Dealing with Souls (The Host)

[Murazor]

I've already posted this in Spacebattles, but since I am interested in getting different opinions...

I finally was convinced to give Stephanie Meyer's (author of Twilight fame) The Host a try. The book turned out to be marginally less stomach churning than I was expecting and even left me with a couple of plot bunnies that probably shall never be used.

It also left me with the idea for this thread, because rarely have I read a sci-fi book that hands an entire species the hat for Banality of Evil to such an extreme. Said aliens, the Souls, are silvery centipede-like brainworms with the ability to take over the bodies of pretty much anything that has a developed neural system (other hosts species mentioned include bear-like things, cow sized arachnids, underwater algae-like aliens with a thousand eyes, freaking flowers and half a dozen others).

The Souls seem to largely lack culture of their own, since life in Earth is noted to be pretty much the same (down to the manufacture of junk food like Cheetos) except now that humans are only flesh suits for the brainworms everything is supposed to be a Sugar Bowl world with no violence, hunger or environmental problems.

The Souls at the time of the novel have no biological drive or external factors that could move them to take new worlds for hosts. It is mentioned that the first alien host species ("the vultures") weren't good, but that doesn't exactly justify using vulture technology to go to the worlds of other species that had been their victims and take them over. Nonetheless, expand they do and do so very deliberately (Earth's conquest, for example, didn't begin until the Souls were sure that their wundermedicine could heal the worst human injuries with a couple of pills). Even more damning, one story told by the main Soul character pretty much proves that they could take animal hosts and retain their cognitive abilities.

They are also annoyingly self-righteous. They feel horrified about the fact that half of the population of the plant people decided to mass suicide, rather than become hosts. They are outraged about the fact that the diet of one of their host species involves setting on fire a plant-like creature that they later discovered was also intelligent (which made them start making plans to modify the dietary requirements of the animal species and preparing the plant lookalikes as new hosts). And they are extremely smug about how everything is better in the planets they conquer, after mindwiping the bodies they claim.

So... what would be the proper way of dealing with Souls from the point of view of any scifi/fantasy faction you care to name?

[Samuel]

A nice science-fiction civilization would engineer a virus that destroys their ability to control their host. A mean one would make a lethal strain. A ruthless one would simply glass it from orbit. A robotic one would probably find it amusing.

[NecronLord]

I'm infromed they cannot do battle due to pacificsm and abhoring violence. The comedy option would be to set the goa'uld on them.

[Murazor]

I'm infromed they cannot do battle due to pacificsm and abhoring violence. The comedy option would be to set the goa'uld on them.

Not entirely accurate. Most have a deep dislike of violence as a concept, but there is a group, the Seekers, the "caste" who go looking for new worlds and pacify them post-invasion and have been known to use violence when they feel that it is warranted. One of these, for example, kills with a shot to the head one of the human resistance fighters.

[NecronLord]

Weren't they deeply disturbed by doing this? I was under the impression that they literally couldn't stand violence at all, and couldn't even watch mundane human action films. This suggests very limited (at best) military ability.

As for proper way of dealing with them, well, really, are they that impressive technologically? I expect removal or purging figures heavily in dealing with any brain parasites for most sci-fi settings.

[Murazor]

As for proper way of dealing with them, well, really, are they that impressive technologically? I expect removal or purging figures heavily in dealing with any brain parasites for most sci-fi settings.

Not a lot in post-invasion Earth is different (according to the survivalist crazies living in caves it is all the same, except for the medicines and using spaceships instead of planes). They are definitely advanced in the medical sciences (stuff of the "heal cancer with a pill" is shown) and have interstellar capabilities, but since cryosleep and transit times measured in decades and centuries are mentioned they might be limited to sublight.