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Updated Sunday 15 May, 2011 12:18 PM |
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This Day in Alternate History Blog
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Footfall There are many collaborations between famous writers that
don’t work out, but the Niven/Pournelle team has proved its worth and staying
power, tackling stories that can’t be shown on the big screen.
Having tackled an asteroid impact, they then consider an Alien Invasion. Plot: The
earth detects an approaching alien generation ship, far bigger than any ship
ever built on earth, and assumes its friendly.
They assume this so much that they send a US congressmen to a Russian
space station (which was planned by the USSR, but never built) to meet the
aliens in orbit. Unluckily for
earth, the aliens are unfriendly and open fire, using their technology (which is
not much in advance of humanity’s) to force humanity down to earth.
After a landing in Kansas is repelled, the aliens hit earth with a large
asteroid (the foot) and begin a slow takeover of Africa, until the US manages to
launch another spacecraft and threaten the alien mothership, after which the
aliens surrender. Sadly, the team puts up big issues and fails to do them
justice. First thoughts: The
technology is superb. The aliens
have no FTL drive or phaser weapons, they have small projectiles to use as
bombardment weapons (destroying US bases, dams, power supplies, roads, etc),
lasers and a version of Project Thor. The
humans are outmatched and can do little to threaten the aliens.
Until the end of the book, the best success humanity has involves
blasting Kansas with nuclear missiles from Russia, after which the only other
trick is partisan warfare. However, there are bad things about the book.
The aliens hit earth with an asteroid!
Where’s the suffering? Surly,
there would be more effects than extra rain and gloating about the end of OPAC?
Further, it’s hard to believe that the aliens could have achieved space
flight – even with the massive cheat that reads like the uplift novels.
The aliens are very dumb indeed and few of them suspect that humans are
– if you’ll pardon the pun – alien to them.
Humans can run rings round them. The
authors tried to integrate an interesting concept - that this species was
descended from herd animals and thus view certain behaviours differently - that
the individual was completely sublimated to the herd.
However, they carried it too far - to the point of making the aliens
complete idiots. There are some good characters in the book, such as the
mechanic Harry Reddington and the US president. However, others are clinched, such as the subplot about
survivalists, and only two of the Russians come across as human.
None of the aliens appear ‘human’ to us, the characters from WorldWar
being far more understandable. Incidentally, the book does have the best – although
that’s not saying much – reason for the alien invasion. It turns out that there were two factions on the alien
homeworld and it looked like there would be a nuclear war. Therefore, they built the large ship and played a game for
the prize. The losers got to go to
earth. However, that’s still odd,
I would have bought an alien plan to trap humanity on earth – therefore
removing competition – but not an outright invasion. The book appears somewhat dated to us, with the USSR still going and a moonbase, but hell, we can just say it takes place in an alternate timeline. |
