But Yeager did not tell the lizards. He did tell Straha, who was a defector living in the US, and who, as far as Yeager could tell intended to remain in the US. It was only after Yeager’s life, and his family’s life was threatened that Yeager decided to provide the information, confidentially to Straha as a “just in case” situation. It was when the situation that Yeager anticipated, namely that the US government was actively trying to kill him and his family, and in fact kidnapped Yeager, and seemed ready to kill him, that Straha decided to use the information that Yeager gave him to re-defect back to the lizards, assuming that Yeager had been killed.
In other words Yeager found out the secret and kept quiet, but when the US government went after him and his family, the precautions he had taken as an insurance kicked in and the secret was out. If I recall, he repeatedly tried to tell his captors that unless he was allowed access to the President “the secret” would be revealed. His captors did not believe him, and Straha defected.
The Lizards had no problem with the idea of killing as many humans as it took to take over the planet and use it and humanity for their own purposes.
I dunno, maybe I am not imaginative enough or too imaginative, but I just can’t buy the whole rationalization route when it comes to the idea of an alien species that comes to invade and colonize our planet. I know that it’s totally unlikely that such a thing would happen—any species advanced enough to cross the stars would also know that it would be much easier and cost-effective to utilize space colonies than try to descend into a gravity well and take over another inhabited planet, despite Turtledove’s logical meanderings to justify it. But if it ever DID happen, I sure as hell wouldn’t be going through moral gymnastics to decide whether they should be killed or not.
I agree that any aliens who come to conquer Earth should be fought against. But not because they are aliens. You’d fight humans trying to conquer the Earth, wouldn’t you? Whether the sentient beings attempting to conquer Earth are Homo sapiens or some other species is irrelevant.
Oooh, and this goes back to my previous post, even!
So, it’s Lizards vs Draka? Where do I sign up to join the Lizards? It would be infinitely preferable to have the Lizards conquer humanity than to allow the Draka to continue to exist.
I don’t know. That would depend on the circumstances. Is Earth being run by a brutal dictatorship? Then maybe humans coming in and setting things right wouldn’t be so bad. But the difference is: they’d be HUMANS. I could understand their motivations, understand who they are. They would be fighting for their home the same as the people fighting them, because they would have to originally be from Earth.
An alien…you may THINK you know what makes it tick, but you could never be sure. It might have motivations you would simply never be able to understand. In that sense, Turtledove’s aliens simply aren’t alien enough.
And in my first post in this thread, I was of the opinion that in such a battle, I would wait to let one wipe out the other, then attack the survivors. Let the Lizards wipe out the Draka, then take on the Lizards, or vice versa.
The main series is Marching Through Georgia (1988), Under the Yoke (1989), and The Stone Dogs (1990), all by S.M. Stirling, which cover the “alternate history”. These three books were reprinted in an omnibus edition called The Domination in 2000. Stirling also wrote Drakon (1995) which is related to the series. And there’s an anthology Drakas (2000), in which various other authors wrote short stories in Stirling’s setting.
I don’t agree - habitable planets don’t require constant maintenance, energy and life support to sustain life. If offered the choice between colonizing one or the other, I’d choose the planet everytime.