Fiction where humans are exctinct.

So I started thinking, other than Planet of the Apes (which is not quite what I'm looking for), is there any work of sci-fi where humans have gone extinct and have become sort of the "precursor" or ancient race, akin to the Protheans in Mass Effect?

The reason I bring up Planet of the Apes is because of the twist ending where you realize the whole thing took place on Earth in the far future. I don't quite count it into what I'm looking for, because humans aren't actually extinct, just basically devolved and the protagonist is still human as well, familiar to us.

The story in the Babylon 5 TV show covers about a million years, from mankind's first contact with ancient alien species like that, and in the end mankind becomes one of them itself.

Not prothean kind of stuff, but there's sci-fi where mankind has been wiped out:

Tokyo Jungle is the first example that comes to mind.

Forsaken to some extent too, although you play as a human, you're supposedly one of a handful left after an experiment wiped Earth's atmosphere out.

I'm pretty sure there were a few more 90's games with that premise too, but I can't remember their names right now. I guess Total Annihilation would count - it's set in a universe where mankind created military robot technology which then wiped their creators out and are now on a several thousand year war where they reproduce and use up all the resources in the universe, and fight over what little remains.

well extinct technically doesn't mean there aren't any of that species left, it's possible to be a human and still be extinct. So arguably something like Dead Nation and I Am Legend fits the bill, as does Planet of the Apes. But it sounds like OP is looking for media where there isn't a single human left.

Well I guess that's stating the obvious, but someone was going to say it so I might as well be the one.

@strife777: Moved to Off-Topic. Please try to keep all threads in their relevant forums. Thanks!

@sparky_buzzsaw: Oh shit, my bad. Totally forgot to change the forum destination. Sorry about that.

@egg: Really? Looking up the definition of the word says it means a species with no living members. But I guess it could have a different meaning in a different context.

@fisk0: Yeah, those don't quite fit what I'm thinking of, I'm more looking for something set further in the future, where our civilization (or lack thereof) is discovered or something, but I'll definitely look into what you presented, thanks.

I guess I was wrong. Dunno how I got confused about this, for some reason I thought the scientific definition of extinct was "really really endangered"

If you wanna count endangered as well, Battlestar Galactica is a fantastic show. Humanity has been wiped out except for the people left in the fleet. The show was highly praised even by people who were never into sci-fi to begin with. My absolute favorite series.

Can't think of anything where humans are truly extinct.

Not quite what you want, but one of my favorite lists on Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_apocalyptic_and_post-apocalyptic_fiction

Not 100% with the theme of what you're looking for, but Terry Brooks's Genesis of Shannara trilogy and Legends of Shannara duology cover a scenario where about 99.9% of humanity is dead.

Tokyo Jungle for a videogame one

Wasn't that the cux of Advent Rising?

EDIT: Also I think the weird twist at the end of the Book of Swords series by Fred Saberhagen was that it was Earth all along far in the future and that all the magic and demons came from remnants of our civilization before we nuked ourselves into oblivion.

Mankind is pretty darn extinct by the beginning of the Darksiders series.

I dont think its ever explicitly stated but the world your on in Pikman is meant to be earth and I think its post humans.

The Cars franchise.

People had to build that shit, but there aint no people there no mo.

Yeah Advent Rising is the closes thing I can think of in regards to the original post. True, humanity isn't extinct, but the plot revolves around how they use to be one of the most powerful species in the universe and they were all but wiped-out by another species.

Primordia A point-and-click adventure game from Wadjet Eye Games. It takes place in a post-apocalyptic world where only machines remain.

Humans as we know it are pretty much gone in Warframe. Well, at least it seems that way. Lotus and others in her group seem to be human-like but they all wear helmets on their heads so we have no real way of knowing what is going on there. A lot of the lore is purposefully obfuscated at this point. The Grineer which you fight in large numbers are overproduced industrial clones. Grineer being copies of copies are slowly breaking down more and more and are unable to create anything new, only clones of clones. Given the lore of the game Dark Sector, the Tenno in Warframe may have been human at one point, but are twisted by the void so the likelihood of them being perfectly normal under the suits is quite low.

Also, Warframe is pretty cool.

Darksiders: Humanity has been extinct for centuries on those games, and some of the dungeons play with the human ruins turned into dungeon theme.

@egg said:

Yeah, in the spirit of egg's idea, and Planet of the Apes, there are the games:

• Fragile Dreams: Farewell Ruins of the Moon:
• Lone Survivor;
• Shin Megami Tensei III;
• Enslaved: Odyssey to the West;
• I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream.

It will also be released the game Everybody's Gone to the Rapture, in the PS4.

And movies:

• 28 Days Later;
• I am Legend;
• The Road;
• Oblivion;
• Zombieland;
• 28 Weeks Later.

And literature:

• I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream.

@jeust: Kudos, I was about to mention SMT3 (or SMT: Nocturne for searching purposes).

Is that connection between the characters being called Tenno and Hayden Tenno from Dark Sector just coincidental? Or is there anything stating that Warframe is a spiritual successor of sorts?

@starvinggamer: I just skimmed the wiki page for that Book of Swords series and that's basically the exact idea I had in mind. A little more fantasy than sci-fi but definitely what I was thinking about. It also seems like the human race didn't fully go extinct, but I like the premise.

Thanks for the suggestions folks. I'll look into those. If anybody got anything else, feel free to share.

Not quite extinct but Y: The Last Man is a pretty good comic book series about a guy who is the only survivor of a virus that kills all males on Earth, including animals.

Hayden Tenno is the first Tenno, though he's not officially recognized by the Warframe lore at this point. Everything points to it being the same universe just far in the future. The suit he gets towards the end of the game is the Excalibur frame from Warframe. Also, the glaive weapon is the same as the one Hayden uses in Dark Sector and in the description for the item it states that:

Dating back to the time of the first Tenno, the Glaive is a uniquely deadly weapon. This multi-bladed disc is not only effective for melee combat it can also be thrown like a boomerang to cut down enemies at a distance.

I am surprised that no one has mentioned H.G. Wells' "The Time Machine". During the second half of the book, the traveller goes so far into the future that there are no humans left. The Kubrick-Spielberg flick, A.I. ends the same way.

@fisk0: THe Babylon 5 stoyline you mentioned had to do with Sol naturally going Supernova but didn't have anything to do with extinction. Humans were just fine but they had evolved into a Vorlon-like energy form like the ancient alien species you mentioned from the primary timeline of the show. The point of that scene was that humans overcame all types of crap up until that point, we're doing A-okay, and we are leaving the garden of eden for the very last time into a shinning future.

There's a certain RPG I can think of from last gen, but even saying the name would be a spoiler.

No, humans totally still exist. The Corpus are all humans. The Red Lotus, who are opposed to the Grineer, are all human, implying the Grineer have dominion over some human populations. Whether Tenno are human and just putting on a different Warframe 'skin' or actual, discrete automatons is debatable, but to me the former makes more sense than having a single, apartment-sized ship dedicated to carrying dozens of living post-human constructs.

Galapagos (Novel) by American author Kurt Vonnegut.
Galápagos is the story of a small band of mismatched humans who are shipwrecked on the fictional island of Santa Rosalia in the Galápagos Islands after a global financial crisis cripples the world's economy. Shortly thereafter, a disease renders all humans on Earth infertile, with the exception of the people on Santa Rosalia, making them the last specimens of humankind. Over the next million years, their descendants, the only fertile humans left on the planet, eventually evolve into a furry species resembling seals.

@crembaw:

Tenno are giant caterpillars that control the suit, duh.