For an early example of this sort of thing, I can’t recommend the Weird Pulp story “The Challenge From Beyond”.

It’s a round robin, which means that several authors got together and wrote this story collaboratively. One author wrote the beginning, the next picked up and wrote the next three pages, and so on. What makes this particular story noteworthy is that its authors were somewhat celebrities in their time.

HP Lovecraft is someone you may not know, but you probably know his creations: Cthulhu and the Necronomicon (yes, like the book from Evil Dead). Robert E. Howard wrote about Conan the Barbarian. There are two or three other authors as well, but Lovecraft and Howard’s sections are the most important in this context.

The story so far: George Campbell is a professor taking a sabbatical by camping in the woods of Canada. Whatever floats your boat, my guy. He discovers this crystalline cube outside of his tent and spends all night looking into it.

Now, Lovecraft comes in and adds that this activates some sort of interstellar cause and effect and George’s consciousness flies through space, causing him to pass out. He knows instinctively that an alien race is behind this cosmic cube, and he discovers exactly who they are when he wakes up. They’re described as basically giant space centipedes that really just need to know all the information ever (pretty much exactly like the Yithians, if you’re familiar with Lovecraft’s work) and also George is in one of their bodies. He’s scared, he’s horrified about what might happen to him on this alien planet and also about what might happen to the alien presumably in his body on Earth. This causes him to pass out again and for the story to go to Robert E Howard.

If you’ve read any of Lovecraft’s work, you know he has a very bleak outlook on humanity. They were created as a mistake or a joke, are generally weak both mentally and physically, and during Lovecraft’s three page section, dear old George faints a whopping three times. Robert E. Howard, on the other hand, is almost the complete opposite. In his stories, Conan is a beast, he’s so powerful he almost doesn’t know what to do with himself, other than save the day and get the girl. Humans are successful in what they do, simply because they’re human, and humans are awesome. This leads to one of my favorite bits of literary whiplash I have ever read.

When George wakes up again, he isn’t afraid. He’s excited about the possibilities of what this new body can do and what this planet has to offer. He isn’t a loathsome gray worm, that’s judging by human standards. He isn’t human anymore, and probably this body gets all the ladies. Somehow, he’s able to tap into the body’s memories and knows everything the worm new. This planet is called Yacomb and the worm guy coming towards him is the Supreme Lord of Science. The worms think they’re invulnerable, but they haven’t met George Campbell! Our hero grabs a scalpel and guts the Supreme Lord of Science before making his escape. He knows that the worm people worship this thing in a temple, so he goes there, guts a priest, and takes the thing for himself. The worms worship him now, and he rules over them more fairly and justly than any of their kings.

I think the Lovecraft model of thinking came about around the same time as Alien and The Thing. They wanted to showcase their alien design, so the logical way to do that was to nerf the human characters. I love stories like that, don’t get me wrong, but I also love that we’re getting away from that now.