The Word for World is Forest by Ursula K. Le Guin

[james_davis_nicoll]

The Word for World is Forest by Ursula K. Le Guin

Comments

[glaurung]

My headcanon for all universes which have humans or human-looking people on many worlds that are not colonies of Earth:

Humans evolved on Earth, but at some point in time someone unknown is assumed to have invented time travel and caused human settlements to be placed on other worlds throughout the galaxy in the distant past. This must be so because genetic testing shows that all those worlds of humans and human-like people, many of which have histories going back before humans evolved on Earth, are clearly descended from Earth humans.

[ba_munronoe]

Neat idea: and if your universe has time travel, it probably has FTL as well, so they can all meet up.

Or if you don't need planets which have had humans far longer than Earth has, you don't need time travel, just aliens with a ecological bent (like the Preservers on Star Trek, the aliens responsible for the godawful "Kirk becomes an American Indian" episode).

(And then there's Big Ancestor by FL Wallace, in which early hominids take the role of ship's rats in the spaceships of gigantic and very slow-moving slug-like aliens).

[(Anonymous)]

> aliens with an ecological bent

Or aliens with a keen eye for servitor species, like Grandfather in *Traveller*.

[keith_morrison]

Seen multiple times, such as the Stargate universe.

DC Comics has used it as well. To explain all the planets with humans who had special abilities as seen in the Legion of Superheroes books set in the 30th Century, the 1988 "Invasion!" crossover had them be the descendants of 20th Century humans abducted and experimented on by the Dominators, the survivors having become metahumans thanks to having the metagene. They settled on different planets after being rescued by the Daxamite hero Valor, were fruitful and multiplied.

[(Anonymous)]

See Charles Stross' Eschaton universe

[agharta75]

Cherryh did that in the Morgaine series.