Moviefone made note last year of the coming invasion of films about coming invasion of aliens. I’ve noticed it, too, and I don’t need to actively watch TV to pick up on the trailers — all I need to hear in the background as I maniacally type away is scary music, military lingo bandied about, and some futuristic flight noises and explosions.
Though novels are probably a better vehicle than actiony sci-fi movies to delve into the details (probably), I like to determine why aliens would bother invading earth. It’s very unlikely, given a few safe assumptions and a dash or two of inductive logic, that aliens would bother invading earth — assuming aliens exist (one of the aforementioned assumptions).
First, we’re going to assume that the aliens that would pose a threat to earth are technologically advanced enough to travel here safely and mount a considerable attack. It does no good to consider aliens in a primitive state since all they can really do is curse at us from their depressing boneyard of a planet.
If they have the technology and resources enough to invade earth, it’s not likely that they would do so for a number of reasons. They would probably not do it out of self defense because we would not pose that much of a military or biological threat, especially when we’re more or less stuck here. If it’s for our resources, they have two strikes against them: one is that we most likely would not have the resources they are looking for if they are so advanced (it would have to be something we currently don’t know about), and it’s far far far less costly and more beneficial in many ways for the aliens to voluntarily exchange with us. If they get Element X and we get some of their technology, we both benefit and the aliens get a better rep for future transactions.
Unless the aliens were given their military and transportive technology by another race, it’s safe to assume that they place a high value on cooperation and material advancement (I’m not one to think that because they have weapons it means they are warlike). So unless they have an extremely provincial disposition it makes sense that they would want to make peaceful contact with us, and they would know the best way to go about it without triggering a self-preservation response out of us — because, let’s face it, some of us are going to freak right-the-heck out and become dangerous if they make contact.
This also means that, if they value the material sciences enough to develop advanced traveling technology and enough of a sense of adventure to be so distant from home, that they would want to learn from our planet. If we don’t have much to offer in terms of technology, we would be an anthropological curiosity in the very least.
There’s left only two reasonable scenarios where we are invaded: if they are warlike by their nature to the degree that they are willing to spend so much time and resources in destroying entire planets of living things for no other reason — or if they were coerced to invade us, either by their own government (sorry, there’s my libertarianism again) or they are being used by another, master alien race as slaves (expendable resources, more or less) to invade for their benefit.
I tend to the think the second half of the latter scenario to be more likely, because I think they would have less and less need for such a strong government; their technology would mitigate their need for centralized, monopolized power. The slave-invader scenario works better, especially if the master race gifted the unfortunate, less-advanced proxies the technology (an idea I mentioned a few paragraphs before) and were faced with an ultimatum to invade us or be exterminated.
Email me with your ideas on this; I’d like to hear them. If you do, put “welcome ta earf” in the subject line, even though Will Smith clearly pronounced the “th”.
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