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Sufficiently Advanced Alien
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alt title(s): Sufficiently Advanced; Sufficiently Advanced Aliens "Any sufficiently advanced alien is indistinguishable from a god."
You know the type. Sooner or later one shows up on every Space Opera or Wagon Train To The Stars. They're the alien being that can do anything with the wave of a hand (or tentacle, or tendril of energy). Sometimes they're hostile, sometimes they're benevolent, sometimes above it all or just... different, but either way they really cramp the style of a young, expanding race looking to make a name for itself on the galactic scene. Usually, though, they tend to just be omnipotent jackasses, looking for a cheap laugh. Sometimes you can exploit their sense of honor or fair play, or their desire for solitude, to make them go away. Or maybe you just have to wait for their parents to come and take them home. Unfortunately, you can't always get rid of them — just ask Jean-Luc Picard. (And don't even get his colleague Capt. Janeway started.)
If you have to use something that's recognizable to the viewer as a machine, you're not Sufficiently Advanced. If you can just wave your hand and things happen, you probably are. (Machines are allowed for really big effects, like making galaxies explode or transporting a planet from one side of the galaxy to another.)
What actually separates Sufficiently Advanced Aliens from genuine gods can get a little vague, especially with the likes of the Ori, or for that matter Q, who do claim to be deities, or, for that matter, Juraian royalty, who don't, but are. Usually, being found in space and/or opposing the heroes' lack of belief is considered enough reason to reject their claims.
Sometimes, they'll show up to put Humanity On Trial. Occasionally, a human or humanoid alien will be assumed into their ranks. Often these beings will claim to be " more highly evolved" than humans, and that someday, if we're good little corporeals and eat all our vegetables and overcome our bratty ways, we might grow up to be like them.
See also Great Gazoo and Energy Beings. When humans are treated like this, it's Humans Are Cthulhu or Thank The Maker. Conversely, if these beings are far enough removed from human understanding, they can be considered Eldritch Abominations, in which case they at least have the decency to take on A Form You Are Comfortable With.
Compare to Higher Tech Species, when the aliens are more advanced, but not quite Sufficiently Advanced to count as this. Contrast with Cargo Cult and Ancient Astronauts. See also Physical God, for an approach from the other side of the spectrum. Naturally, they are nothing like the Insufficiently Advanced Alien.
If you want to go and try to compare these alien heavyweights, then you are Abusing The Kardashev Scale For Fun And Profit.
Examples
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Anime and Manga
- The Anti-Spirals of Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann. They live "in the space between the tenth and eleventh dimensions", can accurately count the exact number of people living on a given planet instantly, hide the moon in a dimensional pocket, and insert genetic programming into individuals of other races to use them as messengers. Furthermore, they can create virtual spaces in which they control all the laws of physics, even directly modifying the probabilities of events occurring, and they can trap their opponents within these spaces. To say nothing of their cruder abilities: physically tossing entire galaxies as weapons.
- And throwing Big Bangs around like KiAttacks.
- While arguably, these feats are incredible by themselves, it is obvious nobody actually considers them Gods. Not even the scared running-away people. The Spiral team knows their nature, those who studied the events that lead to this also know they're just aliens, and their first ship can be destroyed, albeit with explosive consequences. The dimensional powers are also considered scientific and non-God-like. And let's not forget the end, where the Spiral entities gain as much power as them, and again they're not looked at as Gods, nor are their super-mecha and so on.
- Nagato Yuki of Suzumiya Haruhi is a prime example of this. By chanting computer code, she can manipulate matter and space with great precision and scope.
- Yuki also has a superior, the mysterious Kimidori Emiri, and two Evil Counterparts: Asakura Ryouko, a superpowered, really, really freaking scary Uncanny Valley Girl who tries to kill Kyon without even losing her cool and nice attitude, and Kuyou Suou, an Emotionless Girl whose alien race is at war with Yuki's.
- Also includes a bit of a Starfish Aliens touch, in that they had to create humans in order to try to understand them (the "alien" characters would be more accurately described as artificial humans) and are rather interested in the fact that mere matter can apparently have intelligence.
- In Tenchi Muyo the Juraian royalty are semi-divine Sufficiently Advanced Aliens basically through the pact struck with Tsunami, one of their universe's three Physical Gods. (Before that they were and still are just Space Pirates.) The Word Of God also has it that their universe has a real, transcendental God who created said Physical God and her two Sisters, and that this God's avatar is Tenchi.
- The Golden Tribe of Heroic Age. They were reputed to be able to create planets and predict the future (though whether these tasks required the use of machines or not is never explained), and are treated as gods by the Silver Tribe.
- In Neon Genesis Evangelion, the giant monsters attacking Tokyo-3 are called Angels and seem akin to gods, but are actually (according to one of the supplementary sources) expressions of one of a pair of competing "world seeds" launched eons ago by unknown Precursors. What Shinji does at the end also seems to lean towards religion, although it may be interpreted as just science, putting the right objects in the right place and having the desired reaction.
Comicbooks
- The Marvel Universe has tons of these; probably the most famous is Galactus, planet-eating antagonist of the Fantastic Four.
- Runners-up would be the Watchers and the Celestials (who hate each other's guts, interestingly).
- The Impossible Man is quite powerful, but mostly just spends his time annoying people.
- Even the more traditional gods like the Asgardians, Olympians and Heliopolitans are close to being this — especially the latter.
- The DCU has its own fair share. Darkseid and the New Gods are perhaps the most well known, and perhaps falls under a different trope entirely.
- The Guardians of the Universe, who created the Green Lantern Corps, are immortal aliens with vastly powerful personal super-abilities.
- However, this is both played straight and subverted in that the Guardians, for all of their power, are extremely naive, arrogant, and foolish when viewing those who are lesser than them (i.e. nearly everyone in the universe). Their ineptitude has led to the War of Light and the rise of the Black Lantern Corps.
- It's worth noting that of the entries above, Jack Kirby actually created two of them personally (the Celestials and the New Gods) and had a hand in creating two others (the Watchers and Galactus). This trope seems to really have appealed to him.
- The Celestials and the Watchers both answer to the same boss, the Fulcrum, who runs the universe (the Celestials created life, The Horde destroys life and the Watchers record it all).
- Dr. Manhattan of Watchmen managed to become a Sufficiently Advanced Alien without being an alien and without having to advance. It just happened. Which is a neat trick.
Film
- In John Carpenter's Prince of Darkness it is revealed that the Church has hidden the truth for two-thousand years — that Jesus was an alien.
- And there are apparently some who believe this to be Truth In Television.
- The author of the Bastard of Kosigan Neverwinter Nights module series even cast Jesus as a puppet of the minor "free will" faction of the aliens used to defeat the "control" faction's efforts to conquer the world with Judaism.
- The moon Pandora in Avatar is actually one large neural network of electrically-communicating plants. The intelligence which emerged is perceived by the natives as the god Eywa.
Literature
- This is the central conflict of Contact by Carl Sagan. The main character is an atheist and believes in rational explanations for everything, but at the end her journey to the center of the galaxy is revealed to be in every respect a religious experience, where the alien beings are God.
- The book is even more explicit; the journey is to an artificial world where the aliens are researching physical constants looking for messages written into reality itself — a church the size of a planet. And once they return, the main character is able to find one of these messages herself. Thus, Sufficiently Advanced Science is indistinguishable from religion.
- Arthur C Clarke's novels feature this as a constant theme — not surprising given that he's the Trope Namer.
- 2001, 2010, and their sequels explore this in great detail, starting with the aliens' uplift of proto-humans in the African savannah, and progressing to the modern era when it's discovered that they've seeded the solar system with monoliths designed to alert them when humans start to venture into space. They then deliberately capture one (David Bowman) and forcibly ascend him in order to create an intermediary. In 2010, they turn Jupiter into a star to protect the evolution of life on Europa, and allow HAL to join Bowman.
- In the Rendezvous With Rama series by Clarke and Gentry Lee, the unseen beings responsible for the construction of Rama and its sister vessels are compared to God by the characters; this point is driven home rather Anviliciously in the final novel.
- Also the Overmind of his Childhood's End.
- The idea of the Christian God being a Sufficiently Advanced Alien appears in probably more SF stories than can be easily enumerated, but this verges more upon the territory covered by Ancient Astronauts.
- Most of HP Lovecraft's aliens fall into this category: Cthulhu and his ilk do not even have hidden technology. They just are. In fact, Lovecraftian characters' tendency to consider the aliens gods extends to the fans as well. Ask a general Lovecraft fan, and he will very likely tell you, "Cthulhu is a god."
- Lovecraft did write several stories involving gods like Nodens, Bokrug and even ones from established mythology like Hypnos and Bast, who conform better to traditional ideas of godhood, but there's a very good reason for that. Since they're all set in Dream Land, they actually are traditional ideas of godhood.
- There are Azathoth and Yog-Sothoth who approach Yahweh in terms of power, even if one is an idiot and the other is locked out of the universe.
- The Ellimist from Animorphs, as well as his Evil Counterpart Crayak.
- Though in a sense, they actually became gods.
- Also the briefly mentioned being who drove Crayak from his home galaxy (and is implied to be even worse than he is!).
- Uriel from Clive Barker's Weaveworld is probably one of these, although it's bought into its own hype and thinks it's an angel.
- The title character of Isaac Asimov's "Azazel" series of short stories is either this, or an actual demon — and possibly both. The stories can't seem to make up their mind, which fits in with the Unreliable Narrator who may just be making them all up.
- The Culture. And even more than than the vastly-advanced Culture themselves are the Sublimed.
- Flinx from the Humanx Commonwealth series seems to stumble over the leftover super-devices of Sufficiently Advanced Aliens every other novel.
- The Gods (or "Ymirian Guards") in Nerhûn are actually highly advanced aliens from the nearby planet Ymir who used Enôr as an experimental location for genetic modification. It got slightly out of hand, though...
- The eponymous aliens of S. M. Stirling's The Lords Of Creation series alter environments on a planetary scale and create interdimensional gateways with ease.
- The eponymous AI of Charles Stross' Eschaton universe has the power to have scooped up a large chunk of humanity and scattered it both across lightyears of space and centuries of time. It's also been known to wipe out entire solar systems that mess with time travel.
- The Priest-Kings of Gor, who for some reason, kidnap human from Earth, remove any type of firearm, dump them on the eponymous planet and have them create a society that would make the Dark Ages look feminist. Their reasons are unknown, maybe they're just really bored, or just that into human porn.
- It's implied in Priest-Kings of Gor that they're motivated by a largely by intense boredom (Misk has to be physically restrained from committing suicide when the opportunity arises) and that they just think people are interesting.
- The Strugatsky Brothers play with this trope on two different occasions. Their main mythos includes a hypothetical (known only through archeological evidence) race called Stranniki ("Wanderers") who are suspected of messing with human civilization in unclear ways. Roadside Picnic is based on the premise that sufficiently advanced aliens visit Earth, leaving a bunch of (again) confusing artifacts.
- Palmer Eldritch in The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch is an example of this trope.
- The Leatherfaces in Under the Dome are the children of a sufficiently advanced alien race. They exist outside of normal time and space, don't even seem to remember what corporeal bodies are, and play with humans the same way that human children might "play" with ants using a magnifying glass. Although they do use machinery, an invincible box the size of a Tivo set that can project a five mile high dome capable of stopping a cruise missile is definitely pretty advanced.
- The ancient Arisians and Eddorians of the Lensman universe.
- In Larry Niven's Known Space stories, the Outsiders have technology that the other species... even the Puppeteers, who are at least ten thousand years ahead of humanity... cannot even begin to comprehend much less replicate.
- The Jenoine of Dragaera. It takes the full attention and utmost efforts of Sethra Lavode, the most powerful sorcerer on the planet due to being a two-hundred-and-fifty-thousand-year-old vampire to kill a single Jenoine scout. They are so powerful that the gods of this world, who are actually former slaves of the Jenoine who rebelled with magic learned from their masters, are scared of them
Live Action TV
- It seems like Star Trek had dozens of these buggers running around the edges of the Federation: Trelane, the so-called "Squire of Gothos"; the Organians; the Q; the Thasians, who reared Charlie "Charlie X" Evans; The Companion; Nagilum; the Caretaker; the Douwd (one of whom wiped out an entire expansionist empire in a fit of anger); Bajor's "Prophets" (even though they never came out of the wormhole); Apollo and the other Olympians; even Quetzalcoatl (in an episode of the animated series). It's implied that Wesley Crusher became one when he was Put On A Bus, as did Kes from Star Trek Voyager.
- Babylon 5 had the First Ones. The Vorlons and the Shadows were almost but not quite Sufficiently Advanced. (If you have to travel through space in a ship, you're probably not Sufficiently Advanced. After all, what does a God need with a starship?)
- And then there's Lorien, the first one, and who can essentially become his own spaceship.
- Lorien and the rest of the First Ones aren't in the same league as the other Sufficiently Advanced Aliens listed here. The B5 heavies can conjure matter using their own thoughts, but this is a parlor trick compared to the kind of universe-wide reality bending abilities demonstrated by the truly Sufficiently Advanced.
- Actually the Vorlons are capable of traveling through space without the use of their ships. They just find it more practical use them for much the same reason that people use cars, it's safer and far faster then trying on their own.
- Stargate SG-1 has the Goa'uld, who are Sufficiently Advanced over most of their slave populations, mostly by virtue of nifty gadgetry rather than inherent powers, but current Earth-born humans — and some limited number of the dispersed humanity — are themselves advanced enough to remain unconvinced.
- In the Stargate Verse, the Ancients, the "good guy" counterpart to the Ori, are also "ascended" human-like beings. Though they have a strict policy of not interfering in mortal matters, the Ancients left all sorts of neat tech lying around when they ascended (including the eponymous stargates and city of Atlantis). The Ancients are often said to have re-created human life across the galaxy when they started ascending.
- As the page quote indicates, John Crichton encountered these occasionally, although they usually turned out to be fairly limited. The one that inspired the page quote was actually a technologically dependent mercenary Energy Being. The Ancients came a lot closer with power to control minds, open wormholes, and in the case of at least one "wrap time around his little finger." The ones in our dimension were still in danger of extinction, though.
- Doctor Who is a rare example of a show that works with a Sufficiently Advanced Alien as the main character, primarily because of the liberal use of The Watson.
- Although other aliens are more advanced than that. The Black and White Guardians for instance, or the Eternals, who dismiss the Time Lords with "Are there Lords of such a small domain?" In the Expanded Universe novels, a group of Eternals are the seldom-mentioned gods of Gallifrey.
Tabletop Games
- The C'tan of Warhammer 40000.
- The C'tan possibly qualify as "actual" gods in that universe (they're certainly supernatural at least) but they still use tech, particularly in that most of their influence comes from their enslaved space-undead servants, the Necrons. Apparently sometimes God does need starships.
- Consider that the C'Tan use robots like more conventional gods use meatbag worshippers.
- C'tan aren't warp-based like "true" gods, which are formed by emotions and beliefs of mortals, but instead extremely powerful Energy Beings. They also lack many of the abilities of true gods, such as being able to bless or protect their servants.
- C'tan are truer gods than those of Chaos. Chaos "gods" can only affect the Warp. C'tan have mastery over the physical universe — the one that matters.
- The C'Tan may fall somewhere between Sufficiently Advanced Aliens and Energy Beings, given that they had no physical form and little power to influence the world until their followers gave them bodies.
- In Magic The Gathering, the mer and kor on the plane of Zendikar each worship a triplet of gods, the legends of which are based on the horrific Eldrazi (Eldritch Abominations). The mer gods Cosi and Ula are based on the Eldrazi monstrosities Kozilek and Ulamog.
Videogames
- Some theories have the G-Man in the Half Life series be one of these.
- He clearly fits the description as he is able to manipulate reality, stop time and teleport people into bizarre alien realms, all without twitching a muscle. He also appears completely unconcerned by the carnage going on around him.
- The Val-Fasq in the Galaxy Angel Gameverse.
- Mother has Giygas, who is a sufficiently advanced alien — advanced enough to where the form of his attacks are incomprehensible, even to psychics. The sequel, Earth Bound, upgrades Giygas to Cosmic Horror status.
- The final boss of the first Shadow Hearts, Meta-God, is explicitly described as an alien so powerful humanity is on the level of ants compared to it. The purpose of The Very Definitely Final Dungeon is to call it to Earth so that it will lay waste to the planet.
- The Longest Journey gives us the Draic Kin (who are also the local breed of dragons): four ridiculously overpowered individuals, one of whom basically runs one world while another single-handedly battles all of the other world's evils at once.
- The Ancients from Might And Magic; they create worlds for fun.
- The Cuotl from the game Rise Of Legends appear Sufficiently Advanced, since their alien technology is literally light years ahead of the steampunk Vinci and the magical Alin.
Webcomics
- The Prime Movers in Buck Godot are Sufficiently Advanced Aliens, and are stated to be omnipotent (atleast they're very good at bending the laws of physics and geometry).
- Lord Thezmothete is most likely one too. His abilities are never explicitly shown or mentioned, but he is mentioned to be a Class 1 Power (by comparison, an alien with the power to teleport entire planets around was classified as Class 8 and humanity — collectively, mind — is a Class 12 Power). He does possess some nifty technology at least, such as a waste disposal unit that creates miniature black holes and in his first appearance was able to make an entire battle fleet disappear without a trace.
- In The Inexplicable Adventures Of Bob, Galatea expresses profound disappointment that Fructose Riboflavin isn't one of these .
Web Original
- Subverted in The Salvation War. The demons and angel are very much insufficiently advanced to deal with modern weaponry. However played straight in that this is what they were when they first showed up in the Bronze Age.
- Some of the most advanced technology in Orion's Arm is referred to as "clarktech" or "clarketech" in reference to this.
Western Animation
- Primus, and by extension his polar opposite Unicron, from Transformers. Primus created the Transformers, and his physical form is their homeworld, Cybertron. Unicron has altered a number of Transformers to his own liking, goes around eating planets, and transforms into a planet himself. Whether or not they're actually gods is entirely dependent on what segment of the mythos you're in.
- Beast Wars has the Vok, the mysterious, skull-shaped aliens who police the space-time continuum and may have created the Earth as an elaborate experiment (and then tried to blow it up with a moon-sized Death Ray). According to some Word Of God (their origins are never explained and even the writers never really made up their minds on it) they might actually be hyperevolved humans.
- Or they might be sentient robo-cancer post-Mind Hug.
- Sul, the Avatar Satis and Canaletto on Oban Star Racers. The Creators, on the other hand, may actually be gods.
Real Life
- Cargo Cults prove that people are already sufficiently advanced.
- 10th Century cleric Gerbert D'Aurillac (later Pope Sylvester II) was one of the first Europeans to learn and to understand the implications of Arabic numerals. The comparatively advanced inventions and skills he derived from his knowledge (wonderfully precise models of the earth, an improved version of the abacus, a sweetly tuned hydraulic organ, the ability to calculate restaurant gratuity in his head) led to a contemporary reputation as a necromancer.
- Just to make sure you fully understand the implications, before the Arabic numerals (which actually were invented in India, but never mind) came along, the Europeans had no concept of zero or decimals.
- Dr. Neil Tyson came up with what he calls a "discomfiting thought that might keep you up tonight". Consider, he says, how close humans are to chimpanzees, probably one of the smartest animals on the planet. There's a difference of ~2% in our genetic structure. So, he asks, is it just that 2% that all the difference is contained in? That restricts chimpanzees to using sticks to catch termites and maybe being able to learn a little sign language, when any human toddler could be taught such? That allows humans to launch telescopes into space and see to the end of the universe and build an Internet and send probes out of the solar system, when it takes a smart chimpanzee to finger-paint? And if so...how much smarter might an alien race be that is an additional 2% smarter than humanity? Would they look upon even Stephen Hawking, who can do advanced physics in his head, as adorable, and compare his accomplishments to what little Gwarblarx did for mumdad just the other hoon the way a chimp's attempts at painting might be compared to a toddler's pasta art? Would they see humans as people at all, or would they be clever animals, with their quaint theories of relativity and quantum mechanics?
- It's notable that Tyson doesn't take into account the cumulative effect of language and society in combination with that 2%; he's an astrophysicist, and a brilliant one, but he's neither a biologist nor an anthropologist. Still, that raises the question, what would society be like for an intelligent species that 2% beyond humans?
- The problem is that humans define intelligence by our own standards. There is lots of evidence that various Apes, Elephants, Dolphins, and several other species here on earth are self-aware and capable of complex thought. But because they don't think the way we do, we classify them as "animals". It is a big assumption in most fiction that Aliens are about as smart as we are and approach problems the same way. Tyson's theory is not a bad one. If aliens came to earth there is no guarantee that their measures of intelligence would have anything to do with what Humans are skilled at. Creatures of our level may be relatively common on their planet, and their ability to perceive space&time directly/telepathically communicate/build tools in their sleep/whatever is what marks them as "intelligent".
- A recent BBC program (I forget the title) took a group of aboriginals on holiday to the UK. These people had never seen electric lighting before, and on being shown such landmarks as West-Minster Abbey, they exclaimed that the structures could have only been made by Gods.
- Reminds me of Meet the Natives: which I thought was a disgusting way to show people off to amuse the audience's condescension.
- Physicist Frank J. Tipler advocates advocates Omega Point theory, in which it is necessary that Sufficiently Advanced Aliens (or Sufficiently Advanced Humans) are not merely indistinguishable from gods, but become/create (it's complicated) God.
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