Gentler Aliens In Two Future Histories

On Shalmu, the process of industrialization:

"...was slower than it had been on Terra; Shalmuans were less ferocious, less able to treat their fellow beings like vermin or machinery, than humankind is."

-Poul Anderson, The Rebel Worlds IN Anderson, Young Flandry (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 367-520 AT CHAPTER THREE, pp. 390-391.

 

Right on, Shalmuans.

 

On the now uninhabited planet, Good Luck, Trevelyan Micah finds some statues and murals showing combat:

 

"But oftenest he found imagery which he read as of affection, gentleness, work, teaching, discovery, or the sheer splendor of being alive."

-"The Pirate," p. 155.

 

Human cultures vary, non-human cultures presumably more so, so let's not project violence onto every fictional species. Interstellar explorers might encounter Merseians or Shalmuans but, more probably, something unimaginable.