Mere interplanetary invasion – attack from another world of
our own Solar System – is hard to plot plausibly, given
modern knowledge of the unlikelihood (in fact the virtual
impossibility) that any other world circling our Sun could
harbour a technological civilization which might pose a
threat to us. But what about invasion from another star
system?

Here the problem is different. It’s plausible enough to
imagine that starfaring species exist out there, and that
one of them might want to grab Earth for their own use. But
if so, how could we possibly make a fight of it against a
race advanced enough to have conquered interstellar space?
Wouldn’t it be so one-sided as to furnish scant material for
a story? The tale, it seems, would be one of destruction
rather than invasion. Rather like a human army versus an
anthill.

One possible answer might be that a race from a dying
planet, wishing to change worlds, might be so few in number
that our vastly greater numbers might compensate for our
equally vast technological inferiority. This is perhaps the
rationale for the old TV series The Invaders, starring Roy
Thinnes.

Another possible answer is that the foe might be essentially
parasitic, with no need for its own civilization; it merely
infiltrates the host culture and turns it against itself.
This is what happens in R A Heinlein’s classic The Puppet
Masters (which I count as a tale of interstellar invasion,
as although the immediate origin of the invaders in this
novel is Titan, the suggestion is that their ultimate origin
is interstellar).

A perhaps even more ingenious solution to the problem of
plausibility can be found in Larry Niven and Jerry
Pournelle’s novel Footfall, and also in Stephen King’s The
Tommyknockers. The stories are very different – in Footfall
the invasion affects the whole world, in The Tommyknockers
it is local in impact and is defeated by the efforts of one
man. But in both of these novels what gives us a chance
against the invaders is the fact that they are in a sense
“freeloaders” or scavengers, who have stolen or inherited a
spacefaring technology which they could never have invented
for themselves.

They are nevertheless formidable opponents, and the reader
can feel a proper awe at the immensity of the task of
defeating them. But at least the idea of resistance is not
utterly ridiculous, as it would be if we were fighting the
actual originators of the starships.

All the examples I have given also deal effectively with
another possible objection – namely, the objection that
races advanced enough to master star travel would also be
advanced enough to refrain from imperialism. I’m not sure
that the argument is conclusive in any case, but certainly
it need not apply if the users of the starships are a
desperate few, or parasites, or the galactic equivalent of
delinquent joyriders.

Robert Gibson is caretaker of the Ooranye Project, creating
a fictional giant planet which can be explored on
http://www.ooranye.com. The project’s aim is to meld the
sub genres of Future History and Planetary Romance,
resulting in over a million years of civilization with its
own societies, customs, conflicts, triumphs and disasters,
politics, philosophies, flora and fauna, empires both human
and non-human, and adventures that range over an area ten
times that of the surface of the Earth. Lovers of planetary
adventure are invited to view the history, comment on the
progress of the project, access the tales and keep in touch
with the developing destiny of Ooranye.

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