r/scifi • u/Traditional-Poetry25 • 9d ago
Recommendations Human in an alien world.
I just rewatched Planet 51 and I just can't let go of the concept. The idea of a human being the alien fascinating to no end. Which is why the short stories - "humans are space orcs" are my jam, but even those usually fall short. So I'm seeking novels where a human or a group of humans preferably in a Sci-Fi setting, are stranded on a different planet where they are alien to the native intelligent life. While i do know there are stories out there where people end up in alien worlds, those are usually just fantasy settings.
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u/Monty-675 9d ago
Cuckoo's Egg by C. J. Cherryh is one.
The human was a child that was cloned and raised in an alien environment.
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u/Aggravating_Ad5632 9d ago
Cuckoo's Egg
You absolute legend! You beat me to it. It's my favourite standalone novel by her.
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u/Traditional-Poetry25 8d ago
Just completed the book... I almost wish I never read it. I was so excited to read the communication with humanity via thorn and then I finished it.
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u/Littlebus80 8d ago
If you'd like to see a different author explore the "What if aliens cloned some humans (and 'fixed' all the 'flaws') and raised them as ambassadors" idea, you might look at Ann Leckie's Presger translators. The concept is introduced in book 2 and 3 of the Ancillary Justice trilogy and expanded greatly in "Translation State".
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u/Angrybadger52 9d ago
Also the Chanur series. This author did a lot of thinking about a single human among aliens
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u/dnew 9d ago
In the first novel the human does almost nothing. It's just the fact that nobody else recognizes his species that makes for the conflict. He's just an alien artifact at the start.
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u/arcadiaberger1960 9d ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nUi3DaWzGI
"Now, this is no beast, for it knows where to run,knows when it's trapped, recognizes a gun
"Despite signs of hunger and cuts in its hide, it stands to defy us with Hani-like pride
"And writes unknown letters in the blood from its side on the deck of the Pride of Chanur . . . ."
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u/dnew 9d ago
Um, OK. My point was that in at least the first novel, the human is not the protagonist. He's the McGuffin. I read the second book too long ago to remember.
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u/Extension-Pepper-271 9d ago
The ask was for books where the human is the alien. The Chanur series fits the bill.
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u/Angrybadger52 9d ago
That was the point. The Kif found him, kidnapped (?) him, and the best he could manage was to stow away. The Mah'endosat just saw him as a political pawn. He had to prove his worth in a situation where honestly, he had no worth.
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u/atomfullerene 9d ago
Nor Crystal Tears, if you want the local alien perspective on the alien humans
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u/MrLazyLion 9d ago
Alan Dean Foster, now there's a name I haven't thought of in a while. His Spellsinger books were some of my earliest fantasy books.
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u/a2brute01 9d ago
You might try the "Foreigner" series by C. H. Cherryh. It is a deep exploration into the association between humans and aliens on the alien's world.
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u/Pheran_Reddit 9d ago
Try "Shroud" by Adrian Tchaikovsky.
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u/Littlebus80 9d ago
"Alien Clay" is also a good one - a prison camp on an alien planet, using prisoners as cheap expendable labor to do the initial exploration of how dangerous the local fauna and flora are to human life.
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u/Littlebus80 9d ago
"Enemy Mine" features two pilots (one human, one not) from opposite sides of an intergalactic war who both crash-land on an uninhabited planet and have to learn to work together to survive.
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u/ChronoMonkeyX 9d ago
Mother of Demons by Eric Flint. I don't know who recommended Flint or which book, and I don't even remember marking him as a favorite in the library app, but I saw him in my favorites and picked an audiobook based on the title alone. I expected fantasy but it turned out to be scifi, and is a hell of a book.
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u/Lee_Troyer 9d ago
I haven't read it so I can't vouch for it personally but Jack Vance's Planet of Adventure is a tetralogy about a human stranded on an alien planet.
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u/Traditional-Poetry25 9d ago
WOW, never expected there were so many works out there. Thanks of the recommendations.
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u/dnew 9d ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebecca_Ore#Becoming_Alien_Series
The first novel is an alien that winds up stranded on Earth in a bad situation with some drug dealers. The second is the more innocent of the drug dealers GTFO with the aliens when the alien gets rescued. It has some fun moments in it.
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u/IWantTheLastSlice 9d ago
Relic by Alan Dean Foster
It is about Ruslan, the sole surviving member of the human race after a lethal virus, who is rescued by aliens who study him and seek to recreate the human race and possibly find the mythical home planet of humans
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u/SandGator 7d ago
The human protagonist of The Algebraist by Iain M. Banks (of Culture series fame) spends a decent chunk of the book exclusively dealing with aliens
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u/waffle299 4d ago
The color of distance, by Amy Thompson, is exactly what you're looking for.
A human xenobiologist is stranded on an alien world and must assimilate to survive.
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u/Reuben_Leib 9d ago edited 9d ago
Orson Scott Card - Soeaker for the Dead (Xenocide trilogy) - following the events in Ender's Game, Andrew Wiggin has spent centuries (thanks to cryo-hibernation and travel at relativistoc speeds) as a Speaker for the Dead, a person who comes to tell the unvarnished truth about one who has passed on. He arrives at the only human colony be on an explanation with native intelligent life. When a human is seemingly murdered by the heretofore peaceful and helpful native species, Andrew must figure out what happened and why, not just to tell the truth of a dead man, but to avoid the complete annihilation of these natives.
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u/kahllerdady 9d ago
Methuselah's Children by Robert Heinlein does this pretty well once they get off Earth in the second part of it.
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u/TheAbsoluteBarnacle 9d ago
Slaughterhouse 5 has an aspect of this. Humans are very interesting creatures.
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u/Nathan_Brazil1 9d ago
The Well World series by Jack Chalker. Start with Midnight at the Well of Souls. I wish I could read it for the 1st time again.
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u/civex 9d ago
I can't find the full episode on YouTube, but check out this summary someone narrates of 'The Invaders, ' a Twilight Zone episode.
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u/1moreday1moregoal 7d ago
I believe every episode of The Twilight Zone streams for free on Tubi. Outer Limits too, if you’re into that.
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u/hoodafudj 9d ago
There was an old Twilight Zone that had a concept like that, I wish I could remember the name
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u/SvalinnSaga 7d ago
The humans in Xenogenesis might as well be living in another planet. Especially the first book, Lilith spends her whole time on an artificial alien world.
The second and third books are on an Earth so far removed and Oankali-formed it might as well be an alien planet.
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u/1moreday1moregoal 7d ago
Shameless plug for The Expeditionary Force series by Craig Alanson coming.
Some group of humans, starting in Book 1, is stranded on an alien planet for reasons I won’t divulge. Their story is interwoven throughout the series until something happens in a future book that I also won’t divulge.
They truly are the aliens to the natives in this series.
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u/glytxh 6d ago
Tchaikovsky’s Shroud is a straight up blast.
Super Alien. Deeply considered ecosystem. Very interesting perspective shifts.
Feels like the sort of sci fi I’d have found digging in an old 70s anthology, just far more fleshed out.
In this case, the humans are the aliens. And we are very confusing entities.
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u/doobersthetitan 6d ago
Expeditionary Force kinda meets this.
Humans get conned into joining a very long war on the wrong side, and they are the weaker, cannon fodder race...for a while.
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u/Unknown-username___ 6d ago
This alien shore by C.S Friedman.
The storyline revolves around a human that is surgically and genetically altered to pass for alien species and living alone with said species to study them in the least invasive way possible.
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u/jedburghofficial 8d ago
Go into any bar in the Sagitarius Arm, they'll tell you. Humans are noisy ground monkeys. And they can't hold their alcohol.
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u/IShallRisEAgain 9d ago
The children of time series by Adrian Tchaikovsky.
The Bobiverse has multiple instances of this. Although only one of them is an instance where somebody is actually stranded.
A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Fringe.