China’s Yutu-2 rover has reportedly spotted a cube-shaped “mystery hut” on the far side of the moon. No doubt the object is a hut in the same sense that Mars’ canals were canals—not at all—because like ʻOumuamua, it is almost certainly not an alien artifact. Even if it is an alien artifact, there’s no reason to think it is new. Estimates as to how long the Apollo relics on the Moon will survive thermal cycling and micrometeor bombardment range as high as one hundred million years. And for all we know, aliens build better than we do.
Still, coincidences do happen! It is fun to speculate about what might bring aliens here just now, or what Earth could possibly offer that aliens could not get more easily closer to home?
A Perceived Threat…
Regrettably, it seems our radio and television signals become inaudible noise fairly close to the solar system. What should be clearly detectable across a surprising fraction of the Milky Way, however, are exoatmospheric nuclear detonations like the ones produced by the 1960s US and Soviet Union weapons tests. Good news! Our neighbors within 70 light years are (probably) not judging us by The Gong Show, The Trouble with Tracy, or Big Brother! They’re judging us by the fact we are demonstrably using nuclear weapons.
A question that may well occur to our hypothetical aliens: “If humans are willing to use nuclear weapons on each other, what will they do to beings who are not related to them at all?” The worst-case scenario is that the aliens will conclude it’s safest not to find out. That possibility is explored in works like Greg Bear’s The Forge of God, in which what initially appears to be benign first contact very rapidly is revealed as an effort to expunge humans and all our works from the universe before we become a menace to other species.
Acquisition of Biological Materials
Every species on Earth is the product of billions of years of variation and natural selection. Even if every life-bearing world has the same fundamental biochemistry, it’s vanishingly unlikely any two worlds have the same life forms living on them. Not only does it appear plausible that the Earth’s lifeforms are unique to Earth, it’s almost certainly the case.1
Amber Royer’s Free Chocolate serves as an SF example: Earth’s technology and culture may be nothing special to the other worlds of the Milky Way—it is, however, the only planet with chocolate. Even more conveniently, chocolate was overlooked by the conniving Krom as they covertly captured the galactic markets for Terrestrial coffee, sugar, tea, and vanilla. The First Contact War gave the HGB corporation a monopoly on chocolate production. A new global conflict looms, thanks to the struggle to control the chocolate market. Idealistic Bo Benitez believes she knows how to prevent war…if she can somehow break the monopoly.
Cultural Exchange
Humans have their annoying quirks but they are very, very good at producing human art and culture. Indeed, humans seem to produce art and culture like a plant produces O2. If aliens want their Rembrandt paintings, Lagaan DVDs, and BABYMETAL albums, aliens will have to come to Earth to acquire them.
In Clifford Simak’s So Bright the Vision, humans have an ability unmatched elsewhere in the galaxy: consummate liars all, we provide the Milky Way with the pulp fiction its aliens crave. Extreme demand has induced mechanization. This is a problem for Kemp Hart, who cannot afford a cutting-edge writing machine. Economic desperation forces him to embrace an unthinkable option.
Convenient Living Space
As will come as no surprise to anyone living in a Settler nation, Earth may be valuable because it’s a life-bearing world with abundant water and free oxygen, where beings like us could live. We have no idea how rare those are. It’s true we’re living on the planet at the moment, but any civilization that can reach us commands technology we cannot match. Given how many people are where they are because they aggressively seized land from previous occupants, it doesn’t seem as if humans displaced by aliens would have any grounds for complaint. Humans being humans, no doubt they will protest bitterly for however long it takes the heat rays to be deployed.
Claire Coleman’s Terra Nullius begins with an all-too familiar scene: in the land Europeans call Australia, a native boy escapes the slavery (by another name) Settlers deemed the only suitable niche for Natives. Before the novel is half over, however, it becomes clear that while the situation is familiar, the players are novel. The Natives are all the humans of Earth. The Settlers are highly advanced aliens who cannot believe Natives are people—not least because it would economically inconvenient if they did—rather than animals to be exploited if useful, and exterminated if not.
Location, Location, Location! (Also known as “The Stars Are Right”)
Very few people in Ontario particularly want to go to Milton, but if you are heading west along the 401 towards Toronto, it’s impossible to avoid it.2 Earth may be valuable real estate because it is conveniently located (in interstellar terms) or in some other way more convenient.3
Self-proclaimed time travelers contact the protagonists of David Drake’s Bridgehead and suggest that it would be convenient if Professor Gustafson and his team were to construct one node of an interstellar transportation network. All would be for the best in the best of all existing worlds! It turns out that the time travelers are aliens who have hornswoggled humans into building the means of their own extinction. The upgraded transportation network is useful; the humans are not.
***
No doubt each of you can think of a dozen reasons aliens might want to bother with Earth and are dying to tell me. Comments are below.
In the words of Wikipedia editor TexasAndroid, prolific book reviewer and perennial Darwin Award nominee James Davis Nicoll is of “questionable notability.” His work has appeared in Publishers Weekly and Romantic Times as well as on his own websites, James Nicoll Reviews and the Aurora finalist Young People Read Old SFF (where he is assisted by editor Karen Lofstrom and web person Adrienne L. Travis). He is a four-time finalist for the Best Fan Writer Hugo Award and is surprisingly flammable.
[1]I say “almost certainly the case” because it is remotely possible that ancient busybodies have been exporting species from one world to another.
[2]I should probably find something nice to say about Milton. Well, I’ve never had a mechanically vital part of a car I was in fall off while passing though Milton, which is not true of either Waterloo, Ontario, or Coal Branch, New Brunswick.
[3]If only I could think of a way to fit in a gratuitous reference to the consequences of the 7.7 light-year Stutterwarp maximum range in “2300 AD” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2300_AD).
I forget the book (something with timeline hopping assassins?) but one possible alien motive for visiting Earth I remember being posited was that Earth has a relatively rare combination of proximity to the sun and a single large moon in stable orbit which means that we get the best full solar eclipses in the galaxy. They suggested looking for odd figures on the edges of crowds in prime eclipse viewing locations.
I’ve always thought it would be interesting to explore the idea that there really is no objectively sound reason for aliens to come to Earth, and then posit the types of aliens who might do so anyways. Missionaries, loners, romantics, producers of niche erotica… After all, humans have demonstrated a tendency to put ourselves in all sorts of situations that don’t make an awful lot of sense on paper.
It has been ages since I read it but I think the alien in WJW’s Knight Moves gives humans immortality and star flight so that humans will move off planet and stop getting in the way of its archaeological survey of Earth.
@1: That was a Connie Willis short story whose title currently eludes me. (Ah! Google sez “And Come From Miles Around,” in the collection Firewatch.) All I remember is the toddler saying “Rocket. ‘Tana. ‘Clipse.” Having been fortunate to have been only a forty-five mile drive from totality, I can completely relate (even if it took me three hours to get home again. People drove in over a wide range of time; everybody left at once).
In John Varley’s Eight Worlds stories, the aliens came to give Earth back to the whales, incidentally driving humanity off planet and into the fringes of the solar system.
Then there are the stories where the aliens come to Earth because we’re warlike. Pour Anderson’s High Crusade and Alan Dean Foster’s With Friends Like These come to mind. Those never end well (for the aliens).
Eh. Poul Anderson. Effin’ autocorrect.
Huh. I would have guessed auto correct would have gone for Poul > Paul.
(Today is the anniversary of my phone’s predictive text suggesting that I finish the sentence “I need to go to the store for” with the word “cheerleaders.”)
Very few people in Ontario particularly want to go to Milton
Interestingly, this is quite similar to the way in which very few people in Oxfordshire particularly want to go to Milton Keynes. Fortunately, the latter is much more avoidable.
If you are driving west along 401 towards Toronto and pass through Milton, either you have gone too far, or you are already lost in some kind of MC Escher foldspace.
@3: Foster’s *The Damned* series is another example of aliens looking for human fighters (the first guy they grab is a pacifist who still outfights them).
Niven’s Protector and Clarke’s The Reunion involve visitors to Earth who only want to help
In my brain, that was east to Milton. Which by the way would be a great title for an epic movie.
I guess fossil fuels would count as biological material? Though I suppose if you have space travel, you can probably synthesize the relevant molecules. Foodstuffs can get a pass for both design and authenticity. Replicated chocolate just never tastes as good as the real thing.
I had some paranormal shows on last night to keep me company doing laundry, and I heard a new theory. UFOs may be us from the future, and they are using our population as test subjects to fight a disease decimating us in the future. Covid for the paranoid, anyone?
Slaves.
They want our water, like in the V TV show, ha ha. Or, equally absurd, like in Doc Smith’s Triplanetary or Jack Williamson’s The Legion of Space, they want our iron.
@1 That’s correct about our moon, it’s just the right size, at the right distance, that it’s almost exactly the same size as the sun when viewed from the Earth’s surface. That’s why we get to see the corona around the moon during an eclipse. As far as I know, it’s the only one like it that we know of anywhere.
On Mars, Phobos and Demios are both smaller than our Moon, and you would always be able to see the sun during an eclipse. At the other end of the scale, Pluto’s moon Charon appears many times bigger than the sun, so an eclipse would be a long period of near darkness. (Although, by human standards, daytime on Pluto is near darkness.)
Our moon will only be like that for the next few million years though, because it is (very) slowly moving away from the Earth, so those aliens better hurry up if they want to see the show!
Ian M Banks – they come to see solar eclipses.
Arthur Clarke – they come to watch humanity’s singularity into a trans dimensional consciousness
some 1950s sci-fi: they come for our steel production
Clifford Simak- they come to build a trading post for intellectual property/inventions. Example trade idea: paint
Larry Niven, protector: they come to determine what happened to their colony planted 3 million years ago(we are their mutated descendants). Australopithecus was a juvenile form of their species that undergoes a metamorphosis into a hyper intelligent and warrior form upon exposure to a symbiotic virus after reaching middle age.
Terry Bisson: they come in search of intelligent machines but instead are shocked to find singing meat (humans)
They come to serve Man.
A variant I came up with to explain the perceived nature of UFOs — visitors from other worlds who seem to be trying to be secretive: The visitors have something akin to Star Trek’s Prime Directive, but not out of concern for the welfare of the primitive planets. The issue is that “Federation” culture is monolithic (in the same way that in our world, Hollywood dominates much of world culture). The valuable resource that new worlds provide is cultural products that have not (yet) been contaminated by the galactic monoculture.
One of John D. MacDonald’s SF novels had Earth serving as a vital repository of capable barbarians. Whenever a terrestrial culture looked like it was getting too civilized, the galactics would intervene to preserve the supply of barbarians. Thus, World War Three.
James, did you write or edit the article this morning? China finally announced what the “moon hut” was: a small close rock.
https://twitter.com/AJ_FI/status/1479431697389309960
I submitted this back in December.
Well, there’s serendipity-do-dah.
If memory serves, the more xenocidal aliens in The Forge of God objected to our existence, not our nuclear weapons.
@13 If memory serves, someone in Triplanetary notes that he would have said it looks like the aliens are desperate for iron, if he didn’t know there were whole mountains of it orbiting beyond Mars, so obviously that motive is absurd…
To destroy all organic life.
Galactic Centre series.
Gregory Benford.
The Earth delicacy that aliens come for is as likely to be poison ivy as chocolate. I’m not sure how that affects the story possibilities, aside from the fact that poison ivy isn’t endangered by global warming.
(ignore if not Ontarian and pedantic) Surely “heading east along the 401” rather than “west”?
Yes, it was a non-spelling error typo that spell check for some reason didn’t catch and that my tendency to see the word I thought I put down instead of the one I did put down did not flag.
@13: I have rough notes for a fanfic in which I explain V as an attempt by certain powers that be on their home planet to make a big splashy documentary about how awesomely they conquer Those Others, because historically their power depended on publicly conquering Those Others and they’ve run out of their own. (And some of the lizard people who came on the expedition actually are Those Others, they’re just undercover. Because they are exactly the same species as the rest of the lizard people, of course.)
One that circulates on Tumblr: Aliens come to Earth to take videos of us, but not in order to make a spectacle of conquest–they come because we are just so gosh darn cute! We are the red pandas of the galaxy! There are laws about protecting our cuteness and our fragile ecosystem clear out past the Kuiper Belt. We can, if we are willing to work it (they love watching us eat and dance), get free, comfortable passage to anywhere we like, because any commercial passenger service that can advertise Humans On Board makes more Galactic Bucks.
The aliens use us like we use yeast: to grow biologicals like adrenaline. It’s cheaper than making the chemicals in a lab and it’s not like any Earth species is good for anything else. Or modify humans as we’re now starting modify pigs to grow whole organs for transplant.
@18: Ballroom of the Skies. I’m not certain there was WW3, just an inversion of powers (such as we’re now seeing) such that impoverished USians were desperate for tips from rich South Asian tourists. I’ve since wondered whether MacDonald actually thought India (along with Brazil and Iran, says Wikipedia) was actually likely to become a top dog or whether he thought putting China in that position would have made a 1962 book unpublishable.
@16: or, in another Damon Knight satire, to buy cowpies (for a little while).
T. L. Sherred’s Alien Island posits that there are all sorts of things aliens might fancy — but that they’re only a small part of Terran production, so nations start squabbling about who’s going to sell what and everything falls apart (as happens too often in Sherred). The title comes from the port-to-offworld being an island in the Detroit River, in between the US and Canada and coveted by both; there was a sequel featuring the island’s inhabitants (evacuated after the collapse) that I recall as undistinguished.
If i recall correctly, Rama Revealed from Arthur C Clarke & Gentry Lee finally provides explanation for purpose of the Rama ships:
*even though the books are generally not that popular, i still politely like to add “big spoiler alert” * : collecting aliens (incl. humans) & its culture for study and keepsake in a galactic library.
Bit more original: the 456 Aliens from Torchwood miniseries “Children of Earth” require children for “the Hit”.
I came up with another one a while back: Ecosystem tourism. Imagine machine people from a machine world (yes, this started life as an idea for a Transformers fanfic) coming to see a place where there is so much carbon-based life that its remains form rock strata and gemstones. Or people from a non-oxygen-breathing species putting on environment suits to come see the glorious deathworld. Or people from a frozen planet putting on another type of environment suit and going underwater to stare in awe at the life forms that exist in molten dihydrogen monoxide.
@25, Maybe we can find aliens to like kudzu.
Re: biological commodities — in John Ringo’s Live Free or Die, the aliens who come to conquer Earth discover that maple syrup is like catnip to them. Our heroes threaten (and possess the power) to destroy the supply and force the aliens to the bargaining table.
Moore/Kuttner: They come to watch things go boom.
@1: I’m pretty sure Ian Banks used this idea in one of his “borderline SF but not labelled as such” novels, but I can’t remember which one. We may be talking about the same book.
Re chocolate: one of the repeated subplots of the later books in Diane Duane’s “Young Wizards” series is that chocolate has somehow become an incredibly valuable commodity amongst the aliens who visit the Crossings, a big interstellar transit point. The mystique built around it is largely the fault of one person, who is sometimes a little economical with the truth, especially when creating rumours of Earth’s deadly space fleet which avenges any chocolate piracy.
Young Wizards also has a race of intelligent alien dinosaurs who are incredibly fond of tomatoes and regard them as the ultimate taste treat. The extra chemicals in tomato ketchup turn it into a powerful aphrodisiac.
And there was a story in Analog in the sixties or seventies in which Earth was quarantined because it has the most addictive drug in the galaxy. When smugglers get through the quarantine a farmer is surprised to find that someone has somehow taken his entire corn crop, carefully removed the cobs, and left the grain behind.
@36. The most recent DOCTOR WHO had the potato-headed Sontarons getting a buzz off of chocolate and sugar so the foot soldiers were busy assaulting corner stores for goodies.
@34, The Syrup must flow!
I also like the idea of humans being adored for their cuteness. Think of how we could use that to our advantage!
@1. is similar to my pet UFO theory; we’re a bolt-hole for the Han Solos of the galaxy. Earth is too primitive and resource-poor to be on anyone’s sensors, but we’re just technologically advanced enough for a visitor to hide out relatively comfortably for a brief time (even if you’re not able to pass as human, it’s trivially easy to find an abandoned building somewhere and forage for food).
@38
It occurs to me that most vertebrates on this planet keep their spines horizontal. To aliens with a different evolutionary history we might well look like a planet full of performing dogs walking on their hind legs. Bound to be entertaining.
princessroxana @38: “BEWARE–CREATION TOOK EIGHT DAYS”. Heinlein’s “Goldfish Bowl”.
@39 Sounds pretty chill until that Han Solo equivalent draws the ire of somebody vastly more powerful who tracks them to earth. Imagine the sudden appearance of alien invaders who rip everything in their path apart for a few days/weeks/months before capturing/killing their guy (who humans didn’t even know was here) and disappearing. No explanation to us, and no further contact.
I imagine humans well disposed to the aliens trying to make them understand that some humans resent being dismissed as cute and just how nasty we can get.
Pandas after all are dangerous animals.
@41, I missed that Heinlein but I can guess how it goes from that quote and the title.
In Frank Herbert’s The Heaven Makers, alien film makers camp invisibly on Earth, manipulating groups of humans so they can turn their lives into soap operas that are mega-popular on thier homeworld.
In Andrea K. Host’s And All the Stars, energy being type aliens need to borrow intelligent, mortal fleshsack bodies to take part in violent sport contests which have important cultural significance. Unfortunately these are rather destructive, so the aliensneed to be continually searching for a fresh supply.
Big game hunting (Predator franchise).
@32: Or people from a frozen planet putting on another type of environment suit and going underwater to stare in awe at the life forms that exist in molten dihydrogen monoxide. Thank you for the reminder! In Hal Clement’s Iceworld the aliens come from a planet so hot that H2O has been theorized about but never found; the first visitors think their probes are being destroyed by the “flatlanders” who live in the 2/3 of the globe with no topography, not having realized what happens when something designed to run hotter than Mercury lands on water. Why are they here? “Tofacco” — which a freelance explorer discovered, and which is now an addictive gas on the homeworld. (“Clement” was the person at conventions wearing badges like “I don’t spit in your drink. Why do you smoke in my air?” back when smoking in public spaces was allowed.)
Scientific curiousity.
@38, it works for cats!
@5: that could make one worry about your purchasing habits….
@25: there was an sf story were Earth was the source for the addictive drug, basil. It was not otherwise memorable.
@36/37/OP,
IIRC Kim Kinnison uses chocolate in one of the Lensman books to get the natives to gather the vegetation from which some drug is derived (thionite?).
@33,
I would have thought koalas might like Kudzu. Kudzu leaves should be more palatable for them than the notoriously toxic Eucalypt leaves.
I wonder if anyone has tried . . .
Two more reasons for aliens to visit us:
Religion / Missionaries: The aliens in Peter F. Hamilton’s Salvation trilogy want us (and every other intelligent lifeform) to encounter their god – if we want to or not.
To tell us their life stories: In David Brin’s Existence, the alien civilizations who visit us are already extinct, but send their probes with information, so that they are not completely forgotten and at least something of them lives on.
In Stephen Donaldson’s “Gap” Series, the apparent motivation of the aliens is to eradicate Darwinism. Coming from a place where the good of the Species is #1 priority and that priority is reached through cooperation and assimilation, the aliens are naturally horrified to discover a species that not only competes with itself in order to “better” itself, but whose individuals are more than willing to lie, cheat, murder, sacrifice and betray other member of its species for personal gain.
Earth girls are easy.
@39 – Resident Alien! [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resident_Alien_(TV_series) ] (Spoilers in link)
@55 Or Earth boys!
There’s the Stargate scenario : sufficiently advance humanoid and non-humanoid aliens have been helping themselves to humans for quite a while
@48, Somebody else who’s read Our Saucer Vacation! I picked up a collection of Lieber’s short stories completely at random and that’s one of my favorites.
Humans as subjects of practical jokes:
“The Great Pat Boom” by Damon Knight
“Something Rich and Strange” by R. A. Lafferty
Sex and cheap labor
“And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill’s Side” by James Tiptree
Our genes.
Xenogenesis trilogy by Octavia Butler
I’m amazed that no one has mentioned a constructor fleet visiting the Earth and hanging in the sky exactly like bricks don’t while they announce that they will destroy the Earth to build a hyperspace bypass.
My novel The Gerfnit Chronicles proposes one reason. Motivated by a misunderstood Voyager platter intercepted by a species called Frobs, they send an investigator to better understand Earth’s secret for a harmonious society. The prequel Originated Under Twin Suns provides the backstory for the selection of Gerfnit as their mission specialist. Originally written as letters to my daughter at an overnight camp, they operate at two levels. Wacky on the top, satirical below.
Refugees? (Zenna Henderson’s “The People”)
You’re overlooking in the most obvious one: knowledge. Whether aliens are naturalists collecting species, sociologists studying foreign cultures, planetary geologists, etc., they’re here because they seek knowledge. To amp that up, imagine we’re the ONLY other civilization they’ve ever found.
Alpha Centauri needs women!
I’m pleased that the first comment is about the total solar eclipses because I’ve always thought that our total solar eclipses would be considered one of the natural wonders of the inhabited universe, and the aliens would love coming to see them. Here’s a related Usenet thread from 2004 in which I made the same suggestion. As there always is on Usenet, some guy argued the point, and it was a pleasant surprise to find that everyone else was on my side of the issue.
If they come to destroy us, we never even see them coming. Anyone with interstellar travel just has to aim an object/missile/ship at earth from interstellar distance, and accelerate as if they are coming for a visit, but don’t decelerate, maybe keep accelerating. energy level needed means at the least they punch through the crust in an event worse than the one that finished off the dinosaurs. Depending on physics of the tech, worst case the debris splatters the remaining planets for a few million years.
Even if we assume sublight is the limit they still have relativistic speed capability for it to even matter, and the attack is triggered by nuke tests, a rock comes in from light years away and near light speed, maybe it’s preceded by a blue-shifted into x-ray source that’s effectively the photon shockwave, not moving in the sky but just getting brighter, can’t tell what it is then it hits.
I think it was a Bruce Sterling short story about an AI that sent agents to a planet to stop the development of the singularity event that would lead to a competing AI. I think the planet was Earth but I am not sure, and am not even sure if Sterling was the author, but, it was a good story. The enforcing AI was, I think, presented as benign, and its intention on preventing other competing AIs as preventing, I presume, AI vs AI competition as AIs in AI vs AI wars might find naturally evolved creatures as hindrances and expendable.
There’s Larry Niven’s _Draco Tavern_ alien visitor stories that revolve around the Chirpsithra aliens providing trade and transportation services, IIRC – Earth is just a node in a trading network, I think? It’s been a long long time since I read them, but they were entertaining.
And his _Fourth Profession_ also has alien traders, who travel via slower-than-light solar sails, and count on the people at the destination building them a launching laser, paid for by information. That’s one of the more entertaining stories I’ve ever read, although the information provided to the waitress is so so wrong (although to be fair to Niven, the characters know that in-story).
@12 – this is one of the best and most sensible options. I recall a Superman novel (NOT a comic book!) where Lex Luthor and Superman happen to be off-planet in an alien civilization and forced to work together. Lex explains they won’t be noticed since humanoids are extremely common and often used as slave labor by most of the rest of the galaxy since they’re dexterous and easily trained to do complex tasks. The trade is quite lucrative with a single humanoid slave being worth the equivalent of millions of earth dollars. Superman says he’s surprised that Lex hasn’t horned in on the market somehow. Lex glares at him and asks “What the hell do you think I’ve been trying to take over the world for, you idiot? I’d OWN the market for human slaves but SOMEONE keeps stopping me!”
@32 I grew up in Wisconsin and went to the University of Florida. Was totally perplexed when two of my Florida born friends said their dream (international) honeymoon was somewhere North where they could see snow! I believe they chose Toronto in January.
So I definitely see aliens doing a biome tour.
The best excuse for actually invading the earth was thought up by Niven and Pournelle in Footfall. An alien race of pseudo-elephants invades and starts to take over. They are technologically advanced, but will immediately accept any surrender. No one can figure out why they’re here and why they immediately attacked because it just doesn’t make sense. Any interstellar civilization can get raw materials more easily, even biologicals which they could grown in orbital greenhouses. They don’t seem to want slaves or anything else we have, they just want to occupy the earth and they find the very concept of negotiation to be foreign.
SPOILERS
They eventually determine that the aliens are a specially bred race of gladiators that ANOTHER race bred to fight wars for their amusement on one planet. Then the master race died out. The gladiators were stuck on a dying planet with plenty of military technology, but no real grasp of science and they weren’t all that bright to begin with. They somehow found out about Earth, were able to salvage a master race ship to get here and invaded immediately because that was literally the only culture they had: war and conquest. They never even thought of negotiating or asking for help or doing anything other than attacking and the Earth was the only place they knew of that could support life.
Humans triumph when they realize all they have to do is force the alien leaders to surrender to THEM at which point they’d do whatever their new masters told them. Figuring out how to do that is a bit of challenge, of course…
How about sheer curiosity? In Sturgeon’s “The [Widget], the [Wadget], and Boff“, aliens have concluded that our species won’t survive without an ability that can only be observed in the field — so a couple of them put on human suits and set up a boarding house to see how we behave. This is explicitly simple (vulgar?) curiosity; the story starts with an analogy to Earth scientists who experiment not because they have designs on other species but simply because they want to know. Like a lot of Sturgeon it’s set in more-or-less the year it was written (1955) rather than in some hypothetical future, so the portrayed gender roles may grate on current readers — but it also has some sharp commentary on how straitjacketing those roles are.
@69 Elliot S! Maggin’s Superman:Last Son of Krypton. Though my memories and yours differ as to details. I recall Luthor wants to conquer the Earth because humans make great soldiers (through adaptability and initiative primarily) and once he is ruler he can start working on an interstellar empire.
This is one of my favorite Luthor incarnations – very bright, almost entirely fixated on killing or beating Superman (at least for a short term goal.) Narrative voice says Luthor has never killed a human being – all of his hatred is focused on Superman.
@72 Thanks, CHip! That was my thought. Not to anthropomorphize those aliens (they are aliens, after all), but curiosity seems to to be a definite motive. Seeing what’s on the other side of the hill, wanderlust, boredom with the same old planets, something a bit new (observations so far seem to indicate that our Solar System is pretty doggone rare). Here,@D&G0*X, hold my beer! (no intelligent species can NOT have a beer equivalent!)
@71 And I’m surprised no Marines ever recruited some of the Herd. They would be proud to wear the Globe and Anchor of their new tribe.
Semper Fi’!
Why would aliens come to Earth? Their version of doctorial students doing a research paper on primitive species who are in the process of destroying themselves an their planet.
Has anyone written this story yet?
The Draco Tavern, of course.
@73 – THANK YOU! I’m thrilled someone else remembers this and I didn’t just dream it. Do you remember as well that the one thing that makes humans unique is their filtrum (the little ridge above the upper lip) so Superman disguises himself by pulling some ‘building material’ off a nearby structure and compressing it with super strength into a cover for his filtrum. I always thought that was slightly lazy writing and a bit out of character – what if the owner of that building notices a chunk missing?
@71 – Thank you! I read Footfall ages ago and I’ve been meaning to read more Niven/Pournelle collaborations.
I love the idea of using nukes to launch and maneuver a spacecraft! I still tell people about this book all these years later. Thanks everyone for mentioning so many excellent SF novels and authors
great reading. I also believe it would be tourism, one of the main motivations for aliens coming Earth; taverns, cities’ celebrations, cultural festivals, geographical marvels, playing padel, Venecia…
and the fact of visiting a far exotic world in one of the Milky way’s spiral arms