Novel with a similar plot to Avatar

kevbot

While I was watching Avatar I felt a strange sense of déjà vu. I'm fairly certain that I've read a novel that had a strangely similar plot; spoilered below.

Human ship arrives at a planet with the intention of extracting natural resources from it for repairs. Natives of the planet have a problem with this. I believe it ends with the humans attacking the native people, being repelled, and forced to live out the remainder of their lives on their quickly disintegrating ship.

I could be completely wrong on the plot, but I think it went something like that. It's definitely not "Call me Joe". So far my google-fu has proven useless and I can't seem to search the Avatar threads here for "novel". Apparently it's too common.

gaming_librarian

You may be thinking of the Foreigner novels by C.J. Cherryh.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreigner_universe

That help?

Red Rover

the animated (and horrible) movie "Battle for Terra" has a very similar plot too.

Food

I can't exactly remember the plot of the book, but reading about the plot of avatar always makes me think of the Hork Bajir Chronicles from Animorphs. I could be completely wrong though, since i haven't read that book in a decade or so.

GothicLargo

Y'all realize that Avatar is just Dances With Wolves in space, right?

Deadfall

GothicLargo wrote: »

Y'all realize that Avatar is just Dances With Ferngully in space, right?

Xagarath

There's some novel by Brian Aldiss (I think) the whole thing is supposedly based on.

Psychotic One

Deadfall wrote: »

GothicLargo wrote: »

Y'all realize that Avatar is just Dances With Ferngully in space, right?

Yeah Ferngully the Last Rainforest does come to mind when I think of it.

kevbot

Oh dear; it turns out that I was thinking of Battle for Terra. I do have some new novels to start looking for now, thanks to this thread though.

Thanks to everyone who replied!

shadydentist

To be fair, its a pretty generic story.

jeddy lee

I've heard it compared to Dune regarding certain plot devices. I personally haven't seen the flick yet.

Sakebomb

Y'all realize that Avatar is just Ewoks: Battle for Endor in spa........with blue dudes instead of teddy bears.

Deadfall

Sakebomb wrote: »

Y'all realize that Avatar is just Dances with Ewoks: Battle for FernEndorGully in spa........with blue dudes instead of teddy bears.

That was a lot of tags.

Echo

Add A Door into Ocean by Joan Slonczewski to that list.

Belruel

Psychotic One wrote: »

Deadfall wrote: »

GothicLargo wrote: »

Y'all realize that Avatar is just Dances With Ferngully in space, right?

Yeah Ferngully the Last Rainforest does come to mind when I think of it.

i was thinking ferngully has a lovechild with pocahontas in space

Siska

I remember watching some hour long episode on TV (twilight zone or some similar show). The crew ran into some sentient, but primitive, natives while surveying a promising planet. Unfortiunatly there was a rule that planets with inteligent life could not be harvested for resources and that meant the crew would not get paid. So they decide to kill all the aliens (Why they think that would help I have no idea. One would assume there are more aliens on the planet then the 5 they accidently ran into near the landing site. But whatever, plothole.). So they kill the 5 aliens, then head back towards earth. The whole crew, except for one, cheering and celebrating the huge bonus they are gonna get. But (dun dun dun) on the way back they encounter a huge ass alien ship who forcebly download their navigation logs. It turns out the aliens they killed were not primitive, they were just kids out hiking. They are infact alot more advanced then we are and now royally pissed and on the way to destroy earth.

-SPI-

I remember that, it was an Outer Limits episode I believe.

edit: This one http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativity_Theory_(The_Outer_Limits)