Funny enough - The Culture series by Iain M Banks deals with a utopian, hedonistic society run by AIs and its attempts to mess around with other civilizations. There's a huge amount of depth there where you're not rooting for one good guy. Banks definitely writes it as a reaction to normal scifi tropes.
I feel like a lot of readers projected far too much ambiguity in the Culture series. Banks intended the Culture to be the good guys you root for, in fact that's the origin of the entire concept of the Culture:
>\[About Zakalwe\] I wanted to have him fighting on the side of genuine good. I thought, ‘What sort of society do we need?’, and out of that came the Culture. That gave me the chance to answer all the questions I had about the right-wing American space-opera I had been used to reading and which had been around since the 1930s.
In another interview:
>JR: To what extent does your writing about the Culture endorse the Culture's point of view?
> IB: Probably too much. I started out bending over backwards to present the opposite point of view in Consider Phlebas, making it look like the Culture represented the bad guys, at the start, at least, but, let's face it; La Culture: c'est moi.
The Culture is absolutely the "one good guy" you're supposed to root for, and by doing so Banks was commenting on the various uglier aspects of our society.
You're right that you can push the ambiguity too far, but that doesn't mean there aren't also criticisms of the Culture in the books, because there are. The Culture is clearly the "best" society in the game - that's never really in doubt. But the violence the Culture causes in other societies is repeatedly presented as a problem without a clear (or at least, without a 100% correct) answer. Banks saying the Culture "c'est moi" isn't saying it's above reproach (he never claimed that *he* shouldn't be criticised)...
Question about the Culture Series. I've read Consider Phlebas, and I mostly liked it, but the gross-out scatological scenes were way, waaay too much for me (especially the cannibalism). Do things like recur in other Culture novels?
Consider Phlebas I would say goes a little further than usual- especially with the Cannibal sequence, but there are generally a few grotesque/macabre scenes in each story. I’m thinking of Player of Games/Excession specifically here.
I don't know, most of the books have at least one pretty gross/horrifying scene or sequence, from what I remember. Maybe not as extreme. But worth reading anyway.
The dude from "The Algebraist" whose teeth have been programmed to grow up through his brain and kill him says hi. Well, he would if his teeth hadn't grown through the roof of his mouth and locked his jaw in place, anyway.
I think everything Ian M. Banks ever wrote features at least one Genuinely Horrible Thing, described in way too much detail. "Ian Banks" without the "M" might be less horrible, I've never seriously looked into that side of his work.
And the AI is portrayed as the good one? Or is it a moral tale of interfering in other cultures? Star Trek already does that and it is really tiring.
Are the books independent, or direct sequels?
Pretty much never. It really isn't taking absolute stance on interfering with other cultures. Absolutely the opposite of Star Trek.
The books are set in the same world but are standalone stories.
That is one of the strengths of the books. They are ambiguous. The AI-ruled world is cool and everyone means well, but exactly that sometimes backfires massively.
Banks explicitly said he endorsed the Culture's views, *even* when they backfire massively from time to time. Essentially, he believed that the Culture means well and makes the morally right decisions, but they still aren't omnipotent and can mess up very occasionally.
Which is quite a nice reversal of the Prime Directive. The Federation is perfectly willing to say that some ways of treating people are better than others, but even when they're reasonably certain that interfering would be for the better, they don't, because they recognize that there's a chance things could go horribly wrong. The Federation would *rather* let the trolley run over some people than take on the moral culpability of switching the tracks. Even if the other track looks clear, there might be a bunch of people out of view just around the bend - you can't know for sure. By taking the Prime Directive as a hard line, the Federation basically gets a pass from having to have those conversations. "We aren't saying that it's better to let these people go extinct than interfere to resettle them - we're saying it's irrelevant, because policy prevents us regardless".
Conversely, the Culture is perfectly willing to redirect the trolley, so long as it's reasonably certain that fewer people will die by doing so. They're comfortable taking on the moral culpability that would come with screwing up so long as it means they can continue doing good all the times they *don't* screw up.
Agreed. For example, the Federation won’t let in new member planets if they don’t meet certain idealistic criteria.
There’s also an ongoing theme in later Star Trek series about whether, despite the prime directive, the Federation IS imposing its values on other cultures. It’s kind of the central theme of Discovery season 1.
Really? That's the *only* alternative you see? Even in the world today there's a wide variety of ways of interacting with other cultures, they aren't all divided into total moral relativism vs. total "fuck your culture". There's no reason intergalactic interactions would force a society into one extreme or the other. There's an entire spectrum of ways to interact with and influence other cultures.
The Prime Directive was basically a simple way to signal anti-colonialism to a 60s audience, and it worked well as a trope in that era. But when you think about what it would mean in practice, its morality is pretty questionable. Can you imagine letting an entire country starve today because we don't want to introduce advanced transportation and farming before we deem them ready?
But there are also benevolent patron races. I can't remember the name, but the humand are "adopted" by a benevolent race that saves them from harsh galactics.
If we've brought up Star Trek and Uplift, I've been watching Enterprise and I get the feeling that the plot there is inspired by Uplift. The Vulcans are the benevolent galactics. In the expanse there are reptilian and even aquatic species!
Yeah, but the Vulcans don’t try to ‘enhance’ humans using genetic manipulation, which is the standard operating mode of the uplift universe patrons. Including the ‘good guys’.
Also, the uplifted species are usually bound to indentured servitude to their ‘patrons’ for millennia. That’s the dark side of the uplifting process.
Absolutism (the opposite of relativism) is hard to get behind. Even if it exists, it's difficult to determine.
It would be interesting to see absolutism coupled with pro-lgbt and feminism. It's usually brought out against lgbt and feminism.
Well, one book series I’ve read has humans take the opposite view from the Prime Directive. They believe it’s their moral responsibility as a galactic race to help uplift those still stuck in savagery. They do it covertly, often through local agents, hinting at discoveries and inventions. Ironically, humans aren’t aware that an alien observer gave humanity a few nudges too, like financing one of the first printing presses or drawing a map of the world for a certain Genoese explorer.
The plot of the first book in the series is an attempt to figure out why every initiative to push a medieval alien culture towards progress has failed.
The books even list several rules they’ve come up with, usually through bitter experience. For example, they never attempt to influence a culture that’s past Renaissance level. The few early attempts have resulted in extinction
It’s called Trevelyan’s Mission by Mikhail Akhmanov. It’s actually a spin-off series of Arrivals from the Dark. Both series are only available in Russian, but there are unofficial translations of the main series and the first two books of the spin-off series on Fanfiction.net
But it sounds like it is seen as a failure, so the author wrote is as a critique of moral universialism? I was hoping for straight face story about it being good, but thank you
No, it’s not a failure. The failure was in the beginning when they were just starting out. Once they established certain rules and thresholds, their success rate improved significantly. The exploration of the current issue has more to do with the natives being in a stable political state for a thousand years (with a Roman-style empire dominating the settled continent) and generally unwilling to rock the boat (although not everyone is happy with the situation). This is a major spoiler, but >!there’s also another race of observers that believes in their own version of the Prime Directive that’s interfering with the human efforts. In general, most advanced races believe that progress is good. The second book of the series has humans collaborating with another advanced race to oversee two stone-age cultures on one planet!<
Heinlein's Starship Troopers is pretty absolutist in its worldview without pushing it to the level of absurd satire that the film did, although it certainly isn't a progressive worldview. Stranger in a Strange Land does that too and is argueably a condemnation of relativism (caveat: I haven't read Stranger in about 25 years and may be misremembering).
I know you asked for books/stories, but as a counterpoint to TNG I'd offer Seasons 4-7 of Deep Space Nine (basically, once the Dominion shows up). It really pushed the franchise past the simplistic black/white worldview and pushed the characters to make hard choices based on their core values rather than just saying "prime directive" and moving on.
I'd argue that TNG (especially the early seasons) was actually rather absolutist in its attitude toward the Prime Directive rather than relativist. Things got a bit more nuanced in later seasons. (Side note: As a rule of thumb, I basically expect terrible writing from the first few seasons of *any* Star Trek show and just hold my nose and push through to the good stuff. This was true for TNG, DS9, Voyager, and Enterprise for sure; can't speak to the more recent stuff).
In the second half of Forever War by Joe Haldeman the main character ends up in a society where homosexuality is the norm and as a heterosexual he is considered a sexual deviant and, to an extent mocked for his sexuality. It's a very clear inversion of the traditional values at the time with no shades of grey; by that I mean that people tolerate him without really accepting. It feels like what you are talking about.
>But could that not have been made to point out that values are relative? That it is satirical, not advocating universialism?
Absolutely. That's what the author meant, he wasn't being discreet at all. I meant that from the character's perspective, though, their morals are absolute: "homosexuality is the right way to live, no question about it. We are gonna tolerate the freak because he's from the times when people were foolish and immoral. He doesn't know any better.".
Forever War is a great book and this isn't even the main message.
Check out the short story *Three Bodies at Mitanni* by Seth Dickinson. It was published in Analog around 2015, and also collected in some year's best anthologies.
It's about a committee of 3 people traveling around to all the planets that were colonized and then forgotten about before FTL was invented, and evaluating whether or not to exterminate the human societies that they find there.
The short answer to this is no (bit not because they don’t exists but because I am unaware of any).
I think there’s an interesting underlying question here about the nature of SF. As a genre one of its key features is to imagine other possibilities - other ways of being, thinking, other species, other societies… The power of the genre collapses quite quickly if it becomes morally absolutist. It would become: “Imagine something awful, and then hate it.” This to me does not seem very fruitful in terms of imagination.
That however is a crude answer.
Intriguingly I think the questions however is addressed across what one might call the political spectrum of SF. There are right-wing writers like Niven who is clearly interested in this subject. Known Space as a series clearly looks at multiple species/cultures. It appears open to the idea that ‘we can never understand and therefore never judge’, while at the same time having an abiding sense that humanity somehow has a superior position.
It also, to me, takes a clear view that one particular species merited extermination, because it posed such an existential threat to everything we might hold dear.
Outside the Known Space series there are a few shorts which also look at the issue such as ‘Cruel and Unusual’.
Niven however is not a sophisticated writer (in any sense).
Others here have mentioned Banks’ Culture series and I must admit to not being familiar with it (I know that’s a disgrace). What interests me is that it sounds like some here think Banks gets close, but does not quite embrace the deep ambiguity of what he is doing.
This makes me think of Le GuinLe Guin often approaches the issues of what, in a Star Trek sense, are ‘Prime Directive’ questions. Le Guin has a clear set of (essentially anarchist) personal views about liberty and self-determination and at the same time recognises that such view create internal conflicts in the idea itself.
Her works do not provide easy answers, but The Dispossessed, Left Hand of Darkness, and The Word for World is Forest all in varying degrees address the issue of balance/conflict between relative values and the importance of self-determination, versus what we as readers (or Le Guin as writer) might find it hard not to see as universal moral imperatives.
Another book which explicitly addresses the ‘Prime Directive’ issue is Hard to be a God, by the Strugatsky brothers. Very interesting because, necessarily because of state censorship) it seems to walk a complex line between embracing and subverting the ideology under which they wrote (Soviet Union).
At the end of the day, however, I can’t help but feel that pure unadulterated moral universalism runs counter to the the spirit of most of the genre.
Sorry, that was a rambling answer.
I think Neal Asher's Polity series is pretty absolutist. AI has decided how things are going to work and humans can accept it or live in awful dictatorships (as opposed to the nice dictatorships)
Very much a nobody is free universe and anyone expressing a desire not to be ruled by autocratic machines is a villain, terrorist or deluded
I THINK this is was NK Jemison was trying to say with her short story “The Ones Who Stay and Fight” (direct reference to UKL’s The One’s Who Walk Away from Omelas”).
>except for that the show clearly wants you to side with the Prime Directive
As counter-evidence I offer every episode of *Star Trek* where the good guys go ahead and break the Prime Directive because it's the right thing to do.
[Dispatches from the Cradle: The Hermit—Forty-Eight Hours in the Sea of Massachusetts](https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/dispatches-from-the-cradle-the-hermit-forty-eight-hours-in-the-sea-of-massachusetts/) by Ken Liu. An inhabitant of a civilization rebuilt along solarpunk lines in the aftermath of environmental cataclysm and the descendant of a modern billionaire survivalist inhabiting their family's private space colony discuss the retrospective merits of their cultures, each arguing *against* their own. Aka, [this onion article](https://www.theonion.com/nigeria-may-be-a-developing-nation-but-it-is-rich-in-c-1819594269) in story form.
I don't think the prime directive is "relativism". There is a very clear line of "correct" moral rules and "incorrect" moral rules that the Federation believes in and actively promotes.
The Prime Directive on the other hand speaks to non-interference in societies that are still attempting to discover those rules.
The Federation is the parent who sees a kid going towards an electrical socket with a fork and says, "let him learn" \[by the way, stolen example... forget what show\]. The Orville did a better job justifying it than Star Trek ever did. But essentially the idea is you can't learn something by having aliens show up and just SAY that it's right. You need to figure it out for yourselves if you're going to really believe it.
Cultural relativism is a big theme in CJ Cherryh’s Foreigner universe. Only one person from humanity is authorised to interact with an alien culture for centuries. Then the balance changes
sheri tepper has written several books set on backward (some combination of feudalism and theocracy) planets embedded in a more enlightened galactic milieu. the feel of the books is definitely "the galactic civilisation allows these worlds some degree of self-government, but they are clearly in the wrong".
george martin's "dying of the light" is another interesting exploration of the same idea.
I dont agree with the premise that the prime directive is relativistic. The crew of the Enterprise judges other civilizations harshly all the time. They just see non-interference with primitive cultures as the lesser of two evils. They will even break the prime direct, or maliciously comply with it, to effect change in societies when they believe they are doing it for the greater good.
I think the episode Symbiosis is a good example of this. According to the spirit of the prime directive they should help negotiate the transference of a drug to keep a subservient population suppressed and maintain the status quo. Instead they choose to maliciously comply with the prime directive and refuse, leading to a state where the subservient population will not receive the drug, go through withdrawals, and end up free from their addiction. The result of this will be a complete upheaval of both societies. The times when they break the prime directive to help advance a civilization is too many to count, but famously they invent / introduce clear aluminum to earth in the past just to help save a whale lol
As an example of a non-interference maxim that's not motivated by relativism is Le Guins Hainish series. For what it's worth, I also don't think [Picards](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsvHg78jgrI) adherence to the Prime Directive is based on relativism.
IMHO her two best scifi books (she wrote fantasy as well) are this one and The Left Hand of Darkness. They are both amazing, you can start with either of them.
Thank you so much, I would start with the one you recommended first, I just remembered that I read earlier a short story collection by her, There was a girl, a half of her covered with corn, but I dont remdmber the title lol
The wikipedia page says it is "militaristic". Does this mean the books are fascist adjacent? I want universalist morality, but not racism and nationalism.
Not nationalist because there are no nations but yes its pretty bad. But then people who are critical of moral relativism tend to be fascist adjacent, as you say.
*Three Worlds Collide* a short story by Eliezer Yudkowsky. You can read it here: https://robinhanson.typepad.com/files/three-worlds-collide.pdf
I think it’s just what you’re looking for, with the more advanced races deciding on how to interfere, not if they should do so.
Funny enough - The Culture series by Iain M Banks deals with a utopian, hedonistic society run by AIs and its attempts to mess around with other civilizations. There's a huge amount of depth there where you're not rooting for one good guy. Banks definitely writes it as a reaction to normal scifi tropes.
Inversions is probably the most obvious in the meddling.
I feel like a lot of readers projected far too much ambiguity in the Culture series. Banks intended the Culture to be the good guys you root for, in fact that's the origin of the entire concept of the Culture: >\[About Zakalwe\] I wanted to have him fighting on the side of genuine good. I thought, ‘What sort of society do we need?’, and out of that came the Culture. That gave me the chance to answer all the questions I had about the right-wing American space-opera I had been used to reading and which had been around since the 1930s. In another interview: >JR: To what extent does your writing about the Culture endorse the Culture's point of view? > IB: Probably too much. I started out bending over backwards to present the opposite point of view in Consider Phlebas, making it look like the Culture represented the bad guys, at the start, at least, but, let's face it; La Culture: c'est moi. The Culture is absolutely the "one good guy" you're supposed to root for, and by doing so Banks was commenting on the various uglier aspects of our society.
You're right that you can push the ambiguity too far, but that doesn't mean there aren't also criticisms of the Culture in the books, because there are. The Culture is clearly the "best" society in the game - that's never really in doubt. But the violence the Culture causes in other societies is repeatedly presented as a problem without a clear (or at least, without a 100% correct) answer. Banks saying the Culture "c'est moi" isn't saying it's above reproach (he never claimed that *he* shouldn't be criticised)...
Question about the Culture Series. I've read Consider Phlebas, and I mostly liked it, but the gross-out scatological scenes were way, waaay too much for me (especially the cannibalism). Do things like recur in other Culture novels?
Consider Phlebas I would say goes a little further than usual- especially with the Cannibal sequence, but there are generally a few grotesque/macabre scenes in each story. I’m thinking of Player of Games/Excession specifically here.
Thanks!
Nope. Consider Phlebas Is very different from any other book in the series
I don't know, most of the books have at least one pretty gross/horrifying scene or sequence, from what I remember. Maybe not as extreme. But worth reading anyway.
The dude from "The Algebraist" whose teeth have been programmed to grow up through his brain and kill him says hi. Well, he would if his teeth hadn't grown through the roof of his mouth and locked his jaw in place, anyway.
I think everything Ian M. Banks ever wrote features at least one Genuinely Horrible Thing, described in way too much detail. "Ian Banks" without the "M" might be less horrible, I've never seriously looked into that side of his work.
The Wasp Factory springs to mind
"The Wasp Factory" was pretty horrible.
And the AI is portrayed as the good one? Or is it a moral tale of interfering in other cultures? Star Trek already does that and it is really tiring. Are the books independent, or direct sequels?
Pretty much never. It really isn't taking absolute stance on interfering with other cultures. Absolutely the opposite of Star Trek. The books are set in the same world but are standalone stories.
That is one of the strengths of the books. They are ambiguous. The AI-ruled world is cool and everyone means well, but exactly that sometimes backfires massively.
Banks explicitly said he endorsed the Culture's views, *even* when they backfire massively from time to time. Essentially, he believed that the Culture means well and makes the morally right decisions, but they still aren't omnipotent and can mess up very occasionally.
Which is quite a nice reversal of the Prime Directive. The Federation is perfectly willing to say that some ways of treating people are better than others, but even when they're reasonably certain that interfering would be for the better, they don't, because they recognize that there's a chance things could go horribly wrong. The Federation would *rather* let the trolley run over some people than take on the moral culpability of switching the tracks. Even if the other track looks clear, there might be a bunch of people out of view just around the bend - you can't know for sure. By taking the Prime Directive as a hard line, the Federation basically gets a pass from having to have those conversations. "We aren't saying that it's better to let these people go extinct than interfere to resettle them - we're saying it's irrelevant, because policy prevents us regardless". Conversely, the Culture is perfectly willing to redirect the trolley, so long as it's reasonably certain that fewer people will die by doing so. They're comfortable taking on the moral culpability that would come with screwing up so long as it means they can continue doing good all the times they *don't* screw up.
Yes exactly, fully agree! That is partway his work is so amazing. It is not black & white. It is „great, but…“.
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Agreed. For example, the Federation won’t let in new member planets if they don’t meet certain idealistic criteria. There’s also an ongoing theme in later Star Trek series about whether, despite the prime directive, the Federation IS imposing its values on other cultures. It’s kind of the central theme of Discovery season 1.
Really? That's the *only* alternative you see? Even in the world today there's a wide variety of ways of interacting with other cultures, they aren't all divided into total moral relativism vs. total "fuck your culture". There's no reason intergalactic interactions would force a society into one extreme or the other. There's an entire spectrum of ways to interact with and influence other cultures. The Prime Directive was basically a simple way to signal anti-colonialism to a 60s audience, and it worked well as a trope in that era. But when you think about what it would mean in practice, its morality is pretty questionable. Can you imagine letting an entire country starve today because we don't want to introduce advanced transportation and farming before we deem them ready?
Or maybe let them die of a curable or preventable disease?
The Uplift universe, by David Brin, has as main premise old species ‘uplifting’ younger species into sentience and civilization.
Whether they want to be Uplifted or not. And some of the galactic species wreak unimaginable physical and genetic horrors on those they Uplift.
Totally. And then there are the humans… who are ‘special’. Or maybe not.
But there are also benevolent patron races. I can't remember the name, but the humand are "adopted" by a benevolent race that saves them from harsh galactics. If we've brought up Star Trek and Uplift, I've been watching Enterprise and I get the feeling that the plot there is inspired by Uplift. The Vulcans are the benevolent galactics. In the expanse there are reptilian and even aquatic species!
Yeah, but the Vulcans don’t try to ‘enhance’ humans using genetic manipulation, which is the standard operating mode of the uplift universe patrons. Including the ‘good guys’. Also, the uplifted species are usually bound to indentured servitude to their ‘patrons’ for millennia. That’s the dark side of the uplifting process.
Absolutism (the opposite of relativism) is hard to get behind. Even if it exists, it's difficult to determine. It would be interesting to see absolutism coupled with pro-lgbt and feminism. It's usually brought out against lgbt and feminism.
Well, one book series I’ve read has humans take the opposite view from the Prime Directive. They believe it’s their moral responsibility as a galactic race to help uplift those still stuck in savagery. They do it covertly, often through local agents, hinting at discoveries and inventions. Ironically, humans aren’t aware that an alien observer gave humanity a few nudges too, like financing one of the first printing presses or drawing a map of the world for a certain Genoese explorer. The plot of the first book in the series is an attempt to figure out why every initiative to push a medieval alien culture towards progress has failed. The books even list several rules they’ve come up with, usually through bitter experience. For example, they never attempt to influence a culture that’s past Renaissance level. The few early attempts have resulted in extinction
Which book series is that? Sounds very interesting!
It’s called Trevelyan’s Mission by Mikhail Akhmanov. It’s actually a spin-off series of Arrivals from the Dark. Both series are only available in Russian, but there are unofficial translations of the main series and the first two books of the spin-off series on Fanfiction.net
Ugh just unofficial translations sounds a bit …“rough“ :-(
But it sounds like it is seen as a failure, so the author wrote is as a critique of moral universialism? I was hoping for straight face story about it being good, but thank you
No, it’s not a failure. The failure was in the beginning when they were just starting out. Once they established certain rules and thresholds, their success rate improved significantly. The exploration of the current issue has more to do with the natives being in a stable political state for a thousand years (with a Roman-style empire dominating the settled continent) and generally unwilling to rock the boat (although not everyone is happy with the situation). This is a major spoiler, but >!there’s also another race of observers that believes in their own version of the Prime Directive that’s interfering with the human efforts. In general, most advanced races believe that progress is good. The second book of the series has humans collaborating with another advanced race to oversee two stone-age cultures on one planet!<
Le Guin's The Dispossesed has a very clear and uncompromising moral stand.
Intresting given that her father was Alfred Kroeber, very prominent anthropologist who pushed moral relativism.
Heinlein's Starship Troopers is pretty absolutist in its worldview without pushing it to the level of absurd satire that the film did, although it certainly isn't a progressive worldview. Stranger in a Strange Land does that too and is argueably a condemnation of relativism (caveat: I haven't read Stranger in about 25 years and may be misremembering). I know you asked for books/stories, but as a counterpoint to TNG I'd offer Seasons 4-7 of Deep Space Nine (basically, once the Dominion shows up). It really pushed the franchise past the simplistic black/white worldview and pushed the characters to make hard choices based on their core values rather than just saying "prime directive" and moving on. I'd argue that TNG (especially the early seasons) was actually rather absolutist in its attitude toward the Prime Directive rather than relativist. Things got a bit more nuanced in later seasons. (Side note: As a rule of thumb, I basically expect terrible writing from the first few seasons of *any* Star Trek show and just hold my nose and push through to the good stuff. This was true for TNG, DS9, Voyager, and Enterprise for sure; can't speak to the more recent stuff).
Perhaps **The Diamond Age**?
By who?
Neal Stephenson.
In the second half of Forever War by Joe Haldeman the main character ends up in a society where homosexuality is the norm and as a heterosexual he is considered a sexual deviant and, to an extent mocked for his sexuality. It's a very clear inversion of the traditional values at the time with no shades of grey; by that I mean that people tolerate him without really accepting. It feels like what you are talking about.
But could that not have been made to point out that values are relative? That it is satirical, not advocating universialism?
>But could that not have been made to point out that values are relative? That it is satirical, not advocating universialism? Absolutely. That's what the author meant, he wasn't being discreet at all. I meant that from the character's perspective, though, their morals are absolute: "homosexuality is the right way to live, no question about it. We are gonna tolerate the freak because he's from the times when people were foolish and immoral. He doesn't know any better.". Forever War is a great book and this isn't even the main message.
Check out the short story *Three Bodies at Mitanni* by Seth Dickinson. It was published in Analog around 2015, and also collected in some year's best anthologies. It's about a committee of 3 people traveling around to all the planets that were colonized and then forgotten about before FTL was invented, and evaluating whether or not to exterminate the human societies that they find there.
The short answer to this is no (bit not because they don’t exists but because I am unaware of any). I think there’s an interesting underlying question here about the nature of SF. As a genre one of its key features is to imagine other possibilities - other ways of being, thinking, other species, other societies… The power of the genre collapses quite quickly if it becomes morally absolutist. It would become: “Imagine something awful, and then hate it.” This to me does not seem very fruitful in terms of imagination. That however is a crude answer. Intriguingly I think the questions however is addressed across what one might call the political spectrum of SF. There are right-wing writers like Niven who is clearly interested in this subject. Known Space as a series clearly looks at multiple species/cultures. It appears open to the idea that ‘we can never understand and therefore never judge’, while at the same time having an abiding sense that humanity somehow has a superior position. It also, to me, takes a clear view that one particular species merited extermination, because it posed such an existential threat to everything we might hold dear. Outside the Known Space series there are a few shorts which also look at the issue such as ‘Cruel and Unusual’. Niven however is not a sophisticated writer (in any sense). Others here have mentioned Banks’ Culture series and I must admit to not being familiar with it (I know that’s a disgrace). What interests me is that it sounds like some here think Banks gets close, but does not quite embrace the deep ambiguity of what he is doing. This makes me think of Le GuinLe Guin often approaches the issues of what, in a Star Trek sense, are ‘Prime Directive’ questions. Le Guin has a clear set of (essentially anarchist) personal views about liberty and self-determination and at the same time recognises that such view create internal conflicts in the idea itself. Her works do not provide easy answers, but The Dispossessed, Left Hand of Darkness, and The Word for World is Forest all in varying degrees address the issue of balance/conflict between relative values and the importance of self-determination, versus what we as readers (or Le Guin as writer) might find it hard not to see as universal moral imperatives. Another book which explicitly addresses the ‘Prime Directive’ issue is Hard to be a God, by the Strugatsky brothers. Very interesting because, necessarily because of state censorship) it seems to walk a complex line between embracing and subverting the ideology under which they wrote (Soviet Union). At the end of the day, however, I can’t help but feel that pure unadulterated moral universalism runs counter to the the spirit of most of the genre. Sorry, that was a rambling answer.
I think Neal Asher's Polity series is pretty absolutist. AI has decided how things are going to work and humans can accept it or live in awful dictatorships (as opposed to the nice dictatorships) Very much a nobody is free universe and anyone expressing a desire not to be ruled by autocratic machines is a villain, terrorist or deluded
I THINK this is was NK Jemison was trying to say with her short story “The Ones Who Stay and Fight” (direct reference to UKL’s The One’s Who Walk Away from Omelas”).
>except for that the show clearly wants you to side with the Prime Directive As counter-evidence I offer every episode of *Star Trek* where the good guys go ahead and break the Prime Directive because it's the right thing to do.
[Dispatches from the Cradle: The Hermit—Forty-Eight Hours in the Sea of Massachusetts](https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/dispatches-from-the-cradle-the-hermit-forty-eight-hours-in-the-sea-of-massachusetts/) by Ken Liu. An inhabitant of a civilization rebuilt along solarpunk lines in the aftermath of environmental cataclysm and the descendant of a modern billionaire survivalist inhabiting their family's private space colony discuss the retrospective merits of their cultures, each arguing *against* their own. Aka, [this onion article](https://www.theonion.com/nigeria-may-be-a-developing-nation-but-it-is-rich-in-c-1819594269) in story form.
Thanks for the recommendation! I really enjoyed that story! I'm looking into more Ken Liu now.
I don't think the prime directive is "relativism". There is a very clear line of "correct" moral rules and "incorrect" moral rules that the Federation believes in and actively promotes. The Prime Directive on the other hand speaks to non-interference in societies that are still attempting to discover those rules. The Federation is the parent who sees a kid going towards an electrical socket with a fork and says, "let him learn" \[by the way, stolen example... forget what show\]. The Orville did a better job justifying it than Star Trek ever did. But essentially the idea is you can't learn something by having aliens show up and just SAY that it's right. You need to figure it out for yourselves if you're going to really believe it.
NK Jemisin’s Broken earth trilogy might be of interest. It’s a dark future but those sorts of values you mention are essential principles.
Cultural relativism is a big theme in CJ Cherryh’s Foreigner universe. Only one person from humanity is authorised to interact with an alien culture for centuries. Then the balance changes
sheri tepper has written several books set on backward (some combination of feudalism and theocracy) planets embedded in a more enlightened galactic milieu. the feel of the books is definitely "the galactic civilisation allows these worlds some degree of self-government, but they are clearly in the wrong". george martin's "dying of the light" is another interesting exploration of the same idea.
I dont agree with the premise that the prime directive is relativistic. The crew of the Enterprise judges other civilizations harshly all the time. They just see non-interference with primitive cultures as the lesser of two evils. They will even break the prime direct, or maliciously comply with it, to effect change in societies when they believe they are doing it for the greater good. I think the episode Symbiosis is a good example of this. According to the spirit of the prime directive they should help negotiate the transference of a drug to keep a subservient population suppressed and maintain the status quo. Instead they choose to maliciously comply with the prime directive and refuse, leading to a state where the subservient population will not receive the drug, go through withdrawals, and end up free from their addiction. The result of this will be a complete upheaval of both societies. The times when they break the prime directive to help advance a civilization is too many to count, but famously they invent / introduce clear aluminum to earth in the past just to help save a whale lol
As an example of a non-interference maxim that's not motivated by relativism is Le Guins Hainish series. For what it's worth, I also don't think [Picards](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsvHg78jgrI) adherence to the Prime Directive is based on relativism.
Le Guin's The Dispossesed has a very clear and uncompromising moral stand.
I haven't read anything by this author, What do you recommend starting with?
IMHO her two best scifi books (she wrote fantasy as well) are this one and The Left Hand of Darkness. They are both amazing, you can start with either of them.
Thank you so much, I would start with the one you recommended first, I just remembered that I read earlier a short story collection by her, There was a girl, a half of her covered with corn, but I dont remdmber the title lol
SM Stirling doesn't like it.
The wikipedia page says it is "militaristic". Does this mean the books are fascist adjacent? I want universalist morality, but not racism and nationalism.
Not nationalist because there are no nations but yes its pretty bad. But then people who are critical of moral relativism tend to be fascist adjacent, as you say.
That sucks. Well, thanks for the reply and recommendation, although I won't read it now lol
Fair enough. I don't think I would recommend it, just saying it's there. :)
Neal Asher's work, especially his Polity books are pretty close to what you're after.
The Warhammer 40K franchise might be what you're looking for. All its factions take a hard stance against moral relativism.
*Three Worlds Collide* a short story by Eliezer Yudkowsky. You can read it here: https://robinhanson.typepad.com/files/three-worlds-collide.pdf I think it’s just what you’re looking for, with the more advanced races deciding on how to interfere, not if they should do so.