Earth Is Space Australia

[kerravonsen]

There's a trope I rather like in SF, which a reverse of the usual "all aliens are superior" thing. It isn't that humans are superior as such, but that humans are better at surviving - because the planet Sol III is a hellhole, a Deathworld. Such extremes of temperature, of landscape, of flora and fauna! How could any being survive it? Hence the "Earth is Space Australia" -- everything here is out to kill you. And the related trope, "Humans are Space Orcs", as a consequence of being native to a Deathworld.

It's not a new trope, IIRC Alan Dean Foster did a series using the idea. And in a way, the movie "The Last Starfighter" touches on this too, in that humans make better soldiers because they are more aggressive, have "fighting instincts" which they use to entertain themselves playing video games...

It got revived again from a tumblr post (further down the thread here). Tom Scott did a cool "Interplanetary Space Council Warning" video inspired by that post.

And there are tags and collections on AO3:

• Humans are space orcs (tag)
• Humans Are Space Orcs (collection)
• Earth is Space Australia (tag)
• Earth Is Space Australia (collection)

Some of my favourites from AO3:

• Persistence Hunting (Guardians of the Galaxy)
• Grace (Original work)
• Earth, The Fatal Frontier

Now, the version of "Earth, The Fatal Frontier" which is on AO3 turns out to be the prologue of an actual published novel/novella. So I ordered it from Amazon, and Amazon kept on telling me they were having problems sourcing it, would I like to cancel the order? But I didn't cancel the order, and eventually, months later, it actually arrived! So I settled down to read it, with much anticipation.

Alas. Inconsistent worldbuilding for the fail.

There's been an alien invasion, right? The military have been slaughtered. The elderly and disabled have all been massacred. Country towns have turned into ghost towns. And yet Our Heroine can wander into such a deserted country town, charge her mobile phone, connect to the internet, post to Social Media, start a Human Resistance Facebook group all without any problems or a single bit of alien interference.

WHAT?

(headdesk)

Yeah, my suspension of disbelief crashed and burned on that one.

So, any recommendations for stories/novels/shows/movies that use this trope?

Comments

[watervole]

Does Dune count?

[kerravonsen]

I don't think so.

[tree_and_leaf]

This is a difficult one to answer, because the most obvious one that springs to mind is this trope, but it also appears as the twist towards the end of the book, though it's fairly easy to spot what's actually going on if you have a) read some SF and b) are more genre-savvy than the narrator (and possibly also the author, who I don't think has actually read much SFF).

[kerravonsen]

So you can't tell me what it is, because the rec itself is a spoiler? Darn.

[tree_and_leaf]

Yes, that's about the size of it!

[lizvogel]

Not exactly on-trope, but if you like the related trope of "Humans are weird", there's this: We're the Weird Aliens.

(Full disclosure: I have a story in it.)

[kerravonsen]

Yeah, I like "Humans are weird" too. 8-)