History Main / HumansAdvanceSwiftly

* Most monsters have Telepathy in ''Literature/ThatTimeIGotReincarnatedAsASlime'' so don't use maps or writing and can't pass as much knowledge onto their children so humans are the most advanced civilization.

** The Trisolarans estimate that in the five centuries it will take them to reach Earth four light-years away, Earth will have far surpassed Trisolaran technology and will easily crush the invasion force...unless Trisolaris can halt Earth's scientific progress.

** Lots of this is Humanity is the first species in a long time that wasn't technologically uplifted from a pre-space culture. Despite the fact we were barely in space as galactics figure, we have a complete technological culture, with understanding of our technology. Most other species were bronze age at best when discovered. As a result when given access to galactic tools, we can do things with it the other races can't. And the few things we really don't understand, we spend a lot of time reverse engineering. Especially AIs.

* ''Illegal Aliens'': Though initially technologically inferior to the alien races they encounter, Humans catch up quickly (albeit with the help of an alien technician) and surpass the weaponry, medical, and general technological abilities of the aliens they got most of the technology from in the first place. For example, they regenerate members of an extinct alien race, create a type of unobtanium ship armor an alien earlier on in the story was lying about to make them think alien ships were tougher than they really were, created original weapons based on an "atomic vortex" that started with a pistol that was ridiculously powerful and escalated to a cannon that could wipe out massive fleets of automated attack satellites, and generally overcame any and all opposition by races whose technology they hadn't even known about mere months before.

* In the ''Literature/{{Uplift}}'' series, pre-sentient species are genetically uplifted by extant starfaring races and are given knowledge and technology by their patrons. Since almost every sentient species goes through this process, innovation and original research are not exactly encouraged. Humans, who apparently evolved to sentience without a patron species, had to develop all of their technology up to rudimentary interstellar travel for themselves and so place a much higher value on ingenuity than the rest of the galactic civilization.

## The various philosophical systems of the atevi are numerologically based, so when a new scientific discovery is made their culture spends a long time completely integrating that discovery into their numerologies before moving onto the next thing.
* In ''Literature/{{Pact}}'', this trope is cited by Johannes Lillegard as the reason why humanity is ultimately winning in their two thousand year war against the supernatural, a war which [[{{Masquerade}} most of humanity doesn't even know that it is fighting.]] Because supernatural creatures root themselves in concepts, the rapid change in human society following the Industrial Revolution has resulted in them being beaten back-by the time they adjust, the concept that they've attached themselves to may well have become obsolete. Only the most powerful of them, rooted in fundamental concepts, endure-and they are powerless to act against humanity as a whole, because they have usually signed a MagicallyBindingContract that they cannot attack humans that haven't penetrated the {{Masquerade}}.
* In the ''Literature/PerryRhodan'' universe, Arkonids have had an empire for 20 thousand years, but Arkonids almost immediately stopped caring about space and became reclusionist. Yet neither has ever explored all the galaxy, not even talking about anything beyond. Humanity needs about 200 years from being gifted a drive to produce as many ships as the Arkonid empire, reverse-engineer a different type of hyperdrive, make the traditional one require way less fuel and jump way further, and find stealth methods to prevent detection of the use of the jump drives. In about 600 years Earth is destroyed and humans become kinda nomadic, leading to them travelling to other galaxies. At least the Terrans get help from some Arkonids and from the best microtechnicians in the known part of the galaxy. Until after a few hundred years mutated humans who are only 20 cm tall are better microtechnicians than the ones which used to help them.

* In ''Literature/RhythmOfWar'', the Fused Raboniel [[DiscussedTrope mentions this fact]] about why she admires humanity unlike the rest of her kin who want to KillAllHumans. When comparing humanity's technological advancements across history to the immortal Fused's, she likens it to the sprinter outpacing the steady runner, as her own people suffer CreativeSterility by her standards.

* ''Literature/WearingPowerArmorToAMagicSchool'': In comparison to almost every other race in the galaxy, who have access to magic and have long since migrated to an alternate dimension with near-unlimited raw resources and stable FTL trade routes, humans have been ''forced'' to advance swiftly because they couldn't cut corners with magic - as their ability to tolerate magic devolved and has outright become a WeaksauceWeakness. While magic has its own technology tree and the galactic community is on par with humans in terms of military potential, the importance of using bodily magic to manage everything magical means the they are eternally stuck in a FeudalFuture; the magic-saturated nobles are incapable of realizing their LowCultureHighTech lifestyle is holding them back from swifter progress and true greatness - if they aren't abusing their magically-deficient slaves for the lulz. Meanwhile, the humans react to their horrific first failure of a student exchange by building a magic-resistant drone-assisted military-grade suit of power armor capable of absorbing twenty-nine types of magical radiation ''in less than twenty years''.

* In ''Literature/OutOfTheDark'', aliens decide to send a warrior race to conquer humanity after being horrified by a medieval battle. Said race is considerably alarmed to find the situation rather changed when they finally arrive, centuries later, and their ground forces [[InsufficientlyAdvancedAlien subsequently take a beating]]. The sequels reveal that, while humanity is definitely a huge outlier, there have been other species the Galactic Hegemony encountered that advanced faster than the galactics would like, so they took measures to nip the threat in the bud. There's also a more or less believable explanation for why the Hegemony's technological development has plateaued tens of thousands of years ago: incredible longevity (they live for centuries), post-scarcity (no consumerism or competition to drive the progress), and the dominance of herbivores (who don't see the sense of advancing past the point where their safety and needs are met). Still, [[spoiler:in only four decades after the failed Shongairi invasion, humanity has used the captured technology to make incredible breakthroughs that go far beyond what the Hegemony has even considered possible, including {{Lightspeed Leapfrog}}ing a ship humans sent out 40 years previously. The space battle over Shongaru is a CurbStompBattle without a single human casualty and the entire Shongairi home fleet wiped out. Humans only take casualties during the assault on the orbital habitat and only because the Shongairi are fighting on their home turf, and the humans are deliberately holding back in order not to harm civilians]].

* In ''Literature/OutOfTheDark'', aliens decide to send a warrior race to conquer humanity after being horrified by a medieval battle. Said race is considerably alarmed to find the situation rather changed when they finally arrive, centuries later, and their ground forces [[InsufficientlyAdvancedAlien subsequently take a beating]].

* ''Literature/WearingPowerArmorToAMagicSchool'': In comparison to almost every other race in the galaxy, who have access to magic and have long since migrated to an alternate dimension with near-unlimited raw resources and stable FTL trade routes, humans have been ''forced'' to advance swiftly because they couldn't cut corners with magic - as their ability to tolerate magic devolved and has outright become a WeaksauceWeakness. While magic has its own technology tree and the galactic community is on par with humans in terms of military potential, the importance of using bodily magic to manage everything magical means the they are eternally stuck in a FeudalFuture; the magic-saturated nobles are incapable of realizing their LowCultureHighTech lifestyle is holding them back from swifter progress and true greatness - if they aren't abusing their magically-deficient slaves for the lulz. Whereas the humans understand that progress can branch out in many ways, the arrogant nobles are incapable of realizing that some upstart commoner human in a funny looking suit of armor can have a different form of 'magic', and thus can run circles around them (and quickly learn all their darkest secrets).

** One of the great advantages of humanity in ''VideoGame/XCOMEnemyUnknown''. In a matter of months, humanity goes from being armed with conventional weapons -- akin to peashooters when compared to the aliens' equipment -- to reverse-engineering their armor, power sources, weaponry, and psionics to field soldiers better armed than the enemy's frontline troops, and equipping fighter craft that are better-armed than their ''battleships''. [[spoiler: That was all part of the Ethereals' plan; they wanted an intelligent, strong species to add to their collective, and humans were ideal to that end. Too bad for them that humanity proves [[GoneHorriblyRight too good at the job]]. Specifically, they wanted a strong, smart race that was also capable of using [[PsychicPowers the Gift]], since most of their other subjects are, basically, failures]].
** The same then happens all over again in [[VideoGame/XCOM2 the sequel]], only this time with only two individuals doing all the researching and engineering with almost no resources and barely any support. Slightly different in that all of the technology is reverse-engineered from existing tech[[note]]XCOM doesn't develop laser weapons this time, instead working on making their own magnetically-accelerated weapons to match ADVENT tech, which has lockout safeties and can't be used if recovered from the field, for example[[/note]]. The greatest advance that XCOM comes up with in the game, the Avenger itself, is just a recovered and retrofitted UFO.