We Will Destroy Your Planet Read online

  The next stage of the alien invasion genre came from the US. This is perhaps unsurprising, as the popularity of Wells’s novel had led a number of American newspaper publishers to commission their own sequels to War of the Worlds, which brought the invasion to America, and took the fight back to Mars. In the first years of the 20th century, rip-offs abounded, though these became less popular during the years of the First World War.

  In the 1920s and ’30s, however, science fiction, inspired by so much post-war technological development, boomed. With it, so did the alien invasion. The futurism of science exploration blended with the vicarious thrills of the pulp era to produce franchises such as Tarzan (who also fought creatures from a hollow Earth), Flash Gordon, and Buck Rogers. Killer Kane and Ming the Merciless embarked on their campaigns to crush the forces of Earth. In print, strange aliens from far corners of the galaxy set their sights on Earth in the works of E. E. ‘Doc’ Smith and others.

  To be fair, most of these villains were, like the invaders of the earlier European invasion literature, thinly disguised racist stereotypes, usually of the Asiatic variety. This isn’t surprising, as invasion stories have always been about fear of the incomer who isn’t part of the local group.

  War of the Worlds again changed that, this time in the form of a radio drama produced by Orson Welles. This 1938 Halloween broadcast is the alien invasion story to which all others still aspire, having caused a number of listeners to believe that three-legged Martian war machines really were trashing New Jersey.

  Rather than disappearing during the Second World War, as invasion literature had done during the First World War, the alien invasion story simply took more overt sides, with alien invaders in the pulps and comics siding with the Axis forces in stories, which merely served to give the heroes all the more reason to fight against the villains.

  Thanks to both Wells and the pulps and comics, the alien invasion had become a staple of written SF by the 1930s. The sub-genre would become more accessible to a wider audience, however, on screen.

  It didn’t take long for Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers to become Saturday morning serial films, bringing their alien invaders to cinemas everywhere, but what sparked the next shift in the genre was the Cold War and the rise of the UFO report. The year 1947 was a good one for UFOs, with the first reported sighting of so-called (by a reporter, not by the witness) flying saucers, and the original Roswell incident. Over the next few years, flying saucers from space were big news, hitting front pages in the US on a regular basis, and making massed flypasts over Washington DC in 1952. Couple that with the Cold War paranoia about Communism, and the fear of the devastation caused by the all-new nuclear technology, and what do you get?

  You got a golden age of alien invasion movies, in which Communists of some form or another (either politically, just being from the Red planet or being generally faceless) came to the USA and caused havoc. Earth vs. the Flying Saucers, Invaders from Mars, the George Pal movie version of War of the Worlds, The Thing from Another World, and many more such movies graced the screens.

  The genre also mutated somewhat, with the related alien infiltration genre coming to prominence in both literature and film. The likes of Jack Finney’s 1954 novel The Bodysnatchers, filmed several times and better known as Invasion of the Bodysnatchers, and Robert Heinlein’s The Puppet Masters (1951) ushered in the popular theme of alien conquest by infiltration rather than overt warfare. Because these books and movies came to prominence at the time of the Cold War, during the height of the McCarthy Hearings and the paranoia that anyone could secretly be a Communist spy for the Soviets, this whole side of the genre has become viewed as an allegory for that fear.

  It’s certainly true in some cases – The Puppet Masters repeatedly compares the invading parasites directly to Russia and Communism – but this is an interpretation attributed more by critics and audiences than by the creators. For example, the 1956 film version of Invasion of the Bodysnatchers is often held to be the definitive Reds-under-the-beds paranoia allegory, but writer Jack Finney, producer Walter Mirisch, director Don Siegel, and star Kevin McCarthy all maintained that no such thing was intended.

  In the UK, alien invaders were almost as popular, but less open to interpretation as being based on fear of Communism as they were clearly highlighting the wounds of the recent war and the loss of Empire. Where America feared the soulless commune from outer space, Britain was wary of the dangers of German-inspired rocket technology in the Quatermass serials, and of the resurgence of Nazism in the form of the Daleks.

  The other big difference between alien invasions on American and British screens is that American media tended to put alien invasion stories on the cinema screen – or at least at the drive-in theatre – while British invaders were far more likely to threaten the heroes of TV shows than films. Partly this may be because American SF series tended to be more about the pioneer spirit, going out and exploring, while their movies were more about bringing thrills to an audience. It also probably relates to the fact that British cinema simply never was as big on SF movies, while TV, needing more hours of programming to fill, could be more imaginative.

  Oddly, while the ‘other’ or alien that Hollywood feared in the 1950s was supposedly in the form of Communism, the Eastern Bloc made its own SF movies, which were far less driven by fear. This means they tended not to be invasion stories in the typical sense, but were usually about human explorers going to other planets (Venus was a common destination) and there meeting utopian alien civilizations who either already were communist themselves or were happy to learn about it.

  This probably has less to do with the values of the political system itself, or even the state-mandated propaganda side of things, and more to do with the effects of having gone through a lot of very bloody recent history, up to and including the Nazi invasion of the Second World War.

  In fact, it’s worth noting that the country that really took the alien invasion genre to heart and made it a major part of the entertainment media was the one big player in the Second World War that was never threatened with invasion, let alone actually invaded.

  Britain had been under threat of invasion for the first three years or so of the war, and its alien invasion stories tended to either reflect the recent fascist threat, or be more subtle types of invasion of the land of the living that had evolved from ghost stories and demonology. Japan had been occupied by the US, and its fictional alien invaders tended to be technologically superior powers who stayed remote and used monsters of mass destruction that reflected both the nuclear bomb and the constant threat of earthquakes and tsunami.

  Throughout all these different periods and fashions of storytelling, H. G. Wells’s War of the Worlds has still remained the touchstone for the alien invasion story. It has been reinvented for every generation. A Hollywood movie with Oscar-winning visual effects in the 1950s, which relocated the story to contemporary America (as had Orson Welles’s radio version), was followed by a jingoistic sequel TV series in the late 1980s. A Steven Spielberg remake a few years ago tried to make it more a tale of obstacles keeping a shattered family apart. Whether it is Jeff Wayne’s unofficial, haunting musical version, or a big screen adaptation, War of the Worlds still casts its long shadow. Mars Attacks, which started as a trading card series in the 1950s, before becoming a comic book series and movie in the 90s, and still going strong in card and comic format today, is a black-humoured pastiche. The Martians may come in flying saucers rather than cylinders, but they have their heat-rays all present and correct. The blockbuster Independence Day even managed to update the virus idea, by using a computer virus uploaded from a laptop to knock out the systems in the alien mothership, leading to the defeat of their invasion.

  V and Independence Day share an ethos that dramatic imagery is preferable to practicality or sense. Both invasions begin with gigantic saucers hovering over the cities of the Earth, making for jaw-dropping visuals that certainly impress both the characters and the audience, but which would be
rather foolish for an actual invader, who would surely rather keep their plans and presence a secret until they actually attack.

  Alien invasions have not always been depicted as necessarily hostile or evil, however, and there is a whole sub-genre of the benevolent invasion, exemplified by Arthur C. Clarke’s Childhood’s End, in which the aliens are seeking to better humanity. Both versions of the film The Day the Earth Stood Still threaten this, as the aliens there are concerned about humanity and human effects on the galaxy at large.

  Oddly, SF has more recently taken a turn back towards the more paranoid style of alien invasions, but this time with religiously radicalized terrorists with suicide bombs in mind as the threat to be converted into hostile aliens for the purposes of entertainment.

  The alien invasion genre has also adapted over time to new forms of media. From books it moved to films. When radio and TV came along, aliens invaded the new formats very quickly. Nowadays the alien invasion genre is hugely popular in video games, second only to military shooters and racing games, at least in the West.

  This is perhaps not surprising, as the game that really sparked the video game medium itself was an alien invasion game - the legendary Space Invaders.

  The other unusual form of alien invasion story that is seen to subvert the usual genre is the fake invasion. This is a story in which an apparent alien invasion is actually intended to unite humanity against a (non-existent) common enemy. The most famous example is probably the giant squid at the end of Alan Moore’s graphic novel Watchmen, though this element is left out of the movie version.

  Moore has been criticized for supposedly taking the idea from the Architects of Fear episode of The Outer Limits, but in fact this type of faux invasion has a longer history than that. Theodore Sturgeon originated the idea in the short story Unite and Conquer in 1948, while Kurt Vonnegut used it as the basis for his full-length novel The Sirens of Titan in 1959.

  There have actually been several suggestions in real life that this strategy should be tried. In 1983, US President Ronald Reagan suggested in a broadcast that the US and the then Soviet Union would unite against an alien invasion. In 2011, Paul Krugman suggested that building defences against potential alien invasion could spur financial growth in the world’s economies. The alien invasion story may not just be fiction for long, even if the aliens themselves are.

  THE BEST OF THE INVASIONS

  The best fictional invasions will be valuable research and inspiration for both invaders and defenders, so here is a quick rundown of those that are worth experiencing.

  CONQUERING THE EARTH IN PRINT

  Some memorable or important alien invasion novels, which should be read by anyone with an interest in either attacking or defending the Earth:

  WAR OF THE WORLDS (H. G. Wells): The definitive alien invasion novel from which all others take their lead. Originally published in 1898, the nameless narrator’s tale of travelling through an English countryside besieged by Martians still holds up today. The novel is short, but introduces so many of both the familiar elements and ones well thought-out according to the science of the time: the arrival of a technologically and militarily superior adversary, battles in which the cream of Earth’s military are outclassed, the bravery and tragedy of the collateral damage, aliens using humans for food, terraforming by means of Martian plant life (the Red Weed) altering the atmosphere… it’s all here.

  THE PUPPET MASTERS (Robert Heinlein): A quite exciting little adventure, in which a secret agent discovers that some of the enemy spies and saboteurs he has been hunting are from rather further away than Russia. In fact they are parasitic aliens that control people. This is the granddaddy of all alien parasite stories, of course, and the likes of the writers who created the Goa’uld in Stargate owe it quite a debt.

  THE BODY SNATCHERS (Jack Finney): Almost as definitive as Wells’s expose of colonialist military invasion, but covering a stealthier attempt to conquer the Earth. As with Wells’s book, the story is told by a first person narrator, but this story is more unsettling, perhaps. If you’re only familiar with the film versions – official and unofficial – you’ll find that the original book has a clearer picture of the ultimate threat to life on Earth, as the invaders cannot reproduce, but only have a five-year lifespan, meaning the Earth would be sterile after that.

  CHILDHOOD’S END (Arthur C. Clarke): This is an example of the benevolent rule of a successful invader, in which the story is told by a person who serves the Overlords, demonic-looking beings who actually invaded the Earth in order to prevent humanity from turning to the Dark Side and conquering the universe. This they achieve by enlightening humanity, at least to start with… As with all of Clarke’s work, it is thought out with scientific precision, and contains some interesting reversals and characterization of the effects of an invasion on both human society and the invaders.

  FOOTFALL (Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle): This reinvents the alien invasion for the 1980s, with a doorstop-sized epic in which pachydermic aliens use sensible strategies like research and asteroid bombardment in an attempt to conquer the Earth. Not all of their attempts at research are successful, as proven when they think they can learn about humanity well enough from notorious 1970s blue movie, Deep Throat.

  As well as having epic action, and terrifyingly believable asteroid strikes, Footfall does a good job of depicting the invaders as having an alien mindset, and inability to understand humanity – who to them, are the incomprehensible aliens.

  WORLDWAR (Harry Turtledove): This is a series of military SF pseudo-historicals in which reptilian aliens invade the Earth at the same time as the Second World War breaks out. The series delves into the relative political and moral developments that would have occurred in such a situation, as well as being action-packed.

  THE DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS (John Wyndham) is worth mentioning, as it does cover the events that occur when an alien species – the Triffids, a race of mobile carnivorous plants – begins to spread and multiply on Earth. This species is not extraterrestrial in nature, however (the narrator explicitly states this), but almost certainly an artificial creation from a Soviet lab.

  WE CONTROL YOUR TV SET

  Aliens have been invading our TV sets for years – and these stories have been broadcast into the universe at large, so who knows who may be watching these memorable examples?

  QUATERMASS II (October–November 1955): This six-part BBC serial dealt with the discovery of an invasion of parasites that had already been in progress for some years. Like The Puppet Masters it deals with parasitic aliens – with a collective consciousness – who control human minds into building environmental facilities for them. They plan to terraform the Earth later, until the scientists working on a new rocket uncover their plan. This series, like many British alien invasion stories, echoes the Nazi threat from the Second World War, with work camps, black-uniformed guards, and bomb-like objects falling from the skies on peaceful English towns (these objects actually bring the alien parasites).

  The story was remade by Hammer films in 1957, but this changes the ending, so that, rather than terraforming the Earth, the aliens have been growing giant blob-like life forms which burst free into the countryside. The serial also inspired (to put it politely) many invasions in the later series Doctor Who, in some cases literally shot-for-shot.

  Note that there is also an invasion of sorts in the following Quatermass serial, Quatermass and the Pit, though this invasion is actually a delayed effect from the original landing five million years earlier, and the ‘invaders’ are just the segment of the human population who have the genetic memories of the long-dead aliens (who are, yes, Martians again).

  THE MONSTERS ARE DUE ON MAPLE STREET (The Twilight Zone, March 1960): This episode of the legendary anthology series depicts not an outright military alien invasion, but some intelligent preparatory strategy on the part of the aliens, and good observation of human group reactions and psychology. In the episode, the aliens simply let their ship be glimpsed briefly,
cut the power to a residential area, and let the residents react as they feel appropriate – which means suspicion, tribalism, and eventually violence. As an example of the divide-and-conquer strategy, it is worth giving thought to.

  TO SERVE MAN (The Twilight Zone, 1962): Based on a short story by Damon Knight from 1950, this is a good example of the apparently benevolent alien arrival, which conceals a secret objective to turn humanity into food resources. Much of its original power depends on the twist over the double meaning of the word ‘serve’ in the alien documentation, and this twist became sufficiently widespread in pop culture that it would no longer be a surprise today, but it still shows a well thought-out plan of deceptive conquest.

  THE ARCHITECTS OF FEAR (The Outer Limits, 1963): This technically isn’t an alien invasion, but an example of the fake one created by scientists hoping to scare humanity into making peace during the Cold War.

  THE DALEK INVASION OF EARTH (Doctor Who, 1964): This is only the second serial to feature the Daleks, and the first of their many attempts to invade the Earth in the past, present, or future. In this story, the Daleks attempt to replace the magnetic core of the Earth with a power unit, which is not a very practical idea. The idea of Daleks invading the Earth, and the sights of them having famous London landmarks all to themselves – the first time very nonhuman aliens had been shown so convincingly in real locations on screen – was so popular with viewers, however, that not only did they try to invade in several other stories, but this story was remade as a cinema film, which tells the same story, with more fun, in about a third of the time.