I'm considering writing a story about invaders from Mars

Cafe Society
1

Yeah, I know ‘Earth is invaded by aliens’ is one of the oldest stories in the SF book, and having the invaders be Martians is very quaint these days. But for some reason I got the idea to write a realistic hard SF story where Earth is invaded by Martians in modern times.

Now, having the invaders coming from Mars makes a lot of things easier. You don’t need FTL travel. It is completely plausible for Martian life to have DNA and be distantly related to life on Earth, so you don’t have to make up some new biochemistry. Mars has some similarities to Earth, and was probably at one time quite a bit more like Earth.

So, the next step would be to build the Martians, and give them a motivation for invading Earth. This can be difficult - Mars is a pretty inhospitable place. My explanation would be that Mars and Earth both went through several billion years where the only life was single cellular, and life on both planets was related because bacteria had been transferred between the planets via meteorite ejecta. As Mars cooled and dried, and it’s atmosphere grew thinner, life made the leap to multicellular as an adaptation - perhaps a primitive algae began growing large structures to cover open water. Evolution continued to keep one step ahead of the changing conditions, and a complex and very alien ecosystem developed, perhaps before ours here on Earth.

OK, here is where I could use some suggestions by people who know biology better than me…what forms might work for early life in an arid and cold climate with considerably less sunlight? It will be starting like the aquatic single celled life on Earth, but will be forced to change. I realize it would probably be very different from anything on Earth - complex life arose in warm seas here, I see early Martian life in seasonally frozen lakebeds and around subterranean water deposits. I’m assuming some equivalent of photosynthesis is going to be needed by something to provide enough energy for these life forms to get very advanced. As conditions grow more harsh, I imagine the motile life becoming symbiotic with it’s food sources.

Well, however I end up explaining the origins of complex Martian life, I intend for them to reach some level of sentience long before us. I think I’ll have it so that life evolved intelligence as a result of the increased complexity of the ecosystem they have to maintain, and after Martian life became technological, the intelligent lifeforms and their symbionts were about the only things to survive the great extinctions as conditions reach a point where life cannot be maintained without some kind of artificial aid.

Now, I’m thinking of how we as humans would adapt to circumstances like this. Maybe the Martians would try to artificially maintain the climate of their planet (Areforming?), but eventually have to give up and maintain only subterranean habitats. Remember, things were already far beyond what all but the hardiest Earth lichens could endure by the time the Martians evolved intelligence. I imagine that a modern Martian would suffocate on the surface of Mars today, but an unprotected human would die quickly even in one of their protected underground habitats. I think that they would turn inward, and find some way of storing their consciousnesses, and perhaps genetic samples of all the extinct Martian lifeforms, and leave behind a few caretakers to make sure whatever storage media they are using is maintained and protected. I need those caretakers to explain the invasion.

Motivation for the invasion is tricky. We are talking about an ancient civilization that has basically been in storage for hundreds of millions of years - you need a hell of a motivation to get them moving again. My first idea was to have their attack be a reaction to developments on Earth, that perhaps they felt threatened by our talk of exploring their planet…but I decided that was kinda lame, and tired. I decided they need to get off their planet. Why? Not because it’s drying up - it’s been dried up a long time, they dealt with that problem a long time ago and things aren’t getting any worse for them on Mars. So they need a disaster.

I think the disaster should be self-inflicted. My best idea yet is that there is a sect of caretakers that have remained out of mind-storage who are devoted to finding some way to return Mars to it’s old state - this is why they’ve stored everyone and all the genetic samples. These Martians did something while trying to make Mars livable again that is wrecking their planet, but what could threaten them so badly that they feel the need to leave their planet? I’ve only had a couple of ideas, but I don’t like them much. One is that they were messing with something physically destructive - perhaps they are using antimatter for some purpose or another, and the containment system on a large quantity of it is going to fail and Mars is about to have a huge chunk blown out of it (one of the things this idea has going for it is that it could also be pretty disastrous for Earth). I also considered the idea that they let a quantum black hole loose and it’s going to eat the planet up from the inside, but that’s been done three times that I know of in SF literature - twice by Larry Niven (on the Moon and Mars) and once by David Brin (on Earth). Another idea is runaway nanobots or biologicals they created to change the environment. Maybe somethings going to release all the oxygen trapped in iron oxide in the crust too fast and burn it all off. Anyway, the Martians have to bail.

Now, why are they coming to Earth? They should be very high tech and used to living in enclosed areas, why not populate the asteroids, or even burrow into their own moons? This is another tough question, and I could use some suggestions. A possible reason is their biological design does not work in microgravity - maybe their circulatory system is partly gravity-driven. Maybe they think they can make Earth into something like what Mars used to be.

So, any suggestions?

2

Hmm, some interesting delimma’s and thoughts.

As for motivation for them attacking earth, I would make it something simple. So often the best laid plans or ideas are waylayed by the smallest thing.

You said that most of the race is in some sort of stasis or storage. Same with other lifeforms, which are overlooked by some sort of watchers.

OK, now, thousands of years have passed, and the watchers have been unsuccessful in reabilitating the surface. While they are technoligically advanced, their storage systems are starting to fail, and unless they find a way to re-terraform mars, or terraform another planet with similar tolerances (i.e. earth), the whole civilization will be no more than dust in the wind in a very short time. Considering that they’ve spent all this time attempting to fix their home planet and have failed, they now turn thier eyes towards the earth.

Say they revive some others, and send a group to earth to make first contact, to see if they could find a way to live in peace with earth. Now say something goes wrong drastically on both sides of the parties that take part in this “first contact” and it just sets both worlds against each other, both fighting for the survival of their race.

Something like that would allow or make possible to break the mold of the usual “aliens are evil and are only going to destroy the earth” idea, and allow you to make points or plots from both sides of the coin, Earth and Mars.

3

A “beach-head” in Antactica would make sense. The climate is close to Martian-normal as it gets.

Bases in mountain ranges would provide defensible terrain, lower temperatures, & thinner air–all more Mars-like.

Gravity would be a problem. Tank-like vehicles/spacesuits would help–but no robot legs! Too much like H.G. Wells.

Orbital bombardment with asteroids–i.e. dropping big rocks on our heads–is a must.

Do not make them look like us.

4

Coming from the lower gavity of mars you could probably get away with giving them exoskeletons if you think you can do it without it seeming like the “bug eyed monster” cliche’. Since mars is less massive and farther from the sun than earth it cooled much sooner and might have been suitable for life while the earth was still molten and reeling from the impact of the planetoid that created the moon.

5

Far better to make it that everyone only has a vague idea of what they look like. Any landings on Earth would involve spacesuits/environmental suits/vehicles/whatever. Martians are not going to be strolling around naked showing off their physiology to the opposition. And any conflict is rarely going to involve hand to hand. The greater the technology the more remote and automated war becomes.

Remember, nothing is scarier than the unknown.

6

I liked the “invaders from Mars” angle that D.F. Jones used in “Colossus and the Crab” and “The Fall of Colossus.”

7

I like the concept of martians establishing a beach-head in Antarctica. It would be relatively discreet as far as parts of Earth go. And the exo-suit idea is a great way to adapt to the stronger gravity.

Don’t forget how much denser our atmosphere is! I’m sure whatever habitats they have would be at a considerably lower pressure than the outside air. High mountains would help, but I’m fairly certain that the martian atmosphere is still far thinner than high mountain peaks would have on earth.

8

I’m going to go way out there, and say make them border-line insects. Little worm-like creatures that burrow into earth’s soil and destroy the land. This causes crop shortages and the ripple effect throws our entire ecosystem into a tizzy.

You don’t have to give a concrete reason why they come to earth. They do for their own reasons. If Martians were really to attack, a definite reason why would probably be unknown to us anyway. You can have your characters float theories, but you don’t have to commit to any one.

9

Think about what story you want to tell. Is it “Humans triumph over bad guys” or is it “Two intelligent races in conflict” or maybe “If you’d-a asked for help, we would have helped, but now you’ve pissed us off!”?

Do the Martians have to be intelligent? Maybe evolution pushed them underground (as bugs? as viruses? as burrowing somethings?) and now it’s getting so inhospitable that they’ve evolved a way to drift across space and “infect” the Earth.

Where they will Areform it with their innate biological capabilities (honed by millions of years of trying to keep Mars alive)?

10

Hmm, I like some of the ideas. The Martians will be technological, but will not resemble humans physically at all. My brain keeps envisioning something big, dry and fibrous, and subterranean - after a couple of billion years of divergent evolution, I don’t think they would even classify as ‘plant’ or ‘animal’. They will be extremely long-lived, and have a low-energy metabolism. They wouldn’t fight us directly - they may not even risk landing personally on our planet without first making sure they have removed all threats, though the time pressure may force them too…though perhaps their ‘sudden disaster’ will take thousands of years to ruin their planet, but since they live so long they are getting started now. They would attack with machines, or maybe biological weapons. The Martians might be able to survive unassisted on Earth, though - they are very different from us, and it could be the more harmful extremes for them are the other way. Humans can survive under much greater pressures than our atmosphere provides - just go diving. Maybe the Martians are in a similar situation on Earth.

Hmm, maybe the advance scouts have been in Antarctica for a long time, preparing. I’m thinking they may start modifying Earth species to use for their attack, as they are better adapted to our warmth, gravity, and air pressure. Hmm, genetically engineered penguin commandos!

The storyline is going to be along the lines of ‘Earth is invaded unexpectedly by enemies they don’t understand, we fight valiantly, and lose.’

11

Man, you’re really getting close to the Martians in “The Fall of Colossus” now.

12

Hmm, I tried to find what I could about that story, but couldn’t find much of anything. Let me know more about it, to see if I am too close…this happens to me a lot, I get an idea for a story and then find out it’s very similar to something I’ve never read.

13

Here’s my memory of it from a few decades ago:

[spoiler]In the first book of the trilogy, Professor Forbin builds a supercomputer called “Colossus.” As it turns out, the Russians have also built a supercomputer. When the two computers find out about each other, they demand to be linked. Since they were programmed to “help mankind,” and since mankind was on the verge of destroying itself (Cold War), they sorta took over the world.

In the second book, “The Fall of Colossus,” Colossus has some weird project going on that no one seems to understand. Also, Forbin starts getting some weird “transmissions”–that seem to be coming from Mars! The Martians are very concerned about this “project” that Colossus is planning–and they mean to shut him down. They end up sending Forbin a virus to feed into Colossus, which does end up shutting him down. The book ends with the Martians telling Forbin, “Do not touch Colossus. We are coming.”

In the third book, “Colossus and the Crab,” the Martians arrive. I believe that they appear as two kinda black ovoid shapes (hey, it’s been 20 years). They give Forbin the lowdown. Here it goes:

a) Radiation from the Crab Nebula (see title) will eventually reach the solar system.
b) When it does, it will be highly toxic to the Martians, but Earth will shake it off no problem.
c) Oxygen–in short supply on Mars–can help ward off the effects of the radiation
d) Earth has lots of oxygen
e) The Martians want it!

Now, that has dire consequences for Earth, but getting back to the Martians. Forbin assumes that they live on Mars, to which they say, “No. We don’t live on Mars.” Forbin then says, “OK, you must live underground on Mars.” They say, “No. We don’t live on Mars or under Mars.” Forbin, perplexed, then has the light go off. “Aha! You actually live on Phobos and Deimos!” “No,” intone the Martians, “we are Phobos and Deimos.”[/spoiler]