Let's Talk Alien Invasion Media

[Lord Revan]

I agree. On the other hand, it is equally true and likely that we will misjudge them and place ourselves at a grave disadvantage.

true enough, but then my post was more to show that aliens shooting themselves in the foot due misunderstanding humans isn't unrealistic or need humans to be in anyway special.

And in both my examples the side who misjudged the other was the more powerful one, after all it's easier to misjudge opponent so that you leave yourself open for an easy defeat or simply a too costly fight if you're fighting a weaker opponent.

[Borgholio]

That's the sort of thing I want to see, that's the sort of enemy I want humanity to triumph over. An enemy that needs to be seriously out-thought as well as out-fought.

Couple examples that (sorta) fit that idea.

1. Starship Troopers
2. Space - Above and Beyond

[biostem]

TBH, the only way that an alien invasion story could work in our favor, (assuming that the aliens are far enough ahead of us to actually make the trip, without behaving stupidly), would be if they wanted to capture the Earth plus its infrastructure and populace intact. Then, it'd be more about resistance and making the occupation too costly for them to carry on. Otherwise, we have to give them air superiority and the sensory ability to detect any group before they can actually do anything.

While a 2nd group of aliens could get involved, on the Earth's side, these stories usually devolve into a "lesser of 2 evils" plot.

Another possibility would be an alien invasion where some "natural event" gives humanity that miniscule chance at success. For instance, imagine that aliens were invading earth, but an asteroid or immense solar flare temporarily disabled/impaired them...

[StarSword]

Another possibility would be an alien invasion where some "natural event" gives humanity that miniscule chance at success. For instance, imagine that aliens were invading earth, but an asteroid or immense solar flare temporarily disabled/impaired them...

Yeah, but that tends to draw accusations of deus ex machina.

The TL;DR version of this thread: Writing is a lot harder than it looks.

[biostem]

I was thinking a bit more on the subject, and another idea that could work is if humanity, in this scenario, is actually quite advanced, but still pre-FTL, (or at least still less advanced than the aliens). Humanity could use their superior numbers and home turf advantage to come out victorious in the end. They could have humanity employ unconventional warfare vs. a technologically superior, but perhaps overconfident force - maybe the aliens aren't used to dirty tactics or "outside the box" thinking - relying too much on their technology to win the day and so on...

[Simon_Jester]

Although you will then get a host of people growling at you because the aliens that 'aren't used to dirty tactics' are "too stupid" and were defeated by "plot..."

[Metahive]

Wait.

You do NOT want to see enemies who are beaten by a clever gambit, but you DO want to see enemies who must be outwitted? There's sort of a contradiction there. You want the enemy to be clever so that you can't beat them by simply deducing their secret weakness and hitting it, because they will have foreseen that ploy and either countered it or made it a trap. But at the same time, you want us to be clever so that it will be a story of us out-thinking the enemy.

No, that is wrong, what I want is that humanity actually has to be clever when it comes to beating the enemy! There's no cleverness involved if you just exploit the sizable mental handicap of your opponents as many alien invasion media tend to do.

The problem here is that the cleverness on both sides tends to cancel out and you're left with a purely military equation- i.e. whichever side has the most guns wins. If one side wins a war through true cleverness, the result is nearly always a very lopsided victory- the clever side lands an army right in the middle of the enemy's territory and ends the war in a week, or comes up with a strategem that brings the enemy field army to their knees in a matter of a month, or something of that nature.

When both sides are highly clever, the result is usually:

1) Very protracted, and
2) Very complicated.

Both those things mean that trying to portray such a war convincingly leads to a huge, overblown series of novels or movies, in which case the author usually runs into other problems trying to portray the massive conflict.

Of course it would have to be long and complicated. That's kind of the point. The Borg are beaten in two episodes because they have bad network security which I found immensely unsatisfying. It should have taken at least an entire season to accomplish that. In contrast the Dominion War took several seasons and presented an enemy that was both strong and clever. That was done well for the most part.

Dune is a long novel and its plot is intricate and often hard to follow, yet I would say its conclusion is more satisfying than War of the World's which didn't even require humanity to do anything but survive for a few days.

[Simon_Jester]

Wait.

You do NOT want to see enemies who are beaten by a clever gambit, but you DO want to see enemies who must be outwitted? There's sort of a contradiction there. You want the enemy to be clever so that you can't beat them by simply deducing their secret weakness and hitting it, because they will have foreseen that ploy and either countered it or made it a trap. But at the same time, you want us to be clever so that it will be a story of us out-thinking the enemy.

No, that is wrong, what I want is that humanity actually has to be clever when it comes to beating the enemy! There's no cleverness involved if you just exploit the sizable mental handicap of your opponents as many alien invasion media tend to do.

Based on the experience of historical wars, when exceptional cleverness is required to win, the very-clever plans tend to miscarry, or make only small changes in the status quo.

For example, the Germans had a very clever plan for invading Norway during World War Two... and won, but only because Norway was so weak that Germany would have had no trouble winning a direct one-on-one conflict anyway, even without the clever plan. The clever plan just meant they would win quickly, for little cost.

By contrast, when the Germans invaded Russia their plan was also clever- and yet the war bogged down into an enormous smashing contest that Germany eventually lost. Because Russia was too large and well equipped to fall to any single gambit or strategy, even if that strategy had been incredibly brilliant.

Against an opponent strong enough that only extreme cleverness will let you prevail, the odds are that you will in fact NOT prevail. The odds are that you will lose, over a prolonged period of time, because opponents that big, tough, and smart usually don't have any single weak point you can exploit. Which means their strength can wear you down over time. Your example of an antlike species that tricks us into attacking a false "queen" target that was created as a trap, and thus sacrificing 'most of our military' on a decoy, is a good example of this- because if we were losing before, surely we're even more likely to lose now that half our army's been killed trying to attack a decoy!

If the enemy is (as is typical in alien invasion novels) in some ways stronger than the human forces, and can fully match or exceed the human forces in cleverness, humanity's simply going to lose. And if you want stories of roughly equally matched forces opposing each other for prolonged periods using lots of cleverness on either side... well, don't read novels where there's a huge mismatch in raw strength between the two sides.

Of course it would have to be long and complicated. That's kind of the point. The Borg are beaten in two episodes because they have bad network security which I found immensely unsatisfying. It should have taken at least an entire season to accomplish that. In contrast the Dominion War took several seasons and presented an enemy that was both strong and clever. That was done well for the most part.

In that case, I think your desire for this kind of thing is quite reasonable... but the main thing that stops people from doing it more often is obvious. Anyone who wants to tell this story is undertaking a project of complexity equivalent to, say, "tell the story of World War One." In visual media that means many hours of expensive (movie or TV) footage released over years of time. In print, it means undertaking to write several hundred thousand words, maybe even a million words or more.

Dune is a long novel and its plot is intricate and often hard to follow, yet I would say its conclusion is more satisfying than War of the World's which didn't even require humanity to do anything but survive for a few days.

Dune is probably one of the most compact examples of this I can think of, too... but it helps that it is NOT an alien invasion novel. Even though a great deal of weird technology and social structure is involved, the key players are human, so their motives are easier to understand quickly. Moreover, the various sides in the conflict over Dune are pretty much equal in technical capability, if not in resources. There's no required-subplot about how the weak side even gets familiarity with the strong side's capabilities, which is usually a pretty big chunk of a successful alien invasion story.

[e.g. in Footfall a great deal of space is devoted to an alien invasion of Kansas, which serves to familiarize us with the aliens' ground combat capability (limited), their orbital bombardment capability (huge), and their ability to resist/survive having pretty much the entire available ICBM arsenal of the world thrown at them (pretty good). It does relatively little to advance the plot except to establish that while the aliens can and do fight on the ground, that their power comes mainly from dominance of outer space, and that they can't really be opposed except by attacks that come after them in space]

[krakonfour]

I wonder how the story would go if... we saw the aliens coming decades ahead of time.
The telescopes spot a weird signature, it is investigated, and it turns out to be a spaceship weighing millions of tons de-accelerating.

What sort of weaponry would humans invent, when the target is unknown other than it is not to be used against other humans?

[Darth Tanner]

Putting nukes in orbit ready to launch would be the only thing we could deploy even with decades of notice. We'd probably still umm and arrr as any hostile intent would not be known until they get here.

[Borgholio]

Given modern tech, if we really wanted to, would we be able to build RKVs and send them towards the intruder with enough time to intercept before they could do anything to us?

[Darth Tanner]

Given modern tech, if we really wanted to, would we be able to build RKVs and send them towards the intruder with enough time to intercept before they could do anything to us?

I really doubt we have the technology to accelerate something that much, although we could just shuttle up lots of rockets and fire them in sequence to keep accelerating. Plus we would have to be accurate enough to hit it!

[Borgholio]

If it's big enough to detect when it's years away from Earth, I'd assume it's big enough to hit with only minor course corrections.

[Simon_Jester]

What if it starts maneuvering as it approaches? Presumably it's planning to slow down on the way toward the planet.

[Borgholio]

What if it starts maneuvering as it approaches? Presumably it's planning to slow down on the way toward the planet.

Also I guess we have to consider the "what if they're friendly" angle. Perhaps simply launching a large number of orbital nuclear weapons around the Earth / Moon orbit would be a reasonable "just in case" measure, without actually firing the first shot.

[Sky Captain]

Based on the experience of historical wars, when exceptional cleverness is required to win, the very-clever plans tend to miscarry, or make only small changes in the status quo.

If alien forces are small and reinforcements can't arrive, for example single ship ending in solar system because of freak FTL glitch then smart plan to outhink enemy can work because it has to succeed only once. A trick that can't work against fleet and would make situation worse because destroying single ship will only mean we just really pissed of a superior force may be reasonable against lone ship with no way to get back or communicate with home base.

What I am wondering is if there is any potential for a plot or drama in that kind of story. Unless it's some sort of retrospective where the author uses the setup as an opportunity to comment on humanity and preach.

I think in setup like that there is potential for good story. Imagine alien industrial activities randomly knock off some asteorid debris that sometimes hits Earth causing lot of damages and desperate attempt to establish communications is made. A manned space mission to closest alien base in asteorid belt is launched in hopes a direct contact may work better than failed attempts to establish communications by radio.

[Zeropoint]

You could get some dramatic mileage out of humanity realizing that we're not the major power in the Sol system any more, and the fear that all the easily accessible resources being taken would permanently cripple our space presence, even if the aliens didn't directly harm us at all.

[biostem]

You could get some dramatic mileage out of humanity realizing that we're not the major power in the Sol system any more, and the fear that all the easily accessible resources being taken would permanently cripple our space presence, even if the aliens didn't directly harm us at all.

That's an interesting idea. Building off that - what if an alien fleet stopped by our solar system simply to refuel/resupply from the asteroid belt or some other planet, and had no interest in us whatsoever - we find out they're here, and we are the ones to scramble to try and make contact - while the aliens basically look at us as some annoying animal harassing them while they're just making an intergalactic pit stop...

[Scrib]

You could get some dramatic mileage out of humanity realizing that we're not the major power in the Sol system any more, and the fear that all the easily accessible resources being taken would permanently cripple our space presence, even if the aliens didn't directly harm us at all.

That's an interesting idea. Building off that - what if an alien fleet stopped by our solar system simply to refuel/resupply from the asteroid belt or some other planet, and had no interest in us whatsoever - we find out they're here, and we are the ones to scramble to try and make contact - while the aliens basically look at us as some annoying animal harassing them while they're just making an intergalactic pit stop...

Sounds like something Stephen Baxter would write (even though human superiority seems to happen in his world at times). Funnily enough he seems to fall into Simon's camp: if the alien has an insane advantage being smart doesn't help. You either use a deus ex machina, play on their psychology..or lose. You can only be so intricate, if the other guy has a galaxy-sized hammer you're fucked.

Not really sure what you could do with the idea beyond some environmental message. You couldn't even deal with trade with an infinitely superior force and the effect this has economically because we have nothing to trade.

[Metahive]

Based on the experience of historical wars, when exceptional cleverness is required to win, the very-clever plans tend to miscarry, or make only small changes in the status quo.

You seem to equate "clever" with "complicated" or "complex". Actually the most clever plan is the one that leads to success in the least number of steps and is contingent on the least amount of factors. I blame popular media for giving this sort of impression by portraying "geniuses" as complexity addicts.

Palpatine for example is supposed to be clever and maybe he is. His plan however is not. The only clever part of his plan is that he rightfully identified everyone else as totally obvlivious morons and incorporated that into his needlessly complex scheme.

For example, the Germans had a very clever plan for invading Norway during World War Two... and won, but only because Norway was so weak that Germany would have had no trouble winning a direct one-on-one conflict anyway, even without the clever plan. The clever plan just meant they would win quickly, for little cost.

They acted from what they had learned in WW1, more specifically that they had to counter-act a looming british blockade. The invasion of Norway, while successful, also crippled the german surface navy and pretty much elminiated it as a factor for the rest of the war, which doesn't really translate to "little cost" and it was only "clever" in the way that the Germans thought of it before the allies who were about to do the same thing.

In short, they got lucky.

By contrast, when the Germans invaded Russia their plan was also clever- and yet the war bogged down into an enormous smashing contest that Germany eventually lost. Because Russia was too large and well equipped to fall to any single gambit or strategy, even if that strategy had been incredibly brilliant.

Actually, Barbarossa wasn't in any way "clever" since it was pretty much based on a severe overestimation of the German's own forces and a sneering disdain for Russian capabilities. March in, rough the place up a bit, out before Christmas. Doesn't this sound overly familiar to quite a lot of fictional alien invasion plots?

A clever plan would have incorporated things like the disdain many Russians had for Communism as well as the global fear of the communist spectre. So if, say, Germany had lured the USSR into striking first and offered the colchoses freedom instead of enslavement, there might have been quite a different outcome. Don't pledge yourself to the Historian's Fallacy.

Against an opponent strong enough that only extreme cleverness will let you prevail, the odds are that you will in fact NOT prevail. The odds are that you will lose, over a prolonged period of time, because opponents that big, tough, and smart usually don't have any single weak point you can exploit. Which means their strength can wear you down over time. Your example of an antlike species that tricks us into attacking a false "queen" target that was created as a trap, and thus sacrificing 'most of our military' on a decoy, is a good example of this- because if we were losing before, surely we're even more likely to lose now that half our army's been killed trying to attack a decoy!

This is the challenge this thread is about, to conceive of a believable scenario where the underdog will still eek out a victory. Nobody said the victory should come at no cost or without suffering any sort of setback.

If the enemy is (as is typical in alien invasion novels) in some ways stronger than the human forces, and can fully match or exceed the human forces in cleverness, humanity's simply going to lose. And if you want stories of roughly equally matched forces opposing each other for prolonged periods using lots of cleverness on either side... well, don't read novels where there's a huge mismatch in raw strength between the two sides.

You know what? I wouldn't actually mind stories where humanity is curbstomped by a strong and clever enemy because I have it up here with all the human-wank that's infesting so many of these stories. Have the Decepticons blow us all to bits (getting rid of Shia LaBeouf is its own reward), have the Borg silence the preachy, self-righteous and obnoxiously moralising Federation, have the Buggers exterminate the child-abusing shitheads and that insufferable Mary Sue Ender.

That's just me, though.

In that case, I think your desire for this kind of thing is quite reasonable... but the main thing that stops people from doing it more often is obvious. Anyone who wants to tell this story is undertaking a project of complexity equivalent to, say, "tell the story of World War One." In visual media that means many hours of expensive (movie or TV) footage released over years of time. In print, it means undertaking to write several hundred thousand words, maybe even a million words or more.

Eh,it's not like I specified only big budget blockbuster movies to be of relevance here.

Dune is probably one of the most compact examples of this I can think of, too... but it helps that it is NOT an alien invasion novel. Even though a great deal of weird technology and social structure is involved, the key players are human, so their motives are easier to understand quickly. Moreover, the various sides in the conflict over Dune are pretty much equal in technical capability, if not in resources. There's no required-subplot about how the weak side even gets familiarity with the strong side's capabilities, which is usually a pretty big chunk of a successful alien invasion story.

Actually, Paul and his merry band of desert nomads are at a severe disadvantage when it comes to military capabilities. It's just that they have several other factors work in their favor. They can bribe the Spacing Guild and so prevent getting spied on by satellites, the more advanced equipment like forcefields are almost unusable on Arrakis and the enemies can't just bomb the place into oblivion from orbit should Paul become too much of a nuisance due to it threatening the spice harvest. It's a textbook example of a successful guerilla war and those have also given grief to global superpowers in the present day, think of Vietnam or Afghanistan.
I would also say that while all the characters are supposedly humans, many of them act way more alien than the aliens in other popular sci-fi. I would actually say that Vulcans and Wookies are way more human than Bene Gesserit or Bene Tleilax.

[Simon_Jester]

Sounds like something Stephen Baxter would write (even though human superiority seems to happen in his world at times). Funnily enough he seems to fall into Simon's camp: if the alien has an insane advantage being smart doesn't help. You either use a deus ex machina, play on their psychology..or lose. You can only be so intricate, if the other guy has a galaxy-sized hammer you're fucked.

Basically, if they're as smart as we are, and they're far better armed than we are, then we're screwed. "Smart" is here defined to include tactical and strategic planning, understanding of the foe's technology, psychological grasp of one's opponent, ability to foresee the consequences of one's actions, and so on.

And even with superior "smarts" there is only so much you can do to change the outcome of a totally unfavorable military situation. No amount of "smarts" was going to save the sword and rifle armed Dervishes at Omdurman from the machine guns and artillery of the Anglo-Egyptian forces. It's conceivable that enough "smarts" would have allowed them to prevent the battle being fought in the first place... but even that depended on the fact that they had at least some men with guns, and that even their swords could still sometimes be effective on a 19th century battlefield.

Trap a legendary tactical supergenius in a pit, and he's stuck scrabbling vainly at the walls like any other man. Cleverness means nothing if you have no means to exploit it, just as strength means nothing if you have no leverage.

Based on the experience of historical wars, when exceptional cleverness is required to win, the very-clever plans tend to miscarry, or make only small changes in the status quo.

You seem to equate "clever" with "complicated" or "complex". Actually the most clever plan is the one that leads to success in the least number of steps and is contingent on the least amount of factors. I blame popular media for giving this sort of impression by portraying "geniuses" as complexity addicts.

No, actually, I'm not.

See the works of B. H. Liddell-Hart for reference, but a really clever plan in war usually consists of "you there, march over THERE" and putting your forces in a place where they disrupt the enemy's plans by cutting off their strength at or near its source. This the effect of dislocating the enemy's strength and rendering it ineffective. Not really that complicated- but it hinges on you having thought of how to dislocate the enemy, on being able to meaningfully spot their weaknesses and making use of them.

If the enemy is so strong that only supreme cleverness can grant victory, then sheer luck makes the clever plan unlikely to succeed. Because if you cannot hope to win by force, that means the enemy has greatly superior strength. If they have greatly superior strength, then any interference from them in your plan is likely to cause it to fail, in ways you can't plan around because they amount to something like "they have machine guns and we have spears."

If the enemy's weapons are much stronger than yours, then even if you send a strong force to attack the enemy's weakness, you are still likely to simply fail, in ways that would not be a failure against a force with normal weapons. Because even a small detachment of the enemy quick enough to figure out the threat and react appropriately is a threat, if they have machine guns and you have spears. They will be able to tie up your forces and do great damage due to that huge firepower advantage- even if you win you won't win quickly. And a small delay can prove fatal because the plan will not work unless the enemy doesn't interfere... again because of that huge strength advantage.

So to win by cleverness against a very strong opponent, you have to find some way of totally neutralizing their strength, quickly, before they can interfere. In other words, a magic button that turns their weapons off, or a psychological tactic they are utterly unable to comprehend, or something else that looks like contrived stupidity to an unsympathetic audience.

[As to your remarks on the Norwegian and Russian campaigns in WWII, I'd like to comment, but time presses right now; most of my observations are a special case of the things I said above]

This is the challenge this thread is about, to conceive of a believable scenario where the underdog will still eek out a victory. Nobody said the victory should come at no cost or without suffering any sort of setback.

It's "eke."

Anyway, the point here is that if the enemy is just as clever as we are, and vastly stronger, it is virtually impossible to make a believeable scenario where we win. Any viable plan reduces to either:
1) Become as strong as they are, or
2) Remove their strength, quickly and in a single blow before they use their superior strength to interfere in our plan.

Plenty of good stories (and bad stories) involving (2) are out there... but from your earlier remarks you'd usually reject them as using 'contrived stupidity' to wave away the problem of the enemy's strength.

If the enemy is (as is typical in alien invasion novels) in some ways stronger than the human forces, and can fully match or exceed the human forces in cleverness, humanity's simply going to lose. And if you want stories of roughly equally matched forces opposing each other for prolonged periods using lots of cleverness on either side... well, don't read novels where there's a huge mismatch in raw strength between the two sides.

You know what? I wouldn't actually mind stories where humanity is curbstomped by a strong and clever enemy because I have it up here with all the human-wank that's infesting so many of these stories. Have the Decepticons blow us all to bits (getting rid of Shia LaBeouf is its own reward), have the Borg silence the preachy, self-righteous and obnoxiously moralising Federation, have the Buggers exterminate the child-abusing shitheads and that insufferable Mary Sue Ender.

That's just me, though.

Well, you and other masochistic readers do compose a distinct minority of the total market; if you want to try writing for that minority you are free to do so. Please don't complain if the majority doesn't share your tastes and prefers not to identify with the invading violent conquering horde just because they dislike some of the details about the culture that's getting invaded.

In that case, I think your desire for this kind of thing is quite reasonable... but the main thing that stops people from doing it more often is obvious. Anyone who wants to tell this story is undertaking a project of complexity equivalent to, say, "tell the story of World War One." In visual media that means many hours of expensive (movie or TV) footage released over years of time. In print, it means undertaking to write several hundred thousand words, maybe even a million words or more.

Eh,it's not like I specified only big budget blockbuster movies to be of relevance here.

That does not address my point. The point is that if you want a project on the scope of "tell the story of World War One," it's going to take up a lot of space, more than the average writer/author/creator is willing or able to devote to the project.

And that's what it looks like when two large and more or less equally clever opponents go up against each other in an elaborate campaign of deception, counter-deception, maneuver, and counter-maneuver.

Dune is probably one of the most compact examples of this I can think of, too... but it helps that it is NOT an alien invasion novel. Even though a great deal of weird technology and social structure is involved, the key players are human, so their motives are easier to understand quickly. Moreover, the various sides in the conflict over Dune are pretty much equal in technical capability, if not in resources. There's no required-subplot about how the weak side even gets familiarity with the strong side's capabilities, which is usually a pretty big chunk of a successful alien invasion story.

Actually, Paul and his merry band of desert nomads are at a severe disadvantage when it comes to military capabilities. It's just that they have several other factors work in their favor. They can bribe the Spacing Guild and so prevent getting spied on by satellites, the more advanced equipment like forcefields are almost unusable on Arrakis and the enemies can't just bomb the place into oblivion from orbit should Paul become too much of a nuisance due to it threatening the spice harvest. It's a textbook example of a successful guerilla war and those have also given grief to global superpowers in the present day, think of Vietnam or Afghanistan.

What I mean is that both sides have comparable technological background. The Harkonnens may have better weapons, but Paul Atreides is already prepared to understand those weapons, know their strengths and limitations, and plan to overcome them. This is what I (admittedly poorly) tried to express as 'capability.' It's not a case of one side being totally ignorant of what the other side is capable of and having no idea how they accomplish these magical feats.

I would also say that while all the characters are supposedly humans, many of them act way more alien than the aliens in other popular sci-fi. I would actually say that Vulcans and Wookies are way more human than Bene Gesserit or Bene Tleilax.

To be fair, Paul does spend a considerable chunk of the novel having to learn how to function and deal with the Bene Gesserit and the Fremen, both of whom are rather 'alien' cultures. Point.

[Metahive]

See the works of B. H. Liddell-Hart for reference, but a really clever plan in war usually consists of "you there, march over THERE" and putting your forces in a place where they disrupt the enemy's plans by cutting off their strength at or near its source. This the effect of dislocating the enemy's strength and rendering it ineffective. Not really that complicated- but it hinges on you having thought of how to dislocate the enemy, on being able to meaningfully spot their weaknesses and making use of them.

...? Is that in any way different from how I defined a clever plan? Most of, say, the Art of War is really simple measures. Cleverness is demonstrated in when they're applied at the right moment. The old Greek had a word for this, Kairos!

And I'm still not quite convinced you're separating cleverness and complexity.

If the enemy is so strong that only supreme cleverness can grant victory, then sheer luck makes the clever plan unlikely to succeed. Because if you cannot hope to win by force, that means the enemy has greatly superior strength. If they have greatly superior strength, then any interference from them in your plan is likely to cause it to fail, in ways you can't plan around because they amount to something like "they have machine guns and we have spears." [snip]

Simple solution, the enemy has weaknesses that aren't in form of a convenient off-button or stunted intelligence. Like internal division into imperialist hawks and peaceful doves. Or feudal rivalry. Or make them evangelistic and their conquest of humanity just another part of them "spreading the word of hope and peace from Space Jesus". There's a myriad ways. In other words, the first step in writing a believable scenario is in making the invaders more than just marauding space locusts, plain genocidal space Nazis or an otherwise one-trick pony. That was the whole point of my rant about this tendency in stuff like Bab5 after all.

It's "eke."

It wsa a tpyo, slliy!

Anyway, the point here is that if the enemy is just as clever as we are, and vastly stronger, it is virtually impossible to make a believeable scenario where we win. Any viable plan reduces to either:
1) Become as strong as they are, or
2) Remove their strength, quickly and in a single blow before they use their superior strength to interfere in our plan.

Plenty of good stories (and bad stories) involving (2) are out there... but from your earlier remarks you'd usually reject them as using 'contrived stupidity' to wave away the problem of the enemy's strength.

3) Make the occupier's life hell until they leave or convince them otherwise that the occupation isn't worth it
4) Appeal for outside help, be it another alien species or different factions within the invader's species
5) Leave the premises to prepare to come back and win another day

etc. etc. etc.

After all, the only limitation on this scenario is that the alien invaders are stronger in some way, know what they're doing and are not marred by magical off-buttons. Everything else is up to imagination. Let it flow! Why are you so hell-bent on making this scenario so much more simplistic?

Well, you and other masochistic readers do compose a distinct minority of the total market; if you want to try writing for that minority you are free to do so. Please don't complain if the majority doesn't share your tastes and prefers not to identify with the invading violent conquering horde just because they dislike some of the details about the culture that's getting invaded.

Didn't I say "That's just me, though"? Also, de gustibus non est disputandum.

That does not address my point. The point is that if you want a project on the scope of "tell the story of World War One," it's going to take up a lot of space, more than the average writer/author/creator is willing or able to devote to the project.

And that's what it looks like when two large and more or less equally clever opponents go up against each other in an elaborate campaign of deception, counter-deception, maneuver, and counter-maneuver.

I would say the existence of several media that show such a struggle in quite long and detailed ways disproves your notion. The aforementioned Dominion War, Stargate SG1 and Stargate Atlantis, nBSG, the Animorphs series, the Tripods trilogy, there's definitely a desire for these.

Although that's besides the point since I'm not pitching a product here, just asking for some mental stimulation, so I'm not really sure what how this objection is actually about.

What I mean is that both sides have comparable technological background. The Harkonnens may have better weapons, but Paul Atreides is already prepared to understand those weapons, know their strengths and limitations, and plan to overcome them. This is what I (admittedly poorly) tried to express as 'capability.' It's not a case of one side being totally ignorant of what the other side is capable of and having no idea how they accomplish these magical feats.

Say there's an alien invasion story where humanity is aided by a disgruntled member of the invading aliens' species...see where this is going?

[Simon_Jester]

...? Is that in any way different from how I defined a clever plan?

No, but since you were lecturing me on what I think constitutes a clever plan in warfare, I thought I should lay out some ground rules. The reasons I cited Liddell-Hart:

1) He is an English-language source, no translations required.
2) He makes commentary on the recurring theme of the indirect approach and 'dislocation' of enemy forces in the works of other strategists. I believe Sun Tzu is included on that list.
3) He is explicit about the idea that one should seek to dislocate enemy forces and throw them into confusion, while many other strategists state this implicitly or allow it to be inferred from their various maxims.
4) As it happens, I read Liddell-Hart before Sun Tzu, so simple chronological order may have been involved.

An effective example of the indirect approach usually involves simply:
1) Placing your forces where the enemy will be placed at the most disadvantage, and where their strength is useless to them.
2) Possibly creating some sort of diversion or confusion about your intentions to make this possible.

It does not always have to be complicated. In fact, it usually isn't; as Clausewitz put it, "War is very simple." The catch is that he continued the remark with "...but in war, the simplest things become very difficult." The Clausewitzian concept of 'friction' is useful here- all the things that disrupt your ability to carry out a plan in wartime.

Some friction is between you and outside conditions: snarls in your logistics, difficulty physically moving your forces where you need them in a timely fashion. Other friction is caused by enemy action. And if I might relate the strategic concept of friction to the physical concept; the greater the pressure applied between two surfaces, the greater the friction between those surfaces.

If the enemy exerts great pressure on your forces whenever you meet them, because their weapons or tactics are superior, then it will be very hard for you to execute any plan reliably.

Simple solution, the enemy has weaknesses that aren't in form of a convenient off-button or stunted intelligence. Like internal division into imperialist hawks and peaceful doves. Or feudal rivalry. Or make them evangelistic and their conquest of humanity just another part of them "spreading the word of hope and peace from Space Jesus". There's a myriad ways. In other words, the first step in writing a believable scenario is in making the invaders more than just marauding space locusts, plain genocidal space Nazis or an otherwise one-trick pony. That was the whole point of my rant about this tendency in stuff like Bab5 after all.

All these are viable. I divide them into two cases:

One is where 'conquest is not so bad,' where we could learn to live with the invader and negotiate with them readily enough.

The other is where the key to victory is alien politics- the main catch then being that the alien politics have to be quite convincing. It's as easy to mess up the intelligence and competence of an alien parliament as it is to mess up the intelligence and competence of an alien invasion fleet.

Anyway, the point here is that if the enemy is just as clever as we are, and vastly stronger, it is virtually impossible to make a believeable scenario where we win. Any viable plan reduces to either:
1) Become as strong as they are, or
2) Remove their strength, quickly and in a single blow before they use their superior strength to interfere in our plan.

Plenty of good stories (and bad stories) involving (2) are out there... but from your earlier remarks you'd usually reject them as using 'contrived stupidity' to wave away the problem of the enemy's strength.

3) Make the occupier's life hell until they leave or convince them otherwise that the occupation isn't worth it
4) Appeal for outside help, be it another alien species or different factions within the invader's species
5) Leave the premises to prepare to come back and win another day

(3) boils down to "continue the conflict until they give up," which makes a lot of assumptions in its own right. It can be interesting, or utterly improbable, depending on the premises of the story.

(4) reduces to "remove their strength," but by nonmilitary means. Runs into the same problems as before, since the aliens also probably have greater strength in the political sphere- they already know how their own politics work and have more contacts within that political system.

(5) is the prequel to an interesting story, not the story itself.

After all, the only limitation on this scenario is that the alien invaders are stronger in some way, know what they're doing and are not marred by magical off-buttons. Everything else is up to imagination. Let it flow! Why are you so hell-bent on making this scenario so much more simplistic?

Mainly because we're criticizing a genre, not abolishing it.

The alien invasion story is descended from the 'invasion novel,' a genre of story which focuses on a military campaign in which "we," for some definition of "we," are at a serious disadvantage. It is a typical product of a culture which is physically safe at home, and which has many people who derive vicarious pleasure from a story where that home is threatened.

Now, you can incorporate alien invasions into other, more complicated stories; I've played with the idea myself, though in a context that makes the story itself unwriteable. Post-colonialist fiction written for an empire that doesn't exist has little market.

Well, you and other masochistic readers do compose a distinct minority of the total market; if you want to try writing for that minority you are free to do so. Please don't complain if the majority doesn't share your tastes and prefers not to identify with the invading violent conquering horde just because they dislike some of the details about the culture that's getting invaded.

Didn't I say "That's just me, though"? Also, de gustibus non est disputandum.

If you're criticizing people for NOT producing the stories you'd like to see, then there can darn well be some disputing of tastes. If I ask "why don't people make ketchup-flavored coffee," it is totally reasonable to reply with "most people think ketchup flavored coffee tastes terrible."

In this case, if you want stories where humanity gets the tar beaten out of it because you find most fictional protagonists unlikeable, then you are in a small minority and should not be surprised if the stories don't get written. That doesn't make you a bad person- but it's a fairly obvious observation.

That does not address my point. The point is that if you want a project on the scope of "tell the story of World War One," it's going to take up a lot of space, more than the average writer/author/creator is willing or able to devote to the project.

And that's what it looks like when two large and more or less equally clever opponents go up against each other in an elaborate campaign of deception, counter-deception, maneuver, and counter-maneuver.

I would say the existence of several media that show such a struggle in quite long and detailed ways disproves your notion. The aforementioned Dominion War, Stargate SG1 and Stargate Atlantis, nBSG, the Animorphs series, the Tripods trilogy, there's definitely a desire for these.

My point is simply that there are few such fictional series/sagas. They most certainly exist, but they are not very numerous, and hard to do well. And there will always be demand for something that doesn't take ten hours of screentime or several hundred thousand words of print just to set up the central conflict.

It's not that you're wrong, I don't disagree with you, I just want to point out that there are logical reasons why many stories published will disappoint you, if that's what you're looking for.

What I mean is that both sides have comparable technological background. The Harkonnens may have better weapons, but Paul Atreides is already prepared to understand those weapons, know their strengths and limitations, and plan to overcome them. This is what I (admittedly poorly) tried to express as 'capability.' It's not a case of one side being totally ignorant of what the other side is capable of and having no idea how they accomplish these magical feats.

Say there's an alien invasion story where humanity is aided by a disgruntled member of the invading aliens' species...see where this is going?

Yes, and that one has potential.

[Metahive]

"snip cleverness tangent"

Apologies, but I'm really not interested in arguing in a big tangent about the semantics of what constitutes "clever" warplans. I just want that the invaders know what they're doing, especially if this isn't the first time they attacked another species. That's all I find to be of relevance here, sorry for your effort. Just remember these three stipulations:

1.Aliens mustn't have magical off-button
They mustn't be a keystone army that completely crumbles if the keystone is removed.

2.Aliens mustn't be held back by counter-intuitive or insufficient warplanning
They must know about their own capabilities as well as the capabilities of mankind and plan accordingly.

3.Aliens must have an overwhelming advantage in either raw military power or subversive means
This isn't about just Martians, Tripods and Star Destroyers, this incorporates stuff like the Body Snatchers and the Thing, too. Or the Dnyarri if you're really nerdy.

Nothing in there about them being all green-skinned Erwin Rommels or Robert E. Lees, just basic competence is sufficient, OK? It just that I think that this is missing from so many alien invasion stories.

Mainly because we're criticizing a genre, not abolishing it.

The alien invasion story is descended from the 'invasion novel,' a genre of story which focuses on a military campaign in which "we," for some definition of "we," are at a serious disadvantage. It is a typical product of a culture which is physically safe at home, and which has many people who derive vicarious pleasure from a story where that home is threatened.

Now, you can incorporate alien invasions into other, more complicated stories; I've played with the idea myself, though in a context that makes the story itself unwriteable. Post-colonialist fiction written for an empire that doesn't exist has little market.

I do not acknowledge some arbitrary "literary tradition" to be of any importance here. Humanity in a disadvantaged position is attacked by superior aliens, that's a sufficient base to work from. "Battle of Dorking" or "War of the Worlds" are just variations on this theme, not the sole valid representations of it IMHO.

If you're criticizing people for NOT producing the stories you'd like to see, then there can darn well be some disputing of tastes. If I ask "why don't people make ketchup-flavored coffee," it is totally reasonable to reply with "most people think ketchup flavored coffee tastes terrible."

In this case, if you want stories where humanity gets the tar beaten out of it because you find most fictional protagonists unlikeable, then you are in a small minority and should not be surprised if the stories don't get written. That doesn't make you a bad person- but it's a fairly obvious observation.

I said from the beginning of this thread I want figure out ways for humanity to beat a superior opponent without what I consider deplorable plot contrivances. I said I wouldn't mind stories where humanity loses, that is not the same thing as wanting these stories to be written exclusively or even majorly and me bitching about unlikeable protagonists was just me taking the piss (hey, this is partially a whining thread after all). I do not see why you feel the need to direct moralizing lectures about this at me. My taste is different from the majority? Oi vey, Gott der Gerechte, you're right! I totally didn't know!

It's not that you're wrong, I don't disagree with you, I just want to point out that there are logical reasons why many stories published will disappoint you, if that's what you're looking for.

If it were otherwise I wouldn't have started this thread, would I?

It's also interesting to note what happens when a story reverses the roles and has humanity as the superior alien invader beaten by plot contrivance. Just look at the reaction of certain people at James Cameron's Avatar. My o my, I thought that unfettered colonialist-imperialist BS attitude had been left behind in the ruins of WW2. It's fair and acceptable for alien invaders to all catch the common cold and die of it, but not for a sentient planet to sic its lethal fauna at the sparkling space marines and their shiny guns. No sense of irony here.

[Lord of the Abyss]

I was thinking a bit more on the subject, and another idea that could work is if humanity, in this scenario, is actually quite advanced, but still pre-FTL, (or at least still less advanced than the aliens). Humanity could use their superior numbers and home turf advantage to come out victorious in the end. They could have humanity employ unconventional warfare vs. a technologically superior, but perhaps overconfident force - maybe the aliens aren't used to dirty tactics or "outside the box" thinking - relying too much on their technology to win the day and so on...

That makes me think of the Marc Stiegler short story The Bully and the Crazy Boy. The aliens are more advanced and even somewhat more intelligent on average than humans. We manage to keep them from conquering us for two reasons however. First, because they can only divert a limited amount of their resources for a limited time to conquer us before another war is expected to divert them (they are always fighting wars). But more importantly, we are by their standards insane.

Faced with a hopeless military situation, they would surrender and submit; we on the other hand will do things like surrender and let them put occupation troops on board a space station then self-destruct the station. Suicidal behavior that would never occur to them. The final battle that defeats the aliens is "won" by the humans, but by using tactics that guarantee the annihilation of both fleets; not a tactic they would ever consider, and one they don't see coming until it's far too late.

You could get some dramatic mileage out of humanity realizing that we're not the major power in the Sol system any more, and the fear that all the easily accessible resources being taken would permanently cripple our space presence, even if the aliens didn't directly harm us at all.

That's an interesting idea. Building off that - what if an alien fleet stopped by our solar system simply to refuel/resupply from the asteroid belt or some other planet, and had no interest in us whatsoever - we find out they're here, and we are the ones to scramble to try and make contact - while the aliens basically look at us as some annoying animal harassing them while they're just making an intergalactic pit stop...

The Jupiter Theft; where the aliens have arrived to refuel by stealing Jupiter. They are so indifferent to us that they are going to destroy Earth by passing nearby it with Jupiter not out of malice, but because they simply have no interest in the fact that doing so will destroy our species.