Whats the most powerful human civilization in scifi?

[wautd]

Upon skimming the Xeelee-tread, Xeelee-verse humans make Star Wars humans look like illiterate cavemen. Are there any other human civs that can be considered even more powerful?

[doom3607]

Fourth Empire, from the Mutineer's Moon series. At its height, its fleet was about ten million ships each about 25% larger than the moon. Hell, a four-thousand-year-old obselete ship was the moon. Their energy weapons split stuff down to the nucleus inducing fission, and they were prototyping a new standard torpedo that could one-shot a planet, Death-Star style.

[Simon_Jester]

I'm pretty sure Xeelee-verse humans would make the Fourth Empire look like illiterate, or at best semiliterate, cavemen too.

[ThomasP]

Depending on what era you read, the humans in the Xeelee stories range from roughly Star Trek scale, using reaction rockets and fixed wormholes but otherwise fairly mundane mid-future tech, on to galactic fascists with hyperdrives and planet-killing lasers who've exterminated and assimilated every other species in the Milky Way. At their peak around 200,000 AD, the human civilization owned a good chunk of the local supercluster with god-like magic-tech.

As pure human civilizations go, they'll be very hard to beat. The only thing that might come close to my knowledge would be the Culture, but that's being overly liberal with "pure human" for obvious reasons. Even then, the humans of the late era might stomp them through scale alone.

[Omeganian]

The Last Question, Baxter's Manifold series (well, from what I heard, never actually read the latter).

[Darth Hoth]

Skylark by E. E. Smith. The late Skylarkers had extremely insane powers. And then I mean the kind that can stomp on the Culture and their pals quite bad (if maybe not wipe them out entirely) without fear of retaliation.

The Skylark DuQuesne was what the Death Star and Weber planetoids want to grow up to be: A thousand-kilometre sphere of super-materials powered by "quantum" whose least weapon was beams that could vaporise a terrestrial planet in a single shot. It also boasted a computer that was not sentient, but had (from what I know, at least) faster reaction times than the Culture's stuff. The psychics that crewed it by means of thought-interface were not quite that fast; their reaction times were merely in the single-digit microseconds.

Much prior to that, the Skylark Three was a mile-long dreadnought that used total-conversion atomics for power, had FTL beam weapons with a tactical range of hundreds of thousands of light-years, and tactical realspace FTL. It was noted that with their nanowank construction capabilities, they could make these in a matter of hours apiece, and apparently without taxing their industrial base any. She was monstrously obsolete by this time.

The true monstrosity of the Skylarks, however, was when DuQuesne attacked a hostile galactic empire. He had tangled briefly with them before, and wiped out some thousands of their planets with hugely massive teleported total-conversion bombs. But when he went for a total clean-up, he wiped out the galaxy in some hours. Not just the alien empire, that is, but the galaxy itself, its planets and stars. Using a teleport-wank weapon, he teleported a stellar mass into the core of every star they had, turning it into a supernova. He took the ammunition from another (uninhabited) galaxy and sat around himself in yet a third one watching the result.

And now I still left out a lot of their very whackiest stuff.

The Xeelee themselves are probably too big for the Skylarkers to take down, should they want to. Their sheer numbers as such are rather limited by the time of the books. (Though in an "undetermined far future" vignette at the end of the second book, they have formed a galactic-scale empire at least, but this is still too small by far to take on the Xeelee.) But the Xeelee humans should be child's play at any but perhaps their very most developed (I am somewhat poorly read on those; the Exultant-era Coalition of Man would be unable to offer meaningful resistance, though). In fact, barring time-travel wank and supernaturally powerful entities and psychics, there are very few things in sci-fi, period, that can compete with them.

EDIT: Oh, and the Skylarkers were full humans (except possibly for being psychics). They had some alien allies, but none of those was any less human than forehead aliens or space elves. There was no sentient AI and no human augmentation by biotech, cybernetics or anything like that.

[Ahriman238]

Civilization from Lensmen? Not really "pure human" but largely human and they pull off some of the most wanked-out stunts in sci-fi.

Probably they're greatest feat though, is finding a way to extract energy from iron, of all things, enough to fuel a starship at that.

[hermitbob]

Therians. AT-43. Transcended above the mortal coil...also use white dwarf stars to power their small craft, which are still giganormous planets full of nanotech that they use to modify their surroundings so they don't get bored...also live their entire lives via forums...

[Simon_Jester]

Civilization from Lensmen? Not really "pure human" but largely human and they pull off some of the most wanked-out stunts in sci-fi.

Probably they're greatest feat though, is finding a way to extract energy from iron, of all things, enough to fuel a starship at that.

Late Skylark 'verse has more material firepower than the Lensman setting. Indeed, Smith deliberately took a step down from the peak he'd established with the massive, sweeping scale and extremely rapid advancements of Skylark in order to set up Lensman.

Culture against culture, my money's on the Skylarkers.

More generally, late Lensman setting is powerful, powerful enough to take on Star Wars by a very comfortable margin as long as Star Wars doesn't start pulling out some of the wankier options I've heard (like "oh well if they went to full military mobilization" or "oh if they started mass-producing battledroids and droid warships.") But they're also significantly weaker than many of the 'greater' powers in science fiction, especially if the capabilities of the Arisians and the Children of the Lens are not factored in.

[Omeganian]

Using a teleport-wank weapon, he teleported a stellar mass into the core of every star they had, turning it into a supernova.

And that empire had no decent planetary shields?

[dworkin]

The tribe of ape-men from Lewis' 'The Evolution Man' ('What we did to Father'). Their every action literally determines the fate and eventual nature of the species.

After all, if uncle Vanya was a little more persuasive these later civilisations wouldn't be doing much of anything

[Thanas]

The Terran Empire, from Perry Rhodan.

[NecronLord]

As pure human civilizations go, they'll be very hard to beat. The only thing that might come close to my knowledge would be the Culture, but that's being overly liberal with "pure human" for obvious reasons.

Quite. If we can have them, we can have the Time Lords themselves, and as we've seen, they're quite able to ream the Xeelee.

[Eternal_Freedom]

As pure human civilizations go, they'll be very hard to beat. The only thing that might come close to my knowledge would be the Culture, but that's being overly liberal with "pure human" for obvious reasons.

Quite. If we can have them, we can have the Time Lords themselves, and as we've seen, they're quite able to ream the Xeelee.

I'll bite. As awesome as it would be to include the Time Lords, they are manifestly not humans.

Now, if you are talking humanoid, then by all means include the good old Time Lords. Always fun!

[Thanas]

If we have humanoids, then I would include the Kosmokrats, once again from Perry Rhodan. You know, the guys who destroy universes.

If it is pure humans, then the Terrans through all their various empires/forms take the cake IMO.

[Batman]

The Terran Empire, from Perry Rhodan.

Not unless you include all of the spinoff races, and even then it's doubtful. Perryverse humanity has certainly consorted with entities that could give the Time Lords a run for their money, but humanity itself was never even close to that league.

[Thanas]

The Terran Empire, from Perry Rhodan.

Not unless you include all of the spinoff races, and even then it's doubtful. Perryverse humanity has certainly consorted with entities that could give the Time Lords a run for their money, but humanity itself was never even close to that league.

If we have humanoids, then I would include the Kosmokrats, once again from Perry Rhodan. You know, the guys who destroy universes.

If it is pure humans, then the Terrans through all their various empires/forms take the cake IMO.

[Raxmei]

As pure human civilizations go, they'll be very hard to beat. The only thing that might come close to my knowledge would be the Culture, but that's being overly liberal with "pure human" for obvious reasons.

Quite. If we can have them, we can have the Time Lords themselves, and as we've seen, they're quite able to ream the Xeelee.

I'll bite. As awesome as it would be to include the Time Lords, they are manifestly not humans.

Now, if you are talking humanoid, then by all means include the good old Time Lords. Always fun!

The point is that the people of the Culture are only loosely human. Culture humans are what are usually called humanoids in other sf, various aliens in mostly humanlike form. If you count the Culture as human for purposes of this discussion you open up the playing field a bit.

[NecronLord]

As pure human civilizations go, they'll be very hard to beat. The only thing that might come close to my knowledge would be the Culture, but that's being overly liberal with "pure human" for obvious reasons.

Quite. If we can have them, we can have the Time Lords themselves, and as we've seen, they're quite able to ream the Xeelee.

I'll bite. As awesome as it would be to include the Time Lords, they are manifestly not humans.

That's rather my point. The Culture contains no humans. In the books the term 'human' is used of human-like species. There is mention in the Culture short story that has them encounter Earth that they need surgery to pass as human.

The Time Lords are at least externally closer to human than Culture citizens, regeneration aside.
Spoiler

And regeneration is something humans can get in setting too...

[Batman]

If we have humanoids, then I would include the Kosmokrats, once again from Perry Rhodan. You know, the guys who destroy universes.

Um-the Kosmokraten aren't humanoids, leave alone actual humans. Since they're largely interacting with humaniforms most of the time
they tend to chose humanoid bodies when appearing in this level of reality. Doesn't make them human.

If it is pure humans, then the Terrans through all their various empires/forms take the cake IMO.

Err-no, not really. Perryverse humanity (as opposed to the entirety of the Perryverse) is rather meek compared to the Xelee universe, or Skylark, or the Lensmen I'm afraid.

[ThomasP]

That's rather my point. The Culture contains no humans. In the books the term 'human' is used of human-like species. There is mention in the Culture short story that has them encounter Earth that they need surgery to pass as human.

Banks has left it I think deliberately vague. I can recall a few of the novels make it explicit that "pan-humanity" shares broad features, the basic two-eye, two-arm, two-leg body plan, but beyond that there are local and of course voluntary differences. Matter describes how the humans from Sarl look different than the wider humanity, and I'm fairly certain I recall similar references from other books. I've always read it as being a lot of various sub-species, analogous to different racial or ethnic groups on Earth, rather than being different species (though this is admittedly my own interpretation; YMMV).

I was actually more concerned about the role of the Minds, as in defining a "pure human" civilization as one which is more remarkable for its dominance by machines. I suppose either criticism applies.

Not that I think it matters in any case; the Culture could (possibly) field technology on par with the undying's Commonwealth, but they'd be steamrolled through sheer scale.

Skylark and several of the others mentioned seem like they'd be a much better match up.

[Shroom Man 777]

The Metabarons series had bombs with a blast radius of three universes.

[Thanas]

Um-the Kosmokraten aren't humanoids, leave alone actual humans. Since they're largely interacting with humaniforms most of the time
they tend to chose humanoid bodies when appearing in this level of reality. Doesn't make them human.

Then we also should not include the culture in that, really.

Err-no, not really. Perryverse humanity (as opposed to the entirety of the Perryverse) is rather meek compared to the Xelee universe, or Skylark, or the Lensmen I'm afraid.

Depends, really. The Lemurans were pretty strong, the Galaktikum as well.

[Ahriman238]

Ultimate Marvel earth may be a contender after Reed Richards invents a goddamn Big-Bang Cannon.

[SpaceMarine93]

Humanity's Universe spanning Empire in Blackadder's Christmas Coral

In that episode, Victorian Blackadder sees a vision of a distant future where his distant descendant Grand Admiral Blackadder is a successful, if ruthless, official of a Universe-spanning Empire, with Baldrick as a thong-wearing slave, about to marry the similarly ruthless and insanely ambitious Queen Asphyxia XIX after getting rid of her Triple husbandoid. As far as it is concerned, his marriage would make him the most powerful man in the entire universe.

A universe spanning empire - no sci-fi Human empire could compete with THAT, could they?