"Any Stories About A Parallel Earthly Sentient Species?" Topic

Looking for recommendations . . .

Are there any GOOD SF novels out there dealing with the possibility of a parallel advanced sentient species developing on Earth, either 1) human-like and living among humans or 2) not human-like and still undetected in the wild?

NOT talking about an extraterrestrial race at all. Instead, I am talking about an unknown Earthly sentient species evolving alongside humans, perhaps aware of us, and reaching a relatively advanced technological level.

Hopefully, it is something that could spawn gaming ideas.

Thanks.

Dan
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Check out the Destroyermen series:

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Forest

Well, from way way back "Slan" by AE van Voght was about an evolved human species. Although originally only one novel a sequel waw released 2009 although I haven't seen it down here in Oz yet….

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There was a TV series about that for a while a few years ago. They more evolved humans were working on taking over.

I don't remember the name of the series.

Mike "Bunkermeister" Creek
bunkermeister.blogspot.com

Well there's the dolphins and the mice of course.

'On the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much – the wheel, New York, wars and so on – whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man – for precisely the same reasons'

Any of the Earth mythical races – ranging from vampires to elves to dwarves.

Try the West of Eden series by Harry Harrison.
It involves a bands of humans in North America at a Stone Age tech level, meanwhile, sentient lizards have evolved parrallel in Europe. The lizards are more intelligent, and harness genetic engineering as thier primary science. I haven't read this series in a while, but it was a favorite in high school.

Van Vogt's Slan is well worth reading, although the KJ Anderson sequel is something to avoid IMO. You might also try the Null-A books, which have some similar "concealed superman" memes in them. The third and last van Vogt novel is a bit of a letdown, but there's a fourth book written after his death by Wright that's actually quite good in an over-the-top sort of way.

Review of the first book and links to reviews of the others here:

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CC,
The Bunkermeister passed me this request last night. The series he was referring to was PREY. The new humans were as advanced from Homo Sapiens ans Homo sapiens was from Homo neanderthalis. They were not friendly to sapiens. Nor were they completely genetically/DNA compatible. I have never seen it for sale on DVD, but it might be out there. It lasted about a season and a half. Maybe 8 years back.
Count Natokina.

dagons!

Awesome. Thanks everyone!

Dan

Octavia Butler's Patternist series is about telepaths taking over society.

Have a look at Richard Shaver and the Deros:
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Seems to be a source for all sorts of stories that came later.

The Wolfen, by Whitley Strieber.

"Prey" first aired in 1998. It was later picked up and rerun on SciFi. One of the main characters was a scientist played by Debra Messing, before she went on to "Will & Grace."

Oh, yes.

Kapek's "War with the Newts": Rather overshadowed by his play RUR, this novel is a thoughtful tale of intelligent salamander-like creatures about half human height who are discovered on a Pacific island. Various factions of the Newts are supported by different groups of humans who hope to exploit the resources of the island, yet the Newts are clever enough to see this manipulation, unite and battle against humans with a neolithic-level technology at first, then with human weapons.

That one is off the top of my head – there are dozens of short stories over the years on this topic. Have you access to a library with a back catalogue of ASTOUNDING/ANALOG magazine? Best place to start is there.

What about the Nethanderal Parrallax series by Robert Sawyer?

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Fevre dream by george rr martin had a race of 'vampires' that were part of a parallel branch of evolution as opposed to supernatural entities.

I believe Harry Turtledove published a series of stories collected as A Different Flesh, about the Europeans bumping into "sims" descended from Pithecanthropus instead of American Indians.

a novel "waiting" I think about a occult species living amongst us, visually identical but genetically superior, telepathy, telekinesis etc. biding their time, infiltrating govt. etc
also see FRINGE. parallel dimensions occupying same space with crossover/invasion possibilities.
movie-ABYSS sentient aquatic species- accounts for ufo/uso
phenom.
I thought the slan book I read was from the late 50s or early 60s really old but good

I second many of the above, plus add:

Mutant Season (and sequels) by Karen Haber. The mutants are telepaths living among humans.

The People by Zenna Henderson is much older but has the same theme, except that the psi powers are more varied than telepathy.

Kim Harrison's books with plays on the old spaghetti western titles. (Dead Witch Walking, A Fistful of Charms, etc)

They're a little bit alt-hist, a little bit post-apoc (oh, the horrors of engineered tomatoes!), and a lot paranormal.

It turns out that all the things that go bump in the night were fairly peacefully hiding in plain sight, until a genetically-engineered oops started killing off most of the humans. Seems that the 'nightsiders' were immune to this plague, and were abruptly a much higher percentage of the population than they were before. Some 40-60 years later, humans have more-or-less come to live in peace with the nightsiders again… but the demographics are really skewed. Nightsiders ARE separate species, even 'witches' (the closest to human) are not cross-compatible with humans.

how about this it fits many things I think your looking for with lots of room to run with
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Greg Bear's 'Infinity Concerto' and 'Serpent Mage', sort of.

Laumer's "Yellow Zone", sort of.

Michael McCollum's 'A Greater Infinity', sort of.

Gaiman's 'Neverwhere', sort of.

The RPGs Shadowrun and all of White Wolf's World of Darkness.

Umpty kajillion Golden Age Superman comics.

The Marvel Universe.

Well if the creatures of Faerie are included as 'parallel evolved sentients', then practically anything can be included even "Lord Of The Rings" :)

The oldest story about another intelligent species on Earth BTW is a French tale – Forget the author, but it features a sort of giant ( Rottweiler-sized ) Lobsters living in a mainly paleolithic society on the coast of Antarctica. The humans who visit them observe their culture and debate whether to show them how to smelt the copper ore in the area and move their society along IIRC.

War Monkey,

Wow. I haven't watched C.H.U.D. in ages.

Thanks.

Dan

Harrison's "West of Eden" and Kapek's "War with the Newts" both sound very interesting.

However, I would love to find out if someone had taken the general premise a bit further . . .

* What IF the KT asteroid did away with more than just the dinosaurs?
* What if a sentient reptilian species had attained some level of technology and we just have not come across any evidence of it yet?
* What if some of them survived in deep jungle areas, fully aware of human encroachment and still evolving?

And, hopefully written in a tone that doesn't make them sound like silly Sleestaks. :)

Cool images here of those dinosaurids/dinosauroids:

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Dan
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What if the C.H.U.D.s have been there all along, highly intelligent and have subterranean vehicles, structures armed with weapons and body armor, and very hungry for human flesh!

LOL. That works for me! :)

Now, did someone write that version of the story in a novel?

Dan

sounds like the molemen from 1960's comics

"* What if a sentient reptilian species had attained some level of technology and we just have not come across any evidence of it yet?"

Done in an ANALOG story a few years ago – Forget the author: Large-brained Hypsilophodonts develop a hunter/herder society that survives a few hundred years past the KT event, but dies off when they cannot adapt to the loss of dinosaur herds. their technology is based on wooden, bone and leather artifacts and so persihses completely leaving no trace.

That sounds cool?

Thanks, Covert Walrus.

Dan

I like this documentary, particularly the parts with dinosauroids:

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Dan
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To expand on Covert Walrus' reference to Faerie, I'd add 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer'.
Yes. And the French comics series '666' link

How so?

Confession: implies a slight distortion of the thread's subject, read as "A Sentient Species from Parallel Earth".

Argument: 'Fay' people are so similar to Humans that a parallel evolution 'from the start' is immensely unlikely; indeed tales mention occasional crossbreedings -their rarity can be essentially due to cultural taboos. Thus Faerie humanoids (including 'demons') *belong to the same biological species as us*, are subspecies of Homo sapiens.
The (weak) interfertility suggest a time of divergence of the same order of magnitude as the Neanderthal / Cro Magnon one.
Morphological differences are limited and inconstant (horns…) and can merely reflect *cosmetics*: wealthy 18th C. men make-up looks rather hideous / clownesque to our eyes, and think of the lip plates en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lip_plate and Giraffe Neck Women link

But since 'we' never discovered the land of Faerie, it is located in a *parallel universe* which diverged from 'ours' at most some 300,000 years ago. Occasional 'Portals' between the two Earths open now and then (the 'Hell's Mouth' under Sunnydale is a rather stable one), allowing irregular contacts between the two branches of Humankind.

The major difference between 'us' and 'them' being that, having developed parapsychologic / psionic abilities ('magic', for us), they largely ignored material 'technology': old tales have iron lethal for Elves: indeed, being still at the Bronze Age, they had not developed automatic 'magick' cures ('regeneration') for wounds caused by a metal they ignored. They made up for this loophole since, but aluminium blades or bullets, for instance, would cause wounds that don't 'regenerate' (took the idea from Brian Daley's 'The Doomfarers Of Coramonde').
Wooden stakes and silver bullets have the same effect, because at Bronze Age (and rarely using material devices) they don't often face wooden weapon, thus the 'psi' equivalent of the corresponding 'immunological function' regressed, and none appeared against silver, too rarely used as a weapon: in the same way as a population progressively looses its immunological defenses against an eradicated pathogen, and is defenseless against a 'new' one.

Perhaps the 'time vector' of this 'parallel Earth' does an angle with ours -explaining why time often appears to flow at a different speed; or moving through 'portals' may, now and then, imply some time travel?

Btw, on the same basis (anatomo-morphological and physiological similarities with human too numerous and precise to come from parallel evolution) I like to see *all* humanoids of the WH40K universe (yes, including the humanoid demons') as 'changed' humans; either mutated (Eldars, Tau, Halflings, Squats, Demons) or 'bioengineered' (Orks and, to a lesser degree, Ogryns)… Remember we know them through the vision of a neo-medieval, obscurantist, superstitious 'mainstream humankind'.

To return to the original question, I vaguely remember a reference to a novel where humankind evolved from New World monkeys: very similar to us in the end, but it was mentioned that specialists would spot minor but revealing differences (in the genitalia?).

I always figure, if this were to happen, it would have to be from a place humans aren't capable of visiting easily. Which pretty much leaves Oceans or inside Volcanoes. (Or inside underwater volcanoes ;p)

Octopi i are actually pretty intelligent and clever, but short lived. I was thinking maybe a race of deep sea squid, living near the bottom of the ocean and or in trenches, much like the movie Abyss, (though I think the aliens in Abyss look more like glowy jellyfish)

CC, if you'd be willing to try something from Japan the Getter Robo series has a sentient saurian race as its first set of villains called the Dinosaur Empire. Essentially they were a technologically advanced race that flourished long before humans. They mostly died out due to a new form of energy that reached earth called getter rays. The survivors used their technology and built underground cities, some are like floating cities in the Earths magma streams (and run on thermal energy).

Meanwhile, it turns out while getter rays are harmful to some creatures, it happens to be helpful to others. Such as mammals (convenient, eh?) so while the saurians struggle to get by while humans have a chance to evolve.

The first story picks up somewhere when Dr. Saotome discovers getter rays and a way to harness them (without realizing all of their properties). Only knowing that they are a strange form of energy emitting from space and that they can be used for an unlimited supply of energy (though at this point, with limited output). Using this tech he and his team start to develop a configurable robot for space travel, called Getter Robo.

Of course the timing is that the Dinosaur Empire happens to have finished developing technology that will let them survive getter ray exposure up to a certain extent. Planning their own take over of earth again, and seeing humans harnessing what wiped out their race originally, it gives them plenty of incentive to attack ;)

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Their technology seems to mostly be a mix of bio and cybernetics, which I've always liked the looks of. (Plus plenty of nightmare fuel! :D)

Note: I know this kind of thing isn't in everyone's tastes. The first Getter Robo was actually written and drawn way back when manga was first really starting to roll around. As such its art is a bit wonky at times and its story is a bit…. I dunno, 70's? Of course it really stands out and manages to be its own thing. Especially as it evolves more in the later series. Getter Robo also has this unique taste of using hard science in some places, and totally breaking physics in others.

But at the very least I'd hope it would have some ideas to inspire your gaming. Even if it doesn't turn out to be your cup of tea.

It can be found here, getterrobo.blogspot.com It's only available as fan translations since it was never really brought over here to the English speaking countries. Getter Robo is the first, Getter Robo G is supposed to be next but it isn't finished yet. The storyline branches off at Getter Go and Shin Getter.

You might find parts of Shin Getter Robo interesting, as it shows humanity evolving into a sort of biomechnical space faring race.

As well, something I've been meaning to share in your "The Thing" threads is that Shin Getter Robo Armageddon (anime OVA series) shows what might happen if a being like the "Thing" is able get into an open environment and grow.

EDIT: WOW! This turned out to be a long post, I don't know if it's me trying to be helpful or me just being a fanboy, lol!

No longer 'active 'by our times (at least in the original story) but too 'alien' to be forgotten:
The Great Race of Yith:
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While, unfortunately, the Elder Things evolved elsewhere:
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Both look somehow like evolved Echinoderms, or more likely (?) like descendants from an otherwise extinct Burgess Shale phylum
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Stronty Girl:
Remember that The People were (except for a few human/People interbred children) decendants of an ET civilization that fled its dying planet.
I have a serious soft spot in my heart for the People stories, but I'm afraid that these aliens wouldn't make a very aggressive bunch--too nice and willing to help the poor ignorant humans that they live among and who oppressed them as witches or demons in decades past.

Still, I highly recommend Ms. Henderson's tales--lots of character without too much flashy science fiction--one of the items salvaged from the destruction of their starship (powered by the psychic efforts of expert telekinetics across interstellar space) was Tecla (sp?), a fabric that with the proper psychic nudging and a little kneading or stretching, could change color and/or mend itself, or be stretched to a different shape or size. The "super-science" the People use is always low-key and pragmatically functional.
If you can get your hands on "Ingathering", it is a compendium of ALL of the People stories. I recently gave my copy to a my wife's best friend, who also loved the stories.

Maybe, once the ice in Antarctica thaws, we'll find artefacts there like this weird prehistoric head carving from the Balkans:

Martians:

Coincidence? I think not!!! :)

Dan
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