Tuesday, December 28, 2010

The End Is Near

My general dislike of Aliens in Science Fiction is put on hold for a good story about Humanity fighting a total war against alien invaders. The three criteria are:

It must be set as close to The Present Day as possible, incorporating as many of the awesome real weapons humans have managed to concoct and applying them to the slaughter (or at least attempted slaughter) of aliens. I don't care if that means it's a little dated 10 years from now, as long as it doesn't feel dated when it was actually published. I'm willing to call it Alternate History, The Good if it actually is.

Everybody must know about the alien threat. When they discovered the threat, whatever lame secret Alien FBI was in charge handed it over to the public, which then applied that massive defense budget they'd been paying their taxes for all these years to the problem. None of this sneaking around, I want my alien invaders to be blatant and I want humanity's response to be equally open.

It must be awesome (without being stupid). That's a tricky one, but I know it can be done. My main goto is Freedom's Landing (and the subsequent series) by Anne McCaffrey. Some of the defeated parts of humanity get dumped on a crappy colony planet, but then smash their way back off and liberate Earth. Some quality science fiction is laid out, much like the alien oppressor.

Of course, I'm saying all this. Now I've got to put my word count where my mouth is and bust out an alien invasion story. Oh-hoho? Do I smell the sweat stench of "Treachery Afoot"? I believe I do. I believe I do.

And now to emphasize my point, the best game with the cheesiest intro ever!


Haha! Take that, alien scum! Don't mess with multicultural Earth! X-COM just kicked your ass with weapons that are notoriously incapable of kicking your ass in-game. Sucks to be you.

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Why is Controversy such a popular post? Albeit it is one of my personal favorites, so maybe my taste intersected with that of the masses. That's probably a good sign. In any case, it's just as true today as it was then.

Oh, she's just doing that on purpose now, but that's not really something I want to discourage. And we do need the water.

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250 words? Yes
Book "Lived Too Long to Die"
Short Story "Treachery Afoot"
- - - -
Reading - The Dark Side of Young Adult Fiction
(New York Times)

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2 comments:

  1. That was always my peeve with the intro to X-Com as well. Damn them for making those puny little rifles look so badass. They're not even fighting entry-level sectoids. They're fighting those horrific green guys. In real gameplay, an alien grenade would fly half the squad out of nowhere within a minute of them landing.

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  2. At least the auto-cannon with HE rounds was enough to ensure at least one guy (usually) survived until Science! provided lasers and you trained up a squad that could actually hit something.

    X-com really enhanced my literary sensibilities, because I got really attached to some of those doomed soldiers. Even the especially doomed ones that got mind-controlled and took out their whole squad.

    If Red Alert had given each soldier a name, I'd be a roiling pacifist ball of empathy today...

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