Tripods
While I was out last week I picked up a copy of John Christopher's When The Tripods Came at the local library bookstore for a dollar (Okay, technically it was 50 cents, but I didn't have fifty cents, I had a dollar, so that's what they got). I remember reading this book, the prequel to his highly successful Young Adult Tripods series, some time ago, but I really remembered very little about it.
The thing I noticed most on re-reading it was how much the entire book is essential an Author's Saving Throw to handle the earlier series. And now I'm wondering if the necessity of making that Author's Saving Throw is why I just haven't seen much in that sub-genre recently.
The Tripods series deals with a far future world in which mankind has regressed into a largely pre-industrial state after being conquered by an alien race known as the Masters. The Masters are a race with highly advanced technology in the field of mind control, which explains how they manage to keep the humans under control. When humans come of age they undergo a process called Capping, in which an electronic mind-control mesh is permanently fixed into their skulls, thus cementing them firmly under the control of the Masters.
The Masters spent most of their time in their enclosed cities, breathing their own atmosphere. When they went outside they did it in the series eponymous vehicles, the three legged tripods, homages to H.G. Wells's classic machines. The Tripods were designed to strike, if not terror, at least unease into the minds of young readers, a combination of an octopus, a giant mechanical thing, and something far, far bigger then you are.
The Tripods was made into a television show in the 80s, but by then the Tripods, who had appeared formidable and dangerous to the audience of 1898, were beginning to fade. They looked awkward, ungainly. They were vulnerable to human ingenuity in the pre-industrial future, which was nothing compared to the arsenal that humanity had built up since the 60s. For plot reasons they had to be blind in the dark, in an age where infrared was in every household.
Christopher, being a competent author, saw this coming. In the original series he made it clear that the Masters's strength was in mind control, not force of arms. But even with that caveat he wanted to emphasize the point, and so wrote it down explicitly by writing When The Tripods Came to tell the story of how humanity was overcome by a race whose method of conquest was to walk around in giant three-legged tin cans.
I was thinking about that while reading it, because now the prequel, if it had not been anchored to a time that has already come and gone, looks a little dated. In the prequel, after a preliminary invasion that fails because it turns out the tripods are not bullet-proof, the Masters find some way to take over a production studio and hypnotize people through a single television show. Nowadays that seems quaint - to really hypnotize people all you really have to do is put a video on YouTube. For poor H.G. Wells I don't know what to say. From a hundred years in the future his unstable and mortal war machines look almost absurdly vulnerable, and even a little pathetic.
I wonder if this is why there seem to be less alien invasion stories then I remember. Ever since Wells, the paradigm seemed to have changed to having it be the humans, not the environment, that throws off the yoke of alien invasion. But this seems to put the author in a bit of a bind. For the aliens to withstand the bitter march of progress, their technology has to be so advanced that twenty or thirty years from now people will still be saying "Wow" and "Gee whiz" (presuming lingo goes retro) when they pick up your book. At the same time if you make it too advanced, the humans don't seem to stand a chance, and can only win through clear alien ineptitude, or through teaching them the True Meaning of Love (a cliche so tired that other cliches steer clear of it at parties).
But maybe I'm just being out of touch. Maybe the alien invasion sub-genre has been revived. Because honestly, after Battlefield Earth the movie it didn't need life support, it needed a coroner.
The thing I noticed most on re-reading it was how much the entire book is essential an Author's Saving Throw to handle the earlier series. And now I'm wondering if the necessity of making that Author's Saving Throw is why I just haven't seen much in that sub-genre recently.
The Tripods series deals with a far future world in which mankind has regressed into a largely pre-industrial state after being conquered by an alien race known as the Masters. The Masters are a race with highly advanced technology in the field of mind control, which explains how they manage to keep the humans under control. When humans come of age they undergo a process called Capping, in which an electronic mind-control mesh is permanently fixed into their skulls, thus cementing them firmly under the control of the Masters.
The Masters spent most of their time in their enclosed cities, breathing their own atmosphere. When they went outside they did it in the series eponymous vehicles, the three legged tripods, homages to H.G. Wells's classic machines. The Tripods were designed to strike, if not terror, at least unease into the minds of young readers, a combination of an octopus, a giant mechanical thing, and something far, far bigger then you are.
The Tripods was made into a television show in the 80s, but by then the Tripods, who had appeared formidable and dangerous to the audience of 1898, were beginning to fade. They looked awkward, ungainly. They were vulnerable to human ingenuity in the pre-industrial future, which was nothing compared to the arsenal that humanity had built up since the 60s. For plot reasons they had to be blind in the dark, in an age where infrared was in every household.
Christopher, being a competent author, saw this coming. In the original series he made it clear that the Masters's strength was in mind control, not force of arms. But even with that caveat he wanted to emphasize the point, and so wrote it down explicitly by writing When The Tripods Came to tell the story of how humanity was overcome by a race whose method of conquest was to walk around in giant three-legged tin cans.
I was thinking about that while reading it, because now the prequel, if it had not been anchored to a time that has already come and gone, looks a little dated. In the prequel, after a preliminary invasion that fails because it turns out the tripods are not bullet-proof, the Masters find some way to take over a production studio and hypnotize people through a single television show. Nowadays that seems quaint - to really hypnotize people all you really have to do is put a video on YouTube. For poor H.G. Wells I don't know what to say. From a hundred years in the future his unstable and mortal war machines look almost absurdly vulnerable, and even a little pathetic.
I wonder if this is why there seem to be less alien invasion stories then I remember. Ever since Wells, the paradigm seemed to have changed to having it be the humans, not the environment, that throws off the yoke of alien invasion. But this seems to put the author in a bit of a bind. For the aliens to withstand the bitter march of progress, their technology has to be so advanced that twenty or thirty years from now people will still be saying "Wow" and "Gee whiz" (presuming lingo goes retro) when they pick up your book. At the same time if you make it too advanced, the humans don't seem to stand a chance, and can only win through clear alien ineptitude, or through teaching them the True Meaning of Love (a cliche so tired that other cliches steer clear of it at parties).
But maybe I'm just being out of touch. Maybe the alien invasion sub-genre has been revived. Because honestly, after Battlefield Earth the movie it didn't need life support, it needed a coroner.