OK. What do you hate about alien invasion stories? What cliche do you dread seeing in alien invasion novels and movies?

What would you like to see happen in an alien invasion story that has never been done before in your honest opinion?

What's the best alien invasion story? The worst?

What I don't like about alien invasion stories is all this anal-probe shit. It's kinda gross, it doesn't make any sense, and it's really annoying.

. . . Oh . . . Wait . . . Those're alien abduction stories.

. . . Hehe. Never mind.

Yeah . . . . Anal-probes . . . don't want to go there . . . .

Mee neether. ;)

I can't think of any cliches... well, just like all the cultural icons be destroyed, like in Independence Day or whatever.


What I really want to see done in an alien invasion are the Zerg. That would be bloody killer.

Having the aliens as non humanoid bugs has been done to death.

So's the "pluck makes up for total lack of decent technology" plot line.

Lets not forget the "HHmm, what odd things these humans are, we must capture some and study them...." alien motivation.

Best and worst alien invasion stories? No idea. havn't read any for a while.

By the way, are you an E E smith fan perchance?

I absolutely hate it when an author pulls some sort of nonsensical dues ex machine crap to save the earth from the alien menace. It’s a very common problem with the genera.

genera? Genre? excise me while I check my dictionary.

god in the machine crap? Can you give an example, I'm having trouble working out exactly what you mean. Do you mean that someone manages to attain godlike status and therefore kicks butt?

(And the are you an E E Smith fan question is directed at Lensman Z313)

You’re right, it’s spelled “genre.”

“Deus ex machina” is a literary term for when an author saves the day with a wildly improbably plot twist that doesn’t make sense and/or doesn’t have any logical connection to what’s been happening so far in the story. For example, in the movie Minority Report when Tom Cruise is trapped in the police headquarters and is apparently about to be captured but manages to escape through a giant bathtub drain that’s inexplicably placed in the center of the room, that’s dues ex machina. Or in Star Wars Episode One when the Trade Federation is about to crush the Gungan army and destroy all of Naboo’s space fighters, but is suddenly defeated when Anakin manages to accidentally fly into the TF command ship AND accidentally fire a single shot that destroys the entire ship and deactivates the droid army, that’s dues ex machina.

You see this all the time in alien invasion stories. Like in War of the Worlds, when the aliens with vastly superior technology somehow forget to investigate whether or not earth germs make them sick, or the ridiculously improbably ending for Independence Day.

Basically any time an author can’t think of a realistic, believable way to get his heroes out of trouble and has to resort to something unlikely and stupid, it’s dues ex machine.

OK. What do you hate about alien invasion stories? What cliche do you dread seeing in alien invasion novels and movies?

The whole "Earth would so pwn the aliens" crap. We would loose. Thank goodness for The Outer Limits and The Twilight Zone.

Deus ex machina would also be applicable to every M. Night Shamalanadingdong movie (Signs, The Village, etc).

What's the best alien invasion story?

One of the better ones I've read is Footfall by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle.

Harry Turtledoves' WorldWar novels are pretty enthralling, though more fantasy than sci-fi given that they take place in a timeline that never was, and the invaders are conveniently JUST advanced enough to take on WWII-era Earth (despite being vastly outnumbered). If they had arrived 30 or 40 years later, which is an inconsequential period to them, they would have had very little chance of even landing. The author's habit of repeating what he considers important background - especially the moral aspects of the Nazi holocaust - makes for tedium and yawns in places.

Having said that, the stories are well-written and incredibly complex, with dozens of interesting characters on both sides. Perhaps Turtledove's most impressive achievement is to get away with portraying certain Nazis - even SS men - as heroes, in the face of a common threat to all human nations...

The worst-resolved alien invasion concept I ever read was probably DC Comics' JLA: New World Order graphic novel. It introduced a force of 80 superstrong, shapeshifting, telepathic Martians, each with more powers than Superman. And, since fire is a Martian's only psychological vulnerability, mankind was ultimately able to beat them just by lighting a lot of bonfires! (OK... we did have overwhelming numerical superiority, again...)

It's got to be the alien 'achilles heel' cop out. Take signs. I mean, what a load of dross, that aliens can't get wet. I mean, what do they drink? It never rains on their planet? They don't have a sea, or any rivers? Are completely unaware of the effects of water, but can travel across the galaxy, .... crap. Utter crap.

At least in 'Alien Nation' it was salt water the aliens hated.

'War of the Worlds' I can forgive, because it was written in more naive times, and I think a simple illness saving our bacon is far better than us kicking arse, or supposedly being clever.

What I'd like to see in an alien invasion movie, is aliens coming to earth, and pretending to be the second coming, and enslaving all the Christians, who work for next to nothing, and get tithed to poverty, whilst making the invaders prosperous. The atheists get left alone, because the aliens don't want the cover blown, or the delicate power balance upset.

Every once in a while, I get really annoyed at the idea of an "alien invasion" story. That, of course, leaves me with E.T., Starman, and CE-3.

My favorite alien invasion story, to this day, is V, both in miniseries (including The Final Battle) and literary (by A.C. Crispin) forms.

Of course, if I could get Richard O'Brien to admit that Frank was building clones to take over the Earth, well, the Rocky Horror Show would become my favorite, for obvious reasons. What I still can't figure out about that one, though, is whether things would have gotten out of hand if Brad and Janet were, well, not so freakishly uptight.

And crawling on the planet's face,
Some insects called the human race.
Lost in time, and lost in space,
And meaning.

Signs was utter shite. The writer obviously didn't pass even the lowest stage of science at school as everyone is taught that the air we breath has large quantities of water vapour.

The worst alien invasion stories are those of the "Body Snatchers" ilk. "Oh yay, we're telepathic, let's take over Earth and get our asses kicked by a boy".

If anyone has ever read the Mission: Earth series of books by L. Ron Hubbard they'll find an excellent invasion scheme. The aliens look more or less human (with a few abnormalities) and have been keeping tabs on Earth. Now they want Earth as it is iin a critical location as a staging post in their upcoming expansion (meaning Earth isn't really important in what we can offer, just as a base of operations) and they send some cloak and dagger agents in. These agents have to prevent Earth from destroying itself so an invasion can take place at a later date. I've only read the first two books and I've just ordered the next in the series. Well worth the read.

Deus ex machina would also be applicable to every M. Night Shamalanadingdong movie (Signs, The Village, etc).I’d definitely agree that Signs was a dues ex machina crap-fest. I mean, the aliens can travel across interstellar space but can’t get out of a wooden pantry? And think about it, if you were going to stage a raid on a planet that was covered with a substance that was toxic to you, wouldn’t take the simple precaution of wearing a protective suit or something?

If anyone has ever read the Mission: Earth series of books by L. Ron Hubbard they'll find an excellent invasion scheme.

Is that the one where the narrator is a criminal and Hubbard is bitterly satirical? The whole alien race is just a more corrupt version of humanity, right? I started reading the first book, but it was way too long. Besides, I don't find Hubbard is as funny as Hubbard thinks he is.

I think Battlefield: Earth was far better, but not exactly an invasion story. A post-invasion story.

And Signs... Jesus, what were those aliens thinking? I'm surprised that the water vapor in the air didn't hurt them. Besides, what would you want with a bunch of slaves where 80% of their body composition is deadly poisionous? I mean, all you have to do is spit in their eye or bleed on them....

That is correct. The whole story is seen through the eyes of a crooked alien government employee. Yeah the books are long I admit but I did not read them for the satire (didn't realise it was supposed to be satiracle until I read reviews), I just read them for the decent story.

Battlefield Earth is a great book. Pity most regard it in the same light as the movie.

I heard the movie flashed "Dianetics" every sixty seconds or so. Did you know Travolta digs the scientology?

What about the Tripods trilogy by John Christopher? The alien "Masters" in that were quite believable: from a high-gravity world which made them vastly stronger than humans, long-lived enough to cross interstellar space at sublight speeds, possessed of no morality applicable to the rights of other creatures, unable to breathe terrestrial air - so they were planning to reconstituate the Earth's atmosphere, allowing full colonization. The inevitable extinction of humanity which would result was not an act of malice or preventative extermination - it was simply an unfortunate side-effect of pursuing their own race's interests.

And the human resistance, hiding in the shadows of an Earth run by the Masters' mind-control, were eventually able to bring them down by subterfuge - and carefully planned sabotage. Flooding their cities with our air doesn't seem so incredible, just requiring determination and resourcefullness.

The Masters did have the inevitable Achilles' heel, though, which made human victory possible: their very low tolerance for alcohol...

Tripods. Agreed.

I've always liked 'The Puppet Masters' by Robert Heinlein. The aliens do have an Achilles heel, but it's a more likely weakness than many others.

I've always liked 'The Puppet Masters' by Robert Heinlein. The aliens do have an Achilles heel, but it's a more likely weakness than many others.

What was their fallibility?

I ought to read more Heinlein, even if his stories have dated.

Starthane:
Brief description of their weakness given below, but it's a bit of a spoiler, just to warn you.




The puppet masters are a species of parasitic aliens that control their hosts by sitting between their shoulderblades and tying in to their spinal column - they abducted humans so that they could adapt to our nervous system - and their weakness is that they are entirely dependent upon their host for any kind of dextrous action, and that they have little or no understanding of hygiene.

My favorite alien invasion story would probably be the “Gust Front” series by John Ringo. The aliens end up completely stomping our militaries and taking over everything between the polar ice caps. The human survivors are all driven back to the far north and south polar regions, and the aliens don’t pursue them because they can’t stand cold weather and don’t see the few survivors as a threat worth bothering with. There’s none of the obnoxious “plucky humans saving the day at the last minute by finding the secret alien weakness” stuff.

The human survivors are all driven back to the far north and south polar regions, and the aliens don’t pursue them because they can’t stand cold weather and don’t see the few survivors as a threat worth bothering with. There’s none of the obnoxious “plucky humans saving the day at the last minute by finding the secret alien weakness” stuff.

I don't imagine humans could survive indefinitely on the glaciers anyway - except Eskimos, I guess. On the Antarctic continent, what would anyone eat? Seafood alone might be nutritionally inadequate, and most of the landmass is far removed from the ocean.

I guess that the only way humans could reclaim the Earth, in that scenario, is to somehow bring about another global glaciation episode...

I think Battlefield: Earth was far better, but not exactly an invasion story. A post-invasion story..

I never read the book, but the movie starring John Travolta was abysmal. How could old USAF jet fighters still be in working order after centuries of neglect? How could bronze age-level survivors learn to operate them so quickly? :bugeye:

And, worse, the alien Psychlos were not just defeated - they were exterminated, their whole world destroyed - by the biggest deus ex machina in literature. A single nuclear explosion could trigger a chain reaction in their atmosphere which consumed the entire planet?! Since they were far in advance of humans, should they not reached the nuclear era long ago - and wiped themselves out, with their very first atomic test? :confused:

I loved Battlefield: Earth (The book, not the movie).

I never read the book,

That's your problem. The book is better, one hundred times better, than the movie.

And, worse, the alien Psychlos were not just defeated - they were exterminated, their whole world destroyed - by the biggest deus ex machina in literature.

That happens early on in the book, like the first 100 pages, and then you still have 900 more pages to go (It's explained better, too). The book is nothing like the movie.

I loved Battlefield: Earth (The book, not the movie).


Really? I found the book pretty hackneyed. Not as bad as the movie, but that just goes to show that Hollywood can make even a weak story worse. I also remember how that back when I read it in the late seventies, the book carried the blurb, "Soon to be a major motion picture".

I don't imagine humans could survive indefinitely on the glaciers anyway - except Eskimos, I guess. On the Antarctic continent, what would anyone eat? Seafood alone might be nutritionally inadequate, and most of the landmass is far removed from the ocean.Lots of nuclear power and hydroponics.

I hate the fact that in the midst of the invasion the main male and female character fall in love and some how manage to stop and make love as the aliens attack. The alien invasion movies are really bad at doing this. I mean if the world and life as I know it is being destroyed by an alien invasion sex would be the last thing on my mind. Course thats just me and I might be wrong. :confused:

I suppose, if the world you know is being obliterated around you, you would feel a need to grasp any remaining pleasure while you still had the chance. And sharing adversity often knits people together.

However, there was a scene in the first of the Turtledove's WorldWar series (which I previously referred to) in which a man and woman fall into each other's arms as a result of watching another man blasted into gory fragments during an alien air raid :bugeye: . This did strike me as an unusual and disturbing reaction...

I don't imagine humans could survive indefinitely on the glaciers anyway - except Eskimos, I guess. On the Antarctic continent, what would anyone eat? Seafood alone might be nutritionally inadequate, and most of the landmass is far removed from the ocean.

Well, for starters, the poles aren't technically glaciers; they're entire arctic biomes. They'd have access to polar bears, seals, whales, blue berries, walrus, clams, fish, shellfish, and caribou herds.

In the south, they'd have access to seals, whales and penguins.

The polar marine biomes are surprisingly productive ecosystems.

I never read the book, but the movie starring John Travolta was abysmal. How could old USAF jet fighters still be in working order after centuries of neglect? How could bronze age-level survivors learn to operate them so quickly?
There were learning machines that a slave Psychlos race had constructed that beamed thought straight into the head, and besides that, in the book they never flew jets. They used Psychlos ships, which they hijacked.

And, worse, the alien Psychlos were not just defeated - they were exterminated, their whole world destroyed - by the biggest deus ex machina in literature. A single nuclear explosion could trigger a chain reaction in their atmosphere which consumed the entire planet?! Since they were far in advance of humans, should they not reached the nuclear era long ago - and wiped themselves out, with their very first atomic test?
Had the psychlos actually had the appropriate materials to construct atomics on their planet, it would have detonated anyway. And it wasn't a deus ex machina, since after the Psychlos home world was destroyed, every alien species with a ship went and attacked the newly freed humans.

In the south, they'd have access to seals, whales and penguins.

The polar marine biomes are surprisingly productive ecosystems.

I am well aware of that - in biomass terms, more productive than most other parts of the oceans. But, like I said, Antarctica is a big place, with a hinterland cut off from the sea... and by far the most barren land on Earth.

And it wasn't a deus ex machina, since after the Psychlos home world was destroyed, every alien species with a ship went and attacked the newly freed humans.

I didn't know that. Glad to learn that the book is better than the film; it makes sense that the sudden destruction of a star-spanning race would have wider repercussions.

This new War of the Worlds movie looks terrible.
Does anyone plan on seeing it?

Looks terrible? Have you seen a trailer? - I hope so.

I'll watch it. All I've got to lose is the admission price, and a couple of hours.

Yeah, I've seen the trailer. Granted, it was a teaser trailer, but the narration seemed melodramatically lamed. It just really turned me off.

If you watch it and like it, I'll go.

Theres a war of thw worlds movie being made again?
gies a link, is it set in 1910 England, or bowdlerised and set in the USA for reasons of gathering enough of an audience?

I reads in Total Film yesterday that it's going to set in comtemporary America... BAH. They had few details, but figure it will about "post-9/11 Earth goes Independence Day on the Martian malcontents."

Well that means its nothing like the original story.

SPOILER ALERT!!!!!!!!!!



The English armed forces, at the time of writing of the original story, the best in the world, managed to destroy a few tripods and perhaps a cylinder or two, for almost total losses of their troops. Half the point of the story was that the martians were overcome by bacteria, the enemy within man, thus making it a bit of a strong brought low by the weak kind of story, or a watch out we might have trouble with these bacteria kind of story, or something.

That's another thing which bothers me about so much popular sci-fi: human explorers of the future descending to the surface of some unknown Earthlike planet and breathing the air directly, with no thought for how native pathogens might affect them. Could be just as stupid as HG Wells' Martians, and as fatal. Kirk, Riker or Janeway never seemed to suffer from the alien equivalent of the common cold...

Ahhh, I seem to recall that early "popular" SF had people testing the atmosphere and worrying about such occurences. Then as things got more sophisticated, they worried about them less because of supposed incompatabilities between the alien life forms and our own, meaning the aliens couldnt eat us. Though for Star trek, you should always remember its SF for Kansas housewives. (that is not a saying original to me, but i forget where I got it from)

The most likely pathological reactions to alien microbes would be allergic reactions (easily fatal) or anaerobic gangrene type pathology. Alien microbes would almost certainly not infect us in the the way earth-like bacteria cause infections as they will probably find us inedible if not toxic.


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My vote for best Alien invasion story remains Forge of God, by Greg Bear. Not only a realistic scenario but a good solution to the Fermi Paradox.

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Orion's Arm! (http://www.orionsarm.com)

Alien microbes would almost certainly not infect us in the the way earth-like bacteria cause infections as they will probably find us inedible if not toxic.

In the same way, it's discouraging to think that a future interstellar human civilization may have very few alien delicacies to enjoy, like gagh or Romulan ale or whatever. There would be no nourishment, just poison, in an alien biosphere.

as they will probably find us inedible if not toxic.
Or they would find us completely edible and tasty. There are bacterias that will easily digest organic material if they don't face stress. There's no reason there wouldn't be the same kind of bacteria on another planet that wouldn't be bothered at all by our immune system and go directly for our nutrients and carbon.

Extraterrestrial microbes that attempt to use our nutrients and carbon will be less efficient than infectious agents from our own biosphere; bacteria on our planet use the same array of amino acids, enzymes and protiens to make up their biochemistry, but an alien biology would almost certainly use a different array of amino acids and enzymes which may or may not overlap our array to a greater or lesser extent..

An alien microbe would sometimes, often, or always find it necessary to break down the proteins and other organic material of an earth organism into its component parts, into simple carbon compounds, nitrates, water, sulphates, chlorites, using a lot more energy in the process and being much less efficient in most cases.

Perhaps carbohydrates and hydrocarbons would be usable as sources of energy, but not all of these are usable even by Earth organisms.

If a true interstellar civilisation were established, perhaps involving intelligences from many different worlds, the microbial entourage carried in the bodies of each member species would probably begin to adapt to the various other species. In time, entirely new classes of pathogen might develop, which fed specifically by disassembling complex organic molecules into their simple subunits - as Erburacum suggests. Such adaptations, though perhaps rendering the microbes less competitive within their specific original biospheres, could allow them to invade newly-discovered biospheres without further modification.

BTW Erburacum, how does Greg Bear solve the Fermi paradox in the novel you mentioned earlier?

how about "Childhood's End" by Arthur C. Clarke

Never read that - is it one where the aliens look like demons, explaining the origin of the traditional demon image?

BTW Eburacum, how does Greg Bear solve the Fermi paradox in the novel you mentioned earlier?

He suggests that the galaxy is a wild and dangerous place, full of intelligent races with non-human psychological characteristics; with our radio transmissions we are calling out, like a child lost in the woods, and we are likely to call down the wolves upon ourselves. Any civilisation that broadcasts openly in this dangerous environment risks drawing the wrong kind of atttention.

A planet like the Earth develops life, and becomes a complex system like an organism; Bear calls it a 'planetism'. Once intelligent life develops, the planetism is ready to spread copies of itself into the wider galaxy; this reproduction would involve the processes of colonisation and terraforming that capture our imagination. However the skies are not empty, and the galactic ecology has many predators; like baby turtles sprinting for the sea, only a few attempts at reproduction are successful.

So first contact, when it comes, is often the last and only contact for a youthful civilisation like ours?

Sounds like what Iain Banks called an "outside context problem:" a civilization usually encounters such a problem only once, the same way as a sentence encounters a full stop.

The invasion in Childhood's End is apparently a very benign invasion, although the human race does change beyond all recognition by the end of the book. It really is Clarke's best work.

Y
“Deus ex machina” is a literary term for when an author saves the day with a wildly improbably plot twist ...some are quite good, even "Twilight Zone" & the "Outer Limits" had them


Minority Report when Tom Cruise is trapped... but manages to escape through a giant bathtub drain that’s inexplicably placed in the center of the room, hmmm, no, how do you suggest they drain all that liquid?


Or in Star Wars Episode One when the Trade Federation is about to crush the Gungan army and destroy all of Naboo’s space fighters, but is suddenly defeated when Anakin manages to accidentally fly into the TF command ship AND accidentally fire a single shot that destroys the entire ship and deactivates the droid army, that’s dues ex machina. no, he has the 'Force' in him, its like "being in the Zone", 'he shoots, he scores'

http://www.head-cleaners.com/perfsports.html
Being "in the zone" is often alternatively described as a state of mind where the individual finds him- or herself observing his or her body executing movements or observes as he or she gives a speech. Or it is described as feeling every move or action flow from within somehow.

Well-learned complex physical movements are better handled by the cerebellum -- a part of the brain that functions outside of conscious awareness and manages very complicated movements with greater speed and efficacy than the cerebrum where we consciously solve problems and think about what we're doing. The cerebellum has to have experience, though.

Like in War of the Worlds, when the aliens with vastly superior technology somehow forget to investigate whether or not earth germs make them sick,
maybe our germs are more virolent than Martian ones, or their vaccines or air-filters didn't work,?


or the ridiculously improbably ending for Independence Day. what? the computer virus or the weakness when starting up the 'primary weapon'?