by Iain M. Banks does mostly a good job at not being overly black and white, even though one of the sides has an obvious technological advantage.
Greg Egan? His stuff is way out there, some may do the we're the baddies trope but most doesn't.
"But are there big stories with these exciting concepts where we aren't the baddies in the Anglosphere?"
A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
Try reading Project Hail Mary
> I enjoy the "what if we're the baddies" just as much as anyone else. But are there big stories with these exciting concepts where we aren't the baddies in the Anglosphere?
Hyperion? Ringworld? Rendezvous with Rama? Brin's Uplift trilogy? Neuromancer? A Fire Upon the Deep? Robinson's Mars trilogy?
I'm just going through Hugo novel winners, picking some of the ones I've read:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo_Award_for_Best_Novel
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo_Award#Categories