Tired of Inscrutable Alien Opponents

Photo by Diego Marín on Unsplash

So, I have to say it:

I’m tired of the inscrutable, evil-for-no-reason-we-understand and essentially undefeatable alien trope.

I love when it’s subverted. When, for example, an outsider to the society comes in and tells the aliens to stop fighting. I suppose I subverted it a bit in Transpecial, although it wasn’t conscious.

But there are other ways to write your six book series set in the same war.

Who’s Fault Is It?

TV Tropes calls this trope “Aliens Are Bastards,” but I feel they miss some examples. For example, they miss Fred Saberhagen’s infamous Berserkers. Although, at least they don’t blame it all on Starship Troopers (the Bugs are two-dimensional, but hardly impossible to defeat and their motivations, while simple, are understandable. They just want the same real estate we do).

Then, of course, there’s Alien, still my favorite horror movie of all time. The xenomorphs are pretty nasty, but it is supposed to be horror. I think that makes a difference.

I’d say the most egregious examples are War of the Worlds and Independence Day. The latter is very much a homage to the former. Instead of the aliens being defeated by a biological virus, they apparently run on Windows. But it’s the same thing. They show up, they…