r/HFY has a plethora of such (short) stories. HFY stands for Humanity Fuck Yeah. Sadly I am yet to find an active HFY community/magazine on lemmy/kbin
this post was submitted on 28 Aug 2023
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The 'known space' universe by Larry niven has humans at least as sort of equal. Lower than some life forms, but on par or higher than some.
I recommend starting with the ringworld series.
Warhammer 40k also has humans as a dominant species from what I've gathered. I've tried to get into the lore, but it's massive amounts and no clear "start here" so Iv'e just picked up snippets.
The Horus Heresy cycle is a good way to start. It is 10 000 years before the "current" events in 40k and explains a lot. But it is in of itself a big pile of books. I would say, read the first 3 and then pick whichever book interests you next.
Looks like I can pick up a Boxset at my "local" comic book store. So in gonna do that on the weekend.
Is this a prequel that relies on any sort of knowledge before going in?
Forexample; in the known space universe the "juggler of worlds" is set before the events of the ringworld series. But it relies on previous knowledge about races and spaces, for it to be enjoyable :)
No, I think this is one if the best starting points overall. I hope you are going to enjoy it. 😀
Joe Haldeman - The Forever War
Project hail Mary was cool in the fact that it was just so... Different. Won't say too much to avoid spoilers, but I think it'll tick your boxes.
Yeah, sorry for promoting reddit here, but this subreddit is exactly what you are looking for. And I mean exactly. It is a collection of stories about humans being awesome, usually in a fantasy or sci-fi setting.
If you do not have a life I can recommend The Deathworlders, which was started there and is also available as an ebook on https://deathworlders.com/ . A personal favorite of mine is "Amelia's Last Battle" and "Humanities Debt", which are two short stories and do not take a year of dedicated reading to complete. I have also read "Bought and Sold", "sexy space babes" (contains nsfw), "Chrysalis", and more.
I can also recommend going through their wiki, which has a list of all completed stories. This is probably the best page to start: https://old.reddit.com/r/HFY/wiki/ref/must_read
The only caveat is that people there are amateur writers. Some stories are never completed and the quality differs between "well, at least they're learning how to write" to godlike (e.g. the Deathworlders)
Edit: I see plenty of people already recommended the subreddit XD
I hope mentioning some of the stories I enjoyed does add value here.
I saw you mentioning that you want professional books. I can understand that the format (reddit posts) is not suited for offline reading or printing. This can be very annoying, I agree. But in terms of quality: there are some really good writers there. Buying the book in a physical store or on the internet doesn't change the words that are written.
In “The Gods Themselves” by Isaac Asimov humans and the aliens are about equal (at least for the purposes of the story), though they don’t share the same universe. I find the idea he explores interesting, but if you’re looking for a story on how humans treat ‘lesser’ beings, this isn’t for you.
The Road Not Taken by Harry Turtledove, about aliens trying to invade Earth and finding out there the less advanced race here
A fun little short story.
The culture series? It's not outright said they're human, but they're clearly human. And they outscale basically every single thing in the universe. Or at least in the first few books. Might change later.
In Excession it felt more like
spoiler
The Culture is a race of intelligent starships that keeps humans as pets.
"Never forget I am not
this silver body, Mahrai. I am not an animal brain, I am not even some attempt to produce an AI through software running on a computer. I am a Culture Mind. We are close to gods, and on the far side."