"The kind of classic fifties-era first-contact story that Jonathan Swift
might have written, if Jonathan Swift had had a background in game
theory."
-- (Hugo nominee) Peter Watts, "In Praise of Baby-Eating"
Three Worlds Collide is a story I wrote to illustrate some points on naturalistic metaethics and diverse other issues of rational conduct. It grew, as such things do, into a small novella. On publication, it proved widely popular and widely criticized. Be warned that the story, as it wrote itself, ended up containing some profanity and PG-13 content.
- The Baby-Eating Aliens
- War and/or Peace
- The Super Happy People
- Interlude with the Confessor
- Three Worlds Decide
- Normal Ending
- True Ending
- Atonement
PDF version here.
I agree that killing billions on the off chance that the Superhappies won't find you is a horrific gamble. This is the sort of behavior we find in super villains in all sorts of fictional stories. That the ones making the choice sacrificed their own lives does not make it better. Atonement? Yeah, maybe he enjoyed every minute of it the same way he did torturing and raping a girl to death. Maybe that is what the laughter was really about.
Read Xenogenesis by Octavia Butler. It is a better story. We need to evolve and change. We don't get to refuse evolution. That is a dead end path. There are singularities. That is reality.