Most realistic spacealien invasion

Cafe Society
61

Okay, complete hijack:

I love those new Mac commercials with John Hodgeman; the hipster guy is a Mac and the stuffy suit is the PC. But one of the ads is annoyingly wrong:

Mac: I can do fun stuff, like make videos and (I forget what else.)
PC: I can do fun stuff too, like spreadsheets and pie charts.

Um, hello? Games have always been the go-to strength of PCs over Macs, and I’m pretty sure that games would qualify as an activity classified as “fun”.

Sorry for the hijack; didn’t seem worth making a whole new thread for. No response needed, as I’m not bashing Macs or the ads. It’s just that one misstep that really bugs me in an otherwise excellent campaign.

62

The odds are (literally) incalculable, as we have a sample space of precisely one.

What was that short story I read years ago? The all-conquering super-powered aliens that land turn out to be a small ill-educated and unhappy squad of lowly soldiers, who basically set up the earth as the galactic equivalent of a machine-gun nest, destroying much of human society en route. IIRC they get defeated in a minor engagement, their enemy sets up their own armed post here, much of what remains of human society is destroyed en route. Etc.

63

First a couple of comments about series and books that people have already mentioned.

I agree with those posters who’ve said that Footfall, the Man-Kzin Wars, and the World War books are all very good alien invasion stories. Personally, I tend to think that they all have aliens who are a bit too human, but that’s a flaw that I’m going to mention very quietly. Without a benchmark, it’s impossible to say just what the right level of oddities would be proper for an alien intelligence.

About the World War books - I have to debate the statement that (I think) Cal Meacham made about the tech differences: he claimed that the Race’s tech was 100-200 years in advance of 1940’s humanity. I think that it’s more accurate to say that, with the exception of three technologies, it was an invasion of 1990 technology vs. 1940’s tech. (The three exceptions being the Race’s fusion drives for their spaceships, hydrogen combustion for their vehicles and their cold sleep chambers.) The descriptions of the military hardware match much of the equipment used during the Gulf War I.
One of my favorite alien invasion stories is Roger MacBride Allen’s Ring of Charon, and its sequel, The Shattered Sphere. In this book you have aliens who are “attacking” the solar system for reasons that the humans can barely guess. The aliens are constitutionally incapable of actually recognizing the humans as being in opposition to them, and the signal differences are such that it’s a major portion of the plot of both books. And, it’s a great invasion, because instead of having the aliens coming to attack humanity, or going from either FTL ships to a contested biosphere - or going from successful generations to the same contested biosphere, the aliens are doing alien things for alien goals - and humanity just happens to have gotten in the way.

Another well-written and believable alien invasion is John Ringo’s Posleen invasion. To call it bleak is an understatement, but he’s got good answers to why the aliens want to take over the planet, and as much of the population, as possible. Two reasons, one - their tribal set-up, much like the Kzin mentioned above, place rewards for those individuals that take productive fiefs; and they want food supplies - humans are tasty.He’s also got his advanced galatic civilization very well written: striking just the right balance between being not too altruistic, and explaining why they’re helping the monkeys of Sol III.

Other things that I expect from a good alien invasion: either there has to be a large invasion force, or the aliens have to be major r-strategists. That is, the invasion by the single alien mating pair that’s got a clutch size of 8-10 eggs is not going to be a credible threat. Dave Freer and Eric Flint have a good r-strategist invader in their Rats, Bats and Vats books - basically intelligent sea urchins, which will flood the seas with millions of spawn. So, an invasion force of some thousands of invaders is a credible threat.

64

That was the one I was going to mention. The alien invasion passes unnoticed for a long time because the aliens:

colonise a part of the earth which man doesn’t use and indeed can’t even reach - the deepest parts of the ocean.

But yes, the ending is a significant let down.

65

Great books, but I’m not quite sure if it qualifies as an alien invasion because :

They were here first, by tens of millions of years; they killed the dinosaurs and who know what else.

Another good movie that could be considered an invasion is The Thing ( the good, color version, not the 50’s black and white carrot man ). If it had gotten out, it would have Thingified the entire planet into itself.

66

I’ve never really seen a movie that played this scenario out the way I’d expect.

I would think an alien invasion of Earth would likely mirror the manner in which the New World was invaded by the Europeans.

It is now commonplace for people to speak of the conquest of the New World as if the sweep of 300-400 years of history was all part of a single master plan cooked up in 1492, but of course it was nothing os the sort. The displacement of the Indians by the Europeans was a gradual process, and in large part was pushed along by a combination of whatever the European short term need was along with almost total disinterest in the fate of the American Indian, good or bad. The Europeans would alternately kill, push around, ignore or cooperate with the various Indian tribes depending on whatever suited their needs at the time, and the seemingly inevitable direction of these activities towards the total consquest of the hemisphere was simply a result of the inescapable fact that every encounter was a win for the Europeans because they were simply too strong for it to be any other way. The European invasions of Africa and various other locales followed much the same pattern.

An alien invasion of the Earth would not be a globe-wide planned invasion - nor, for that matter, would it be precisely directed at us, anyway. After all the Europeans didn’t sail the ocean blue to come shoot Indians; they came to get gold, or tobacco, or land, and shot Indians whenver they needed to. No, an alien invasion would likely come looking for something in particular - iron, or uranium, or gold, or timber, or some particular kind of food. They’d land and just set themselves down wherever the thing they were looking for could be found and it was convenient; our claim to “ownership” of the planet would not even cross their minds as important. Say if they were looking for aluminum, they’d plunk down in West Africa near the big bauxite deposits. If the locals put up a fuss they’d kill them. Or maybe they’d do what the French did in Canada, and use them to get the bauxite for them, trading them alien goods to get 'em. Then they’d come in greater numbers and start living here, and they’d foment and get involved in little wars. Or some rival alien faction would start up bauxite mining operations in Guiana and they’d have colonial wars. Once they’re in they’d be like ticks. We’d negotiate land deals with them and they’d eventually break them.

67

Well, this scenario has to be based upon FTL travel - and an existing market out there. Without FTL travel, there’s not much point in going down a gravity well several light-years away from your markets for your products. (It’s a little easier to get around this if you go with them coming for some Terran export that can only be grown here, but I find it hard to imagine what that might be - greenhouses and other controlled environments work well for most species we’ve tried to keep in captivity.) The times required for travel between star systems without positing FTL travel start at about 30-50 years, and go up from there. I cannot, without a good deal more backstory, accept the idea that generation ships would be suitable for the kind of trade you’re positing. (There have been stories that do work off that kind of time to return to markets, but they’re rare. Larry Niven’s “The Fifth Profession” comes to mind: “There is no repeat business between stars.”)

Without an existing market, and a stable one, why go to the trouble of going several light years for anything?

It’s because of these kind of considerations that I really don’t think that the sort of colonial assimilation you’re talking about is the sort of scenario that makes all that much sense - without FTL. Put FTL in there, and all bets are off, though. :smiley:
Der Trihs, I see your point, but I tend to figure that if one lets their occupancy of a planet expire for over, say, two million years, indigenes have the right to view it as their own property. :wink:

68

I remember an interesting invasion in a James White story; don’t recall the title. This huge fleet came out of FTL, brushed aside our defenses and engaged in a massive, worldwide assault. They rounded up huge numbers of people onto their ships, with whatever force was necessary. Then they took off with their human cargo and went FTL - just as the Sun exploded. It turned out they had accidentally destabilized our star with their FTL, and had only hours of warning before it blew. There was no time to translate our languages or anything else, so they just swooped down and grabbed as many people as they could. The casualties were regrettable, but already dead for practical purposes. An interesting scenario.

69

Oops, forgot to say why it’s realistic; it has an actual, sensible motivation to go to that much effort. They expect slipups like that; it’s just that they usually have more warning and the locals know what’s happening and cooperate. Sort of like real world flood exacuations.

70

Ginger, man! Everyone knows you can only get ginger on earth, and I know at least one Race that would kill to get it… (props for anyone who catches the reference).

I agree that it’s quite difficult to imagine an alien invasion at the moment, because they mostly rely on FTL drives which are, as far as we know, impossible. Absent those, and also absent an alien race that simply enjoys conquest for its own sake (though there are a few of those kicking around) it seems a long way to come for stuff you could get at the nearest G-class planet (is that right?) with a biosphere- hopefully one that isn’t inhabited by humans.

71

Yes, but they’ve already got other reasons for regular commerce/communication between Tosev 3 and Home. The ginger is just being added on an ad hoc basis.

72

Otaluki wrote:

Ota, you gotta read more carefully. I said exactly what you claim is the case – 1940s technology vs. present-day.

73

See the problem with most alien invasions is that they assume aliens are on a human scale.

74

Hmm. I don’t have a quote (books are at home), but I’m pretty sure that some of Niven’s pre-M-K series stuff talk about the Kzinti Lesson - a fusion drive is a weapon whose destructiveness is directly proportional to its efficiency - or something like that. I’m pretty certain that fusion drives being used against the Kzinti predates the first Man-Kzin War book, but you’re probably right that the launching lasers were a M-K invention.

But in both the fusion drive and launching laser cases - there’s no conversion to be done - just point the thing at an enemy spaceship. In a lot of his stories/books, (World of Ptaavs, Protector, other Belter stories) Niven makes it clear that every ship in the solar system is constantly tracked and plotted just because the fusion drive is so dangerous to other ships.

On the pacificists becoming warriors - that happened pretty quickly even in the first Kzin story “The Warriors”. Kzinti attacked the Angel’s Pencil, the pilot figured it out and immediately used the ships drive (which conveniently was also a laser for long distance communication) and destroyed the Kzinti ship. I always thought that was a point Niven was trying to make as well - no matter how much the ARM worked at breeding violence out of humans, all it took was one good threat to one’s survival to bring all the old habits back.

75

If I recall correctly it was rather that a reaction drive is a weapon in direct proportion to it’s efficiency as a drive.

I seem to recall that there was a mention of launching lasers in Ringworld, during the set-up of the initial meeting between Speaker-to-Animals and Louis Wu, so I don’t think that they were an invention of the M-K books. Certainly they were expanded for the M-K books, but not an invention of them.

76

Err… :smack:

it’s not my fault. That was my good twin, trying to ruin my reputation, again. Yeah, that’s it. My good twin got out of his cage and started screwing things up again.

77

Yeah, it’s gone into quite a lot: the idea that Earth really does have a system of ready-made weaponry on board practically every ship- all while the Kzinti telepaths are telling their masters that the Earthinglings have absolutely no weapons, honest!

78

That was a William Tenn story, wasn’t it?

79

I want to explain my position, because I don’t want to be seen as waffling or backpedaling. I acknowledge that Niven talks about the way the weapon systems were developed and that earlier stories mention these components. I’m not satisfied with the way he depicts the pacifist society transforming to a war footing. I’m not saying that he can’t, but that he’sd only treated it briefly. And this is a big deal – look at the work of Niven’s idol, Robert Heinlein’s “The Puppet Masters”, wherre the government is aware of an alien invasion threat (and is even prepared for war), yet moves with glacial slowness. The story of how humankind really got up and into the war – a sort of Man-Kzin “1776” – hasn’t been told, although the groundwork’s been prepared.

80

Oh, ok. Have you read the later Man-Kzin War books? There are two stories where they reveal that most of the sociopaths, pyschopaths and paranoid schizophrenics of human society are working at ARM…and the the rest of the employees are made into paranoid schizophrenics while working there by a cocktail of drugs… so it’s not as thought human violence was eradicated, just heavily supressed.