Humans on other planets?

[Tarron Zeng]

Hey, so I was wondering for my superhero world, how would Earth humans react to humans living in other planets, or the reverse? In my story humans in habit 3 world including Earth, but Im still in the process of fleshing them out, such as did they migrate there in a bygone age or are they always there? Im preferring the former, though this could change, but back to the question how would any of them react when they find other humans exist?

 

[Chasejxyz]

In Stargate, Ancient Aliens™* took humans from Earth and brought them to other planets to be slaves or whatever. So you could so something like that. You could also do panspermia (life was seeded from space, which is why it evolved in similar ways), or to a more extreme way like Neon Genesis Evangelion (an ancient alien species was dying out, so they intentionally seeded other worlds, and things would end up as "humans." Which is why the Evas, angels and regular ol humans are the same thing and can do all of that crazy stuff). Or some sort of god created the same life on multiple worlds. Or you can just not say anything in the text and let the reader come up with their own theories, that's valid, too.

I guess also what is your definition of "human." "Kryptonians" are an alien species but they sure do look a lot like humans. The Godzilla anime movies also had alien species that looked just like humans but they all had the same hair/skin color (which were in normal human ranges???), so your "humans" from another planet being a different species but still looking exactly like a Homo sapiens sapiens isn't new. Though some people (like me) who are Way Too Into biology might get really annoyed at you for it.

So when you ask for how they react when they find out each other exist, when exactly does this happen? Is this something that happens in the story? Before? Long time ago? Is the story mostly from an Earthling's perspective or a "Kryptonian" type person? What is this first contact like? Did one of their ships crash land here? Did we accidentally invade them and start a war? There's a lot of possibilities and that will affect people's opinions on the matter.

*The whole concept of "ancient aliens," especially as the ones who REALLY built (insert ancient thing here) or taught ancient people (mathematical concept) is actually Really Racist, because we never doubt that white people built Stonehenge, but we doubt black and brown people doing something similar? okay

 

[Tarron Zeng]

In Stargate, Ancient Aliens™* took humans from Earth and brought them to other planets to be slaves or whatever. So you could so something like that. You could also do panspermia (life was seeded from space, which is why it evolved in similar ways), or to a more extreme way like Neon Genesis Evangelion (an ancient alien species was dying out, so they intentionally seeded other worlds, and things would end up as "humans." Which is why the Evas, angels and regular ol humans are the same thing and can do all of that crazy stuff). Or some sort of god created the same life on multiple worlds. Or you can just not say anything in the text and let the reader come up with their own theories, that's valid, too.

I guess also what is your definition of "human." "Kryptonians" are an alien species but they sure do look a lot like humans. The Godzilla anime movies also had alien species that looked just like humans but they all had the same hair/skin color (which were in normal human ranges???), so your "humans" from another planet being a different species but still looking exactly like a Homo sapiens sapiens isn't new. Though some people (like me) who are Way Too Into biology might get really annoyed at you for it.

So when you ask for how they react when they find out each other exist, when exactly does this happen? Is this something that happens in the story? Before? Long time ago? Is the story mostly from an Earthling's perspective or a "Kryptonian" type person? What is this first contact like? Did one of their ships crash land here? Did we accidentally invade them and start a war? There's a lot of possibilities and that will affect people's opinions on the matter.

*The whole concept of "ancient aliens," especially as the ones who REALLY built (insert ancient thing here) or taught ancient people (mathematical concept) is actually Really Racist, because we never doubt that white people built Stonehenge, but we doubt black and brown people doing something similar? okay

That sums up most of the gripes I have with some sci fi and superhero story, if the aliens are so similar to humans, you might as well just make them humans and save your time. Humans who live in other planets in my story are the same kind as their brethren in Earth, no superpowers and all that. Im thinking that an ancient empire on Earth discovered those planets and colonised them using whatever magic they have found. Again, still in the process of finding and fleshing out my story, and I really do not want to go into the ancient alien path, since it seems so cliche.

 

[ButlerianHeretic]

The friendly AI that runs humanity needs something to do to keep the humans busy since it can do everything so much more efficiently with robots and lesser AI, so sending them to colonize other planets under friendly AI protection to avoid them accidentally creating existential threats is the most efficient option.

 

[pmmg]

I am little confused by the term superhero world in this context. Is the superhero world earth? or some place else? and when discovered, are the superheroes not used to non-powered types?

Anyway...I would think finding other humans on other planets would cause a lot of speculation as to how that could be, producing many theories, some wild, some thought out, as to the possibilities. It might challenge current philosophy or religious thought on the matter (though not really), and would end the question of if there is life on other planets. Upon such a discovery, there would be as many opinions as there are people to have them, but they would probably jell into whatever their media sources pushed them towards.

One question I would have is if these, how many more?

I dont have gripes with this (humans elsewhere), and I am pretty sure Stonehenge is also one of those objects that gets credited to aliens from time to time. I doubt aliens had any thing to do with it. I would bet that all of those weird ancient wonders, if we knew could know the truth, were built by humans.

 

[ButlerianHeretic]

I too am confused how superheroes fit in to the scenario.

 

[Stevie]

There are plenty of models for how humans react to finding other humans on our own planet that you could use. See the Conquistadors in South America, the British meeting the Austrailian aborigiones, Europeans meeting the North American natives ...

The historian Yuval Harari, in one of his books (it's either 'Sapiens' or 'Homo Deus') neatly answers the question of how a far advanced race of aliens would react to meeting us by proposing there is already a model for this as well. How we treat animals.

 

[Queshire]

Mm... I imagine that Earth's human as a whole would be more concerned about first contact in general than about extraterrestrial humans. Sci fi media in general has primed us for accepting humans in space. Actually, we might be more comfortable with extraterrestrial humans than non-humans. We know humans (and more importantly we can send in the anthropologists when we realize we don't know them as well as we think.) Now, this is Earth as a whole. Individuals might still freak out of course.

 

[Miles Lacey]

Humans here discover there's life on another planet (or vice versa). There are several things that pop into my mind.

Communication: The biggest problem could very well be communication. If they speak a language similar to one on Earth then communication may be possible. If not, then misunderstandings could be a major problem. It was primarily because of miscommunication that there were clashes, skirmishes and even massacres between Maori and European explorers and early settlers.

Technology: Just because they are advanced enough to travel across the galaxy doesn't mean that they are more advanced in other things. Some forms of technology may well have been sidelined to allow others to advance. After all, we landed people on the moon in 1969. At the time personal computers were viewed as science fiction.

Social Attitudes: May the gods help us if the humans who discover us (or which we discover) turn out to have attitudes modelled on Social Darwinism or worse. They may very well do to us what the Europeans did to the Aborigines in Australia.

Diseases: It's easily overlooked that the primary reason for the establishment of the barbaric Trans-Atlantic slave trade was because disease introduced by Spanish and Portuguese wiped out the vast majority of the indigenous people and the few who lived were regarded as useless for slave labour. We would be in deep trouble if they inadvertently introduced diseases which we have no defences against.

 

[Miles Lacey]

I was referring to the indigenous peoples of what is now referred to as Latin America in the above post who were killed by diseases in the above post.

 

[Saigonnus]

I would imagine that if you place the story early enough in the history of the planet, that you don't need them to originate from other planets, just separated from the main culture and isolated enough to make their culture very different. Imagine if some island dwellers or someone from another continent have something similar to kung fu or martial arts (like a monk), where the main culture does not, wouldn't it seem to the viewer that they have super powers? Maybe their form of magic is more akin to psionics rather than traditional incantations... that would also seem like super powers.

You could even do the same with technology. Imagine if a citizen from your principal culture washed up on a beach. The place has natives that have never even seen bows and arrows; and suddenly, this citizen makes one. Maybe it wouldn't be percieved as superpower, but it could change the balance of power in the area. Imagine if they were a smith, and could make swords or knives... my goodness.

I actually did something similar to what you are describing with my world. My planet has 3 moons; one able to support life; and does. One of the races of my planet originally came from the moon and thrived there.

Basically when the latent magic field surrounding the planet "rubs" the magic field around the moon, they generate a kind of portal (they are invisible to the naked eye) and people believe they are random, but really, they occur in certain places on the planet. Travel both directions is possible.

The moon dwellers initially thought the portal went nowhere or banished the person to another dimension, so they'd send their criminals and undesirables in... and most never came back, propogating this notion among the people. They soon discovered though that they didn't die, they just went to the planet and stopped doing it, but their kind had already started their own culture, and is vastly different than where they came from.

 

[ButlerianHeretic]

About communication, there is a strong case to be made that the traveling civilization wants to communicate and has computers, and if the visited civilization makes widespread use of visual communication media that the visiting civilization can detect then decoding communications at least a basic understanding of the visited civilizations' language and culture is almost trivially easy. It wouldn't be hard to figure out how to decode non-encrypted video signals (though if we eventually encrypt everything as a matter of course, that could be an interesting wrinkle) to figure out the pictures and sound, perhaps with the help of some reconnaissance. Then, statistically analyzing what words are used in connection with what pictures will allow decoding vocabulary, and from there figuring out syntax and idioms. After that, one can start digging into understanding the culture in different contexts - they'd surely at least be able to do a passable imitation of important persons engaged in official communication.

 

[K.S. Crooks]

I think their behavior will depend on the level of technology differences. Humans have repeatedly shown that when one group has superior weapons and travel capabilities they become hostile to the others they meet. Slavery would probably be out of the picture, however shooting and bombing a society until they are nearly wiped out and then turning them into second-class citizens still happens.

 

[Solusandra]

Hey, so I was wondering for my superhero world, how would Earth humans react to humans living in other planets, or the reverse?

Meaning, Humans go out into space, a triumph of technology, and in the end instead of aliens they just find more humans?

Sounds like the first series of Star-Trek.

I suppose it depends on whether your superhero setting already had very human aliens like Superman and Omniman as local heroes. If not, there'd probably be a lot of consternation before people brought up the old narrative about convergent evolution.
Grrl Power #759 – It’s evolutionary my dear Washington Post – Grrl Power
Grrl Power #760 – Necessity is the mother of space travel – Grrl Power
These two comic pages should probably help.