Stupid Humans

by V.R. Craft

What if all the intelligent humans abandoned Earth... and we're what's left? Samantha is a journalist who travels through the wormhole to New Atlantis and discovers that embarrassing reality when she meets the People, humanity's more intelligent—and smugly superior—distant relatives. Unfortunately, thanks to humanity’s penchant for fighting, a Human/People conflict is brewing. She could almost forget she's not on Earth, except the People have tails and don't slap idiot warning labels on everything. Plagued by anti-Human sentiment on New Atlantis and unwilling to return to Earth, Samantha moves to the Five Alpha, the space station closest to the wormhole, where Human—and People—stupidity lurks around every corner. Then the conflict worsens, causing concern for the security of the wormhole—and its closest neighbor. Naturally, politicians from both sides decide they can provide a diplomatic solution by holding peace talks on the station. When sabotage puts both Five Alpha and her only route back to Earth in jeopardy, everyone blames Samantha—including a manipulative politician with her own agenda—forcing her to fight to uncover who is plotting to destroy the wormhole and cut off Human/People relations for good. Can she find a way to save the wormhole—and her sanity—before it's too late?

455 pages, Kindle Edition

Published June 16, 2016

About the author

V.R. Craft always heard you should write about what you know, so she decided to write a book called Stupid Humans, drawing on her previous experience working in retail and her subsequent desire to get away from planet Earth. She has also worked in marketing, advertising, and public relations, where she found even more material for Stupid Humans. Now self-employed, she enjoys the contact sport of shopping at clearance sales, slamming on the brakes for yard sale signs, and wasting time on social media, where she finds inspiration for a sequel to Stupid Humans every day.

Reviews

[Crystal · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stupid Humans had me laughing all the way through! Samantha, the Human, was my favorite character. I wish I could hang out with her at the bar and enjoy a My Thigh (no, that’s not a typo). Samantha was spot on with her assessment of her race, sarcastic at times, but brutally honest. Her experiences on Five Alpha were totally believable. It was easy to fall into the day-to-day life of living on a space station. Her interactions with the People, especially Vance and Haylea, had me giggling on many occasions. Yes, I laughed a lot, but the story was not all fun and games. V.R. Craft did an amazing job of weaving in the heavy topics of human violence and social injustice, without weighing the story down. Far from being a silly romp through space, Stupid Humans had me thinking about the choices we make every day, and the impact those choices can make on the rest of the world.

Poking fun at human shortcomings is not a new concept (my favorite being Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy), but V.R. Craft’s Stupid Humans is a completely original approach. I was eagerly flipping the pages to see what would happen next! Stupid Humans is an intelligently written and painfully accurate take on the often stupid choices WE humans make in our lives. I look forward to reading more books from this author.

[Siri Lynn Colomy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fun & fantabulous

Stupid Humans was a vacation book for me, that I thoroughly enjoyed. It is about the fabled story of Atlantis being fact, aside from them being a more intelligent cousin to the Human race & they escaped to the stars as opposed to beneath the sea. Hijinks ensue when a smarter than average Human, a reporter by name of Samantha; puts this cousin race of People to a test of wits. *^_^*
Highly recommend - reminiscent of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

[Faith Jones · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stupid Humans, by V.R. Craft

This new science fiction novel is set in the not too distant future, where they have not unrealistically magical technology, where the physical laws of the Universe are the same, in the scenario that the human race has advanced in fields of engineering and expansion but sadly not in brainpower. More specifically, the time period the story draws from is a few years after a space-time wormhole has been discovered which enables humanity to re-engage with another half of the species which, it turns out, abandoned our planet thousands of years previously and then felt guilty about it. The distinguishing categorization is therefore ‘Humans’ (Homo sapiens from Earth now) and ‘People’ (Homo sapiens from Earth ages ago). Normally this would not be enough time to evolve significant differences in any species except bacteria but the People are more advanced at genetic engineering than us and have opted to upgrade their genetics with additional brains and tails. It isn’t clear whether the sub-species barrier can still be crossed sexually because the human who gets the opportunity to find out is so incompetent that he can’t even get drunken bestiality right (I still have the number for a prop forward from Bootle who said that when they were on tour in Zambia… okay, another time then). The difference between these races’ minds is summed up by their relative attitudes to solving famine: The People advise that there would be enough food for all if the Humans ate plants. The Humans reply “Oh, shut up. We know that” and carry on starving. I’m not a veggie but that neat and indisputable point illustrates the title better than the art work. Before you say it: As I’ve described the dimensions of the fish bowl that the characters swim around in, I won’t reveal and spoil the plot any further for the potential reader.

You don’t get a 500 and more page novel without a bit of intrigue and development, so I can say it’s a story layered with inter-species tension, wound up rivalries and perceived injustices over medical and technological problems the People are known or believed to have solved but which they’d prefer not to share their recipes for. The human side is willing to share beer, which sums up what they bring to the table really, and the more inventive ones are continually on the lookout for opportunities to steal forbidden knowledge. The bar where they bring the beer and steal the knowledge is a space station on the People side of the wormhole that’s run by an Earth girl expatriate who calls it home because going back isn’t very appealing (she has secrets). This woman has a lot in common with one of those steel marbles bouncing around a pin-ball machine because although she’s the key protagonist that everyone’s watching and charts her course with confident independence, she’s also claimed, redirected, captured, injected, zonked, questioned, insulted and alternately annoyed or wooed by a lot of the station’s other characters. She’s also fascinating because the two species have fallen out for stupid reasons and her placement and behaviour is out of context. People notice things when they’re out of context. They all want to understand her and make her understand her place but she won’t cooperate. Good girl, good Earthling.

It’s a bit ‘sci-fi’, but within boundaries to avoid the geek factor and there are no nods to other works in the genre. Well done. I thought it was going to be funny (from the title) but then I found it isn’t intended to be. It is definitely not one of those epic and over-arching big idea, galactic empire, multi-species, new languages, good and evil copycat fiascos. What I mean is that there are some space opera sagas where people say things like “Prince Blatula of the Quaargs has sent his Prhypon fighting scorpionistas to conquer the Bfzit continuum” – rubbish in other words. Really over the top. Then in the TV version it’s just a manta ray with flashing doughnuts on it because the description isn’t credible and the film company doesn’t have the budget. In contrast, this book reads like normal civilians (influenced from North America), doing normal things and having sensible conversations but in a world where the technology has got better.

Differences between races in this book have become realistically and physically wider apart (tails etc) but they are noticed even less than happens on Earth now, where the genetic differences within our species are close to nought percent, as that issue isn’t the bone of contention. It’s more about haves and have nots, then how arrogant and condescending the (apparently) intelligent haves are going to be about their superiority and how idiotic the have nots are going to be in response. It’s an age of discovery, not only of technology but also of species expansion, with a sense that colonies and stretched empires are suddenly conceivable. One of the gadgets that the writer explores that could facilitate the next big step is the game-changing development of a space-time curvature drive that will revolutionise distance travel and make the wormhole just another option. Cool. What isn’t mentioned is whether faster than light travel would also allow the hypothetical passenger to change their position in time, giving them the opportunity to interfere in either sub-species’ cultural development (and not return). Avoiding interference on an intellectual level seems to be another key element of the plot, so not making a total cat’s cradle of it all. The interplay of withholding (snide comments, it’s so unfair) creates a sort of simmering French Revolution-esque atmosphere which stays quite light because the humans are outnumbered on that side of the divide. How upset would we get anyway? Have a beer and get over it.

I liked reading the book but I did run into what I thought was some unnecessary re-capping, where an event is played out in fully described action and then more characters get together in a room and state what has just happened, as if they’re on stage and educating an audience about unseen events off-stage (but they weren’t off-stage). I have just opened the book randomly to look for any of several examples of this and, it’s probably not the best one but, on pg 277 “It appears to have been a deliberate act of…” discusses something recently shown as a deliberate act of… This is a pretty dismal piece of criticism (nothing major or handicapping), so that churlish observation should be taken in light of an otherwise enjoyable book with good description, attitude, character realisation and mysteries to unravel. If that’s the only concern I can dredge up, then a reviewer having nothing much else to whine about is effectively a compliment; the bitch that didn’t bark. I just think that if I do mention a slightly harder edit could improve the flow, then the author will hopefully solve that in their next book and their writing style will be even more accomplished, so I’ll have to try even harder to find something to pretend to get upset about to justify my existence (like a stupid human).

This book tells me what I already suspected. We aren’t the noblest, most rational and selfless species on our planet and here’s someone who has noticed some of those deficiencies. When you consider human actions from an external or almost alien point of view, it isn’t always a pretty sight but I acknowledge that a full parody would have attacked the subject too hard and the reader might take that sort of criticism personally. Then there’d be mobs of villagers with burning torches rolling up at the author’s house, chanting slogans to the effect that they’re aware that they’re stupid in a private capacity but feel they’re part of something more worthy as a species and don’t need any judgement beyond dying stupidly at some point from something avoidable. I digress. This isn’t the last we’ve heard of V.R. Craft is it? I hope not. It’s a solid first book and, with will and flair as a story teller, there’s surely more good work to come from this author.

I just wonder who pissed her off enough to write this, but that’s another story.

[Lydia · Rating 4 out of 5]

4/5 stars
Read on paperback

I found this in a used bookstore and thought to myself, "Huh, I agree!" So of course I had to buy it. Here's some categories the book made me think about while I was reading.

Plot – 4/5, what plot holes, only worm holes here
Characters – 3/5, there's some people I'm glad are in love now (??) and others I am not
Originality/Creativity – 5/5, what a fun premise with fun twists and some weird ideas
Impact – 4/5, this book even made me look up things about physics
Pacing and World Building – 4/5, speedy, like FTL, but it all makes sense
Enjoyability – 5/5, but I don't know how much that's saying coming from a stupid human

I finished the book and then went to see if there was a sequel.

[Susan Eschbach · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nailed human beings on the heads, whether they were the intelligent ones or the stupid ones. Large cast of characters which can be confusing at times, but very politically NOT correct and funny.

[Heather Hayden · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've been reading a lot of fantasy so far this year, but I love science fiction as well so I was looking forward to sinking my teeth into Stupid Humans.

I'm so very, very glad I came across this book. It's hilarious and serious in equal parts and has an eclectic cast of characters. Samantha, a Human reporter who chooses to stay after the not-war breaks out, is probably my favorite, simply because she's awesome--and a lot more intelligent than a lot of those "superior" People. But there's also Hank, an Earther who is revived over a hundred years after he goes into cryosleep. And Vance, a doctor who winds up stuck on the station too and does his best to help everyone. And Haylea, who's determined to make the station a profit despite all the obstacles that get in her way. And there there are people like Richard and Xenia, who you'll either want to rage against or might even feel a shred of sympathy for.

Even though it took me several weeks to finish this book, because I kept getting interrupted, every time I picked it back up I was immediately drawn into the story again. Someday I'd love to read it again, only this time in one sitting (that'll take a rainy afternoon--it's a good-sized book). And perhaps I can read it back to back with a sequel, if there is a sequel in the works--I would love to read more about these characters and the worlds V.R. Craft has developed!

[Cameron Kobes · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is primarily a science fiction novel with strong overtones of satire and social critique. The setting is sometime hundreds or thousands of years in the future, on a space station on the opposite side of a wormhole that has opened hear Earth. Despite the exotic location, the author carefully and cleverly included many familiar aspect of the real and present world, with a focus on the more obnoxious and, well, stupid aspects.

In this book’s backstory, the most intelligent humans on Earth fled the planet millennia ago in an event the rest of the world knew as the sinking of Atlantis. They established a spacefaring civilization and named themselves the People, in contrast to the stupid Humans who they left behind on Earth. The passage of time led to somewhat divergent evolution between the People and the Humans (for example, the People developed tails), and the People saw themselves as in every way superior to the Humans they’d left behind. The novel kicks off some years after a wormhole opens between Earth and the space station Five Alpha, where several thousand People live. The unexpected first contact leads to distrust, fear, political wrangling, business opportunities, and a war which the People’s public relations officials struggle to avoid calling a war. In this conflict we have doctors and politicians and beer moguls and regular Joes of both the Humans and the People all trying to find an unlikely stability.

The writing is very good, the pacing was good, and I thought the story overall was very clever and original. It had many familiar elements to it (in some ways it seemed to take the concept behind the movie Idiocracy and invert the premise) but was very fresh as an independent sci-fi work. There were some small typos throughout the story, but they weren’t concentrated anywhere and they weren’t enough to be distracting. The characters were complex, the dialogue and interactions were quite believable, and there were several legitimately funny bits of comedy throughout the novel.

There was one area where the book had some weakness though. It had quite a lot of characters who were difficult to keep track of, and the character who fell into the protagonist’s role is deliberately mysterious about her motives and backstory. I’m referring to Samantha, a Human bartender and reporter who ends up on Five Alpha and is subject to scrutiny by People who are suspicious of her desire to stay on the station. The question of her motive isn’t answered until the very end of the book, and this crucial aspect of Samantha’s personality prevents the reader from developing a very strong connection with the character.

That being said, Stupid Humans is an intelligent and high-quality work of science fiction, a caliber above many other sci-fi novels that I’ve read. I would definitely recommend it to fans of the genre, and to fans of humor and satire.

[P.S. Meraux · Rating 5 out of 5]

A devastating explosion destroys an interstellar transport near a space station and lights the fuse for a brewing war between humans and aliens. Only the aliens it turns out are actually part human, having left earth thousands of years ago. They’ve evolved into a seemingly superior, smug race called the People and are distinguishable from humans by their tails. They’ve also managed to boost their IQ’s across the board. Hence the title of the book.
Stupid Humans is a surprising entertaining sci-fi novel that’s relatively light on the science. Although that’s not much of a handicap as the author doesn’t allow the story to get bogged down in geek-speak.
With the war brewing, much of the story takes place on the Five Alpha space station near a wormhole-- that both sides need for different reasons.
As if that’s not exciting enough, a human who’s been in cryo-sleep ( frozen in a floating space can) for 150 years shows up.
The story is told through multiple POV’s which really brought the Five Alpha inhabitants to life for me. A crisis on the station leads to heightened drama and reveals more about some of the motives and machinations of the characters.
The main protagonist, Samantha, is a journalist from Earth who lost her boyfriend on when the interstellar ship blew up. You’d think that sympathy over that initial tragedy would exclude her from being viewed with suspicion about the event, but since she is human-- that is not the case.
There is plenty of back and forth as both the Humans and the People try to resolve their issues peacefully and avoid conflict. The author provides and interesting peek behind their various attempts at diplomacy.
It’s a good story. Although I was a little disappointed with how the relationship changed between Samantha and Hank (the cryo-sleep guy). It seemed to come out of the blue and was a bit too tidy.
Aside from that I found it to be an enjoyable tale of political and military intrigues on this remote outpost. I could easily see this being developed into a sci-fi series for television.

[Robert J. · Rating 4 out of 5]

This sci-fi novel is a tale about Humans and the People, a civilization who left earth thousands of years ago and now feels guilty about it. The People are much more intelligent and evolved both in technology and demeanor than their human ancestors. Samantha is a human living on Alpha 5, a space station nearest the Divide, a wormhole that allows travel back and forth between Earth and New Atlantis, where the People now reside.
Samantha is a journalist who early on is a suspect in the ongoing tensions between the two races. This carries throughout the story.

As tensions escalate try after try is attempted to end the conflict but one thing or another keeps happening to cause it to grow worse. I liked the relationships and politics of this story. It seemed realistic considering it was set in space with a race sporting tales. There is even a hilarious intimate encounter between a human and a girl with a tail.

This novel is definitely character driven and the characters are many and all pretty unique and well-developed. There are a few places where it slows down a bit but the excellent writing shines through all of that. I would also recommend another editorial sweep through this. Especially in the latter third of the book. Other than that this was a good read by a talented author.