Something where aliens WIN?

[Swoop]

Has there ever been a production (book, film whatever) where the usual ID4 type scenario of having some aliens kick human ass ends in the aliens actually succeeding?

[Darth Nader]

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (I'm thinking more of the remake than the first one...)

[Blake]

Depends a bit on how you define a win.

In the “Alien” novels and the Dark Horse comics the Aliens take over the Earth and all but exterminate Earth based humans.

In the Starcraft computer games at the end of the last instalment the alien hordes had kicked human butt and were persuing the remains of the fleet back to Earth.

There are several productions where humans have already been defeated and are living on as slaves, rebels etc. (Planet of the Apes, Terminator, Matrix)

I guess that generally it’s tough to write a novel/screenplay that consists of the heroes losing despite valiant efforts. It just doesn’t make for a good read. There’s something about human psychology that demands that the hero make it back to the normal world. Without this script piece the story lacks punch. Can you imagine “War of the Worlds” where the Martians won? The ending would lack punch. It would lack any sort of resolution. Even if every last human were destroyed we’d be left wondering what happens next.

In those cases where the Aliens do ‘win’ the ending seems to be universally left up in the air rather than truly resolved in favour of the littlee green men.

[Pábitel]

Not sure if this is exactly what you are looking for but "The Madness Season" by C.S. Friedman has a really wierd twist on this whole topic.

The ending is rather ambiguous though so I'm not sure who "won"

[Back Lot Brawl]

Does the Simpsons episode where Kodos and Kang run for president count? :p

[CalMeacham]

There are plenty of SF novels in which aliens "win", at least for a time. Edgar Rice Burroughs' The Moon Men has Earth conquered by aliens from the moon. The TV miniseries V was all about resistance against alien conquerors. In H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds the Martians pretty clearlt beat the earth people, until they themselves are taken out by bacteria. I haven't read the series, but my understanding is that the Tripods books are set in a world where the Martians don't die. (Marvel Comics "Killraveb" series from the early 1970s is based on this concept.)

Then there's Jack Chalker's Web of the Chozen in which transformed humans set out to conquer human space, and succeed. There are plenty of other examples.

[RealityChuck]

In Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End, the aliens help destroy Earth, but it's probably not what you have in mind.

Gerald Kirsch's Men Without Bones (http://www.scifi.com/scifiction/classics/classics_archive/kersh/kersh1.html), sort of.

[brianmelendez]

Mike Resnick's book Birthright: The Book of Man (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1570900442/qid=1052484524/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_1/104-2438701-3253507?v=glance&s=books&n=507846) ends with the last humans being defeated by an alliance of alien races.

[Evil Death]

Originally posted by CalMeacham
I haven't read the series, but my understanding is that the Tripods books are set in a world where the Martians don't die.

Not altogether accurate, although the scenarios aren't dissimilar. Also, the Tripods are defeated in the final book when their city dome is shattered by an explosion, letting the lethal (to them) atmosphere of Earth in.

[refusal]

In The Day the Earth Stood Still the aliens come to earth demanding world peace, and they win. Don't they?

Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles isn't exactly a convincing victory for either side: most of the Martians are killed, but most of the humans end up packing it in and going home. If you view it as a collection of short stories, there are a number of tales where the Martians are clearly triumphant. (However, Bradbury possibly viewed the humans as villains.)

Aren't there some zombie movies where the all-conquering hordes of the undead are created by space radiation? Doesn't that make them honorary aliens?

[Ethilrist]

John Varley has a whole series of book set in a future where godlike aliens came to earth and said, "Okay, everybody outta the pool!"; everybody's living on the other planets and space habitats.

[Earl Snake-Hips Tucker]

A number of the 1990s "Outer Limits" episodes ended with the aliens getting the upper hand.

[Skeezix]

Originally posted by refusal:
Aren't there some zombie movies where the all-conquering hordes of the undead are created by space radiation? Doesn't that make them honorary aliens?

Depending on how much you want to read into it, the Unholy Trilogy of zombie flicks, Romero's Night, Dawn and Day, can be said to blame the zombies on space radiation.

In the original Night, one of the news reports talk about a space probe returning from (Venus?) another planet, to earth, accompanied by an unknown type of radiation. It's the only attempt (and never explored, in detail) to explain the sudden, mass rising from the dead.

In Night of the Creeps, a fun campy zombie flick, the walking dead are powered not by radiation, but by extraterrestrial brain worms.

So to speak.

The Comet Zombies in Night of the Comet weren't your traditional flesh eating walkin' cadavers, but they were created by radiation from the tail of a comet.

I know, I know, it's right in the title...

Aside from White Zombie and The Serpent and the Rainbow (which didn't actually have traditional zombies, either) how many zombie flicks didn't rely on outerspace gobbledygook?

Well, apart from the Return of the Living Dead series, o'course...

[astorian]

Well, in movies like "Xtro" and "Lifeforece," aliens come to Earth, kill a lot of people at will, and get away pretty much unscathed at the end.

Does that count as an alien "win"? Or do the aliens have to conquer the Earth completely.

[Skip]

At the end of John Carpenter's The Thing, the alien is destroyed but the human's sure as hell don't win. It's just McReady waiting to die in the cold basically...

[Balance]

In Larry Niven's short story "What Can You Say About Chocolate Covered Manhole Covers" (I'm not kidding), the aliens unquestionably win. In fact, we never even see one of the aliens. One of their android flunkies wins, and makes it pretty clear that the best humans can aspire to is to be good slaves...once they've evolved a bit.

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy should probably be mentioned here as well, since the Vogons destroyed Earth at the beginning of the book. Only two humans survived, IIRC.

[Archergal]

In Greg Bear's The Forge of God, the aliens not only win, they destroy the earth. I couldn't read all of it because it was very upsetting to me.

In Octavia Butler's Xenogenesis trilogy, humans actually had pretty much destroyed the earth, but they were rescued by aliens. The only catch was, the rescued humans had to give up a lot of their humanity (i.e., accept alien DNA) in order to reproduce. This one kinda bothered me too, but it was VERY well written. Octavia Butler really makes me think.

And then there was that Sci-Fi channel series Invasion: Earth. It was sort of an ID4 set-up, but the humans definitely didn't get the upper hand. I don't think they actually showed the aliens winning, but that was kinda the outcome you were left expecting.

I like it better when humans win, but I'm not sure it's a realistic expectation all the time.

[tanstaafl]

I almost agree with Forge of God except that some humans do survive (with some help from some other aliens) and go on to kick some alien butt in Anvil of Stars. Forge was the better book of the two though.

Also by Greg Bear is Blood Music in which humanity pretty much gets replaced by what is more or less an intelligent virus. It was man-made though. The short story is much better than the novel.

Gordon Dickson's story Enter a Pilgrim has humanity subjugated under alien rule but he expanded it to a novel in which the humans win in the end, so that may not count.

Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke has the aliens responsible for the end of life as we know it, but it isn't exactly a "defeat".

I know I've read a few other shorts where the humans lose but can't think of any titles at the moment. Let me think on it a bit and see what else I can come up with.

[Shodan]

I believe the name of the short story is The Screwfly Solution. It ends with the protaganist seeing an alien, and one of the best last lines in sci-fi:
I think it was a real estate agent.

Regards,
Shodan

[Troy McClure SF]

Riff Raff and Magenta won in Rocky Horror. Of course, that was kind of an internal mutiny. But it worked out for the humans.

[Bippy the Beardless]

What about good old Battlestar Galactica, the humans are reduced to a small escaping fleet of ships. For literature, anything be H.P.Lovecraft has the Aliens winning.

[Mr. Hand]

In the play (not the movie version starring Rick Moranis and featuring Steve Martin), Little Shop of Horrors, the aliens win. The play ends with the cautionary song (after all the human characters have died), Don't Feed the Plants.

[RealityChuck]

A few more:

William Tenn's Of Men and Monsters (terrible title, alas).

Thomas Disch's "White Fang Goes Dingo" (great title), expanded to The Puppies of Terra (UK)/Mankind Under the Leash (US).

Frederick Pohl's "Punch."

Fredric Brown's "Pattern"

The Triffids in John Wyndham's Day of the Triffids, pretty much take over except for a small colony of humans at the end. Eventually, they should make a decent movie of it (the 1950s version was terrible).

In The Forbin Project, a computer takes over everything. It's pretty close to the book Colossus by D.F. Jones.

[jimmmy]

In Battlefeild Earth the Aliens had ruled earth cruely for 1000 years.

In Titan AE Earth has been destroyed

It is strongly hinted in AI that humans aren't on earth anymore

[N9IWP]

If you stretch the definition of "alien", you could include Star Wars

Brian

[Ranchoth]

Originally posted by Evil Death
Not altogether accurate, although the scenarios aren't dissimilar. Also, the Tripods are defeated in the final book when their city dome is shattered by an explosion, letting the lethal (to them) atmosphere of Earth in.

Are we talking about the "Tripod Trilogy," by John Christopher? If so, I just wanted to note that the aliens in that series weren't [u]Martians[u].

[Mr. Blue Sky]

John Varley's Steel Beach: aliens take over and convert the Earth to suit their needs. The "battle" to defend against this attack lasts about 20 minutes, IIRC.

[Fiat Lux]

Someone mentioned the HHGTTG; at the end of that series, the aliens win once and for all, coming back and destroying the mysteriously replaced Earth and making sure all the pesky humans who escaped the last time are on it as it burns.

For a humourous series, those books sure were dark.

[NoCoolUserName]

The John Varley universe where humans are losers includes Steel Beach as well as the short stories collected in The Ophiuchi Hotline and The Barbie Murders.

The aliens don't so much take over as simply destroy every structure on Earth and then ignore any humans (very few, obviously) who are left. They (the aliens) only like talking with Dolphins and Whales. They consider humans rather pest-ish.

In I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream, by Harlan Ellison, the humans have clearly lost, but we don't know exactly to whom (except that it's "the computer").

In Ursula Le Guin's The Word for World is Forest the invading aliens are the humans, and they "win." Does that count?

[Archergal]

Originally posted by tanstaafl
I almost agree with Forge of God except that some humans do survive (with some help from some other aliens) and go on to kick some alien butt in Anvil of Stars. Forge was the better book of the two though.

tanstaafl, since I had trouble with Forge of God, I didn't even try Anvil of Stars.

Shodan mentioned The Screwfly Solution by Raccoona Sheldon. That's another chilling one I'd forgotten about.

It's available to read online at

[RealityChuck]

Originally posted by NoCoolUserName
The John Varley universe where humans are losers includes Steel Beach as well as the short stories collected in The Ophiuchi Hotline and The Barbie Murders.
Just to nitpick, (always do what you're best at, I always say), The Ophiuchi Hotline is a novel, and Varley's collection The Persistance of Vision has most of the best stories in his universe.

Also, Steel Beach is in a slightly different universe. The discrepency is cause because Varley wrote it many years later and didn't bother to go back and reread things to make sure there was consistency with the previous stories. I admire that.

[Saltire]

Originally posted by RealityChuck
Thomas Disch's "White Fang Goes Dingo" (great title), expanded to The Puppies of Terra (UK)/Mankind Under the Leash (US).In my copy of Triplicity, which was a Science Fiction Book Club volume combining 3 Disch titles, Puppies of Terra ends with a human win (though it starts with our race totally dominated by the Masters).

But The Genocides, in the same volume, was a clear defeat and extermination of mankind. Every last one of us, gone.

[DreadCthulhu]

In Harry Turtledove's WorldWar series, the war ends in a stale mate with aliens holding the Southern Hemisphere, Southern Asia, and Central America, while the US, Great Britain, Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, Japan, and Canada remain independant.

[eburacum45]

The Xeelee in Stephen Baxter's Xeelee sequence are Aliens with technology far superior to anything that humans can produce, and are so far in advance of us that they hardly notice Humanity's efforts to fight back.
Eventually, the only humans left are in a kind of Xeelee zoo.

_______________________
Sci-fi worldbuilding at
http://www.orionsarm.com/main.html

[SpaceGhostofArrakis]

Those Damn Mon Calamari and their rebel sympathsisers destroyed a Human-run Empire.

[Stuffy]

Hmm...no one's mentioned the Twilight Zone episode To Serve Man. Everyone's already mentioned the rest I could think of. Well there is Earthfall by William Dietz, but a sequel just came out; and there's Orphans of Earth but IIRC we killed ourselves off in that one.


On preview; thanks eburacum45 I forgot that one, intersting story.

[RexDart]

Originally posted by Earl Snake-Hips Tucker
A number of the 1990s "Outer Limits" episodes ended with the aliens getting the upper hand.

Well, that's what we get for manning our Dead Man Switch with a bunch of gullible 20-somethings.

[RexDart]

Originally posted by DreadCthulhu
In Harry Turtledove's WorldWar series, the war ends in a stale mate with aliens holding the Southern Hemisphere, Southern Asia, and Central America, while the US, Great Britain, Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, Japan, and Canada remain independant.

Yeah, but if he ever bothered to finish the series, we'd get to the part where our interstellar space ship goes to the aliens home planet and corrupts them with drug addiction, but I'm not sure he's gonna do an 8th book now. So alien victory will be short-lived anyways, at least as I picture the ending in my mind.

[HPL]

Originally posted by refusal
In The Day the Earth Stood Still the aliens come to earth demanding world peace, and they win. Don't they?

Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles isn't exactly a convincing victory for either side: most of the Martians are killed, but most of the humans end up packing it in and going home. If you view it as a collection of short stories, there are a number of tales where the Martians are clearly triumphant. (However, Bradbury possibly viewed the humans as villains.)


Well, it kind of hinted to me that the humans left on mars were perhaps some of the last humans alive, considering it sounded like the people on earth had nuked themselves(Always makes me wonder why you go back to fight in a war in which nuclear weapons were invovled. I'd be hopping the first ship off the planet).

[coffeecat]

The Alien Years, by Robert Silverberg.