History HumansAreTheRealMonsters / Literature

* Mentioned in Creator/EoinColfer's ''Literature/ArtemisFowl'' books -- [[TheFairFolk The Fae]] blame having to move into underground cities on humans expanding, and constantly call humans "mud people", which just happens to be a real-life ethnic slur. Overall, the trope doesn't really apply, although this case isn't made explicitly -- the human villains often don't know who's helping Fowl or are brainwashed, and more often than not, the actual villains are other fairies.

* The Dark Ones in ''Literature/NightWatch'' take this as a basic tenet, though the Light Ones disagree. Case in point: the Light created Communism to try and improve humanity. They claim it was subverted by the Dark, but the Dark maintains they didn't do anything, and humans simply went on a destructive path as a result of their own natures.

* Creator/TerryPratchett plays with this in his ''Literature/{{Discworld}}'' novels. Sure, a lot of human characters are bastards, but instead of just leaving it at that, he often probes the question of ''why'' humans act that way, especially in his later, more philosophical books. Furthermore, there are more than a few non-human characters who are just as much bastards as humans can be; in the novel ''Discworld/FeetOfClay'', Commander Vimes is quoted as saying "Just because someone's a member of an ethnic minority doesn't mean they're ''not'' a nasty small-minded little jerk."

** Played closest to straight in ''Discworld/TheAmazingMauriceAndHisEducatedRodents'', especially when Keith [[spoiler: pretends to]] feed the ratcatchers rat poison.

** One of the clearest illustrations of this trope occurs in ''Discworld/GuardsGuards'' when the dragon, having just conquered the city, learns a good deal of human history by probing someone's mind. It's shocked and more than a little disgusted to find that there is nothing it can do to people that they have not, at some point in history, ''not already tried on each other''.

** ''Discworld/{{Hogfather}}'': The one hundred percent human Mr. Teatime enters a realm made up by the dreams of children, where Death is powerless, under the assumption that this will give him the advantage. Except the children find Death far less terrifying than Mr. Teatime. In the end, someone stabs at Teatime with a fire poker that Susan has convinced children only kills monsters. Teatime hides behind Death; it goes through Death harmlessly, but kills Teatime. This confuses Susan.

* Inverted in the Bill Peet children's book, ''The Wump World''. If you read the part in the opener for this trope about mankind's chance to be such bastards on other planets via interstellar travel, the blue-skinned aliens in the book have us beat.

* Averted in ''TheManWhoFellToEarth'' and its movie adaptation, because [[spoiler: according to Thomas, his people would likely have treated a human visitor as badly as Earth's people treated him]].

* In ''Literature/GulliversTravels'', the final voyage has Gulliver land in a place where he encounters the Yahoos - mindless, crude beasts that are ''visually indistinguishable from humans''. To the point that the "enlightened" (and horse-like) Houyhnhnms eventually forbid him from staying because he's too much like them. They try to use moral threat as a FreudianExcuse, but they're obviously not really afraid of Gulliver's baser moral tendencies. This moral contradiction makes the Houyhnhnms even bigger bastards than anybody, but Gulliver is so wrapped up in his newfound misanthropy that he doesn't notice (or probably doesn't want to).

* Creator/UrsulaKLeGuin's novella ''The Word for World is Forest'' features humans descending upon the forested planet of Athshe, harvesting the valuable lumber and terrorizing and enslaving the native inhabitants.

* An aphorism occasionally seen on the Internet goes that "Intelligence is knowing that Literature/{{Frankenstein}} [[{{I Am Not Shazam}} isn't the monster]]. Wisdom is understanding that he is."

* An aphorism occasionally seen on the Internet goes that "Intelligence is knowing that Literature/{{Frankenstein}} [[{{I Am Not Shazam}} isn't the monster]]. Wisdom is knowing that he is."

* Subverted in Creator/BrandonSanderson's short story ''Deefending Elysium''. The 'civilized' alien races have a peaceful society. The main character keeps knowledge of faster than light travel from humans with the belief that they would ruin the paradise society if they discovered it. [[spoiler: Then he finds out that the aliens define 'civilized' as being willing to imprison anyone who disagrees with their ideals in order to keep the peace, and that they aren't just inheirently good beings. ]]

* In the original version of ''Literature/IAmLegend'', [[spoiler:this is the ending twist. At the ending, Robert Neville finds the living vampires actually imprison him and sentence him to death, learning they are terrified of him; since Neville is the last human, and his idea of survival was murdering vampires indiscriminately, it's revealed Neville is being put to death because ''he's'' the true monster.]]

* ''Literature/ADeadlyPresence'': [[SlidingScaleOfIdealismVersusCynicism The people, of course,]] [[SarcasmMode show their their best qualities]] [[HumansAreBastards and set up the poor crippled animal for all their "noble" deeds: thievery of each others' farm animals,]] [[HumansAreTheRealMonsters drug trading and murders]]. Also they they set the traps, which guarantee slow death for the poor animals. And only Jean and Cliff fight for his right to live...

* Creator/AlanDeanFoster moderates this in his trilogy ''The Damned''. Humans appeared in a world where all life would be impossible by the standards of most aliens, and we went through some unpleasant evolutionary contortions to survive, but if we last much longer without outside interference, we'll achieve peace. Unfortunately, outside interference is coming -- and by book 3, after a thousand years as CannonFodder in an interstellar war, the humans are less "human" psychologically than the aliens are.

** It's worth expanding, the Bolos with the Human Mental fusion end up going on a generations long genocidal war against a larger alien empire. Thousands of worlds, Trillions of humans and aliens, and only a few million survive on a few very backward planets.

* Creator/BruceCoville's ''{{My Teacher|IsAnAlien}}'' series as well as the ''Literature/RodAlbrightAlienAdventures'' series both use this trope: aliens are aware of Earth but refuse to interact with humans because they consider them to be barbarians. It is revealed that one of the aliens in the "My Teacher" series invented television to keep people stupid so they couldn't advance technologically any more. We're so bad Bruce had to introduce [[spoiler:the pain and minor brain damage implied in cut-off telepathy]] to explain why we are as we are. We're also apparently the only species to do things like have homeless people, while most of the other aliens can't even understand the concept of a race at our technological and social level still having such problems (apparently other races fix things like poverty and wars long before they get as far as we have). It basically stops just short of actually having the aliens scratching their heads at this whole "capitalism" thing.

** The ''Homecoming'' series is built on this trope: Humanity were such bastards that [[CrystalDragonJesus the Keeper of Earth]] more or less chased us off to the stars, and genetically altered the populations to receive signals from The Oversoul (super-computers designed to steer mankind's development away from weapons of mass destruction and other planet raping tech). Harmony's Oversoul outright states that he meant to last for a millennia or so before preparing for a trip back to Earth. Humans had been on Harmony for around 50,000,000 years and were no better than when they first arrived. Of course, this was only half of the [[AnAesop Aesop]]. The full Aesop was "since humans can't be any better by their own devices, they just have to trust in God."