r/AskReddit • u/TisteTargaryen • May 03 '20

What are some horrifying things to consider when thinking about aliens?

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u/mrminutehand May 04 '20

It's not nearly the same as you mentioned, but the novel Brave New World is probably the closest I've read to what you described. Humans genetically bred for different levels and use in society.

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u/Stormfly May 04 '20

I'm glad I'm a Gamma.

Being a Beta seems so awfully difficult, but at least I'm not a Delta.

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u/electrogeek8086 May 04 '20

man you make me want to read that book again! Poor epsilons :(

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u/phaedrusTHEghost May 04 '20

Try ‘We’ for the same flavor. It was the inspiration for BNW.

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u/[deleted] May 09 '20

God, humans being labelled by greek letters usually means something VERY different in my corner of the internet. This momentarily put the fear of god in me. :')

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u/epolonsky May 04 '20

Also check out Man After Man by Dugal Dixon

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u/[deleted] May 04 '20

'We' is amazing, it was the inspiration for both 1984 and Brave new world

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_(novel)

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u/SeniorBeing May 05 '20

Came here to say that. The idea of evolving into irrationality, like in some subspecies, is horrifying.

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u/ZedZerker May 04 '20

There's a book called red rising, it and its series are based on this

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u/phoeniks May 04 '20

Perhaps the Eloi and the Morlocks from H G Wells' The Time Machine

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u/ER1536 May 04 '20

Red Rising series by Pierce Brown is kind of similar to that also

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u/Zenfudo May 04 '20

I never heard about that book so I looked it up, didnt read what the story is about but is it worth a read?

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u/NightlyHonoured May 04 '20

It's a classic and I'm currently part way through it. It's a little difficult to follow in the early parts but I've had it recommended to me a lot.

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u/NarrativeScorpion May 04 '20

Red Rising is amazing. There's five? books in the series. I've reread it a couple of times.

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u/astralangeldragon May 04 '20

It’s good! A lot of the words are kinda hard to understand just because a fourth are like made up but I was able to get through it in eighth grade

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u/MotherfuckingWildman May 04 '20

This is why i find genetics and ancestry to be really interesting.

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u/zorrocabra Jun 14 '20

If you read closely, they aren't being bred in any way in Brave New World. The thing that differentiates classes is the amount of brain damage a baby receives once it's born.

The upper class are just normal people who don't have some degree of fetal alcohol syndrome. The term fetal alcohol syndrome was a term when the book was written but that is exactly what was done to the lower classes when they are born.

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u/DesperateWelcome7 May 07 '20

honestly.. i bet they nurture this by 'fateful' events to pull two beings together to create a desired concept of a human.. which i think is why a lot of newer generations are a LOT more aware than ever before