What Books Taught Us – Alien Invasion

Have you checked out our various Features pages lately? Julie and I are all about Features posts. (Who doesn’t need an occasional break from reviews?) In this feature post, we will be discussing What Books Taught Us. And no, we don’t mean cooking, crafting, or organizing. We are talking about serious, useful skills. Like how to survive an alien invasion.  We want to make sure all of our readers are prepared!

Whether it’s little grey beings or scary monsters crawling out of people’s torsos, we need know how to survive alien invaders. Here are some lessons we’ve learned from books.

Become a god: In Dune, House Atreides is fighting off House Harkonnen’s invasion of Arrakis. After the Harkonnen’s kill Duke Leto, Paul, and his pregnant mother, Lady Jessica, run to the desert in hopes of surviving to fight another day. It is in the desert with the Fremen that we learn that Paul has special powers. He’s the Fremen messiah, Maud’Dib.

Try looking into that place where you dare not look! You’ll find me there, staring out at you!

It’s in this guise that Paul instructs the Freman to fight. And together they rise up against the Harkonnen’s. And win back control of Arrakis.

Take the fight to them: If becoming a god doesn’t work, you can always take the fight directly to the alien invaders. In Armada. Zack has always been a gamer. And it turns out that playing videogames is a useful skill.

My whole life, I felt like I was destined to do something important, but I was only ever good at videogames, which I always figured would be completely useless. But it’s not useless, and neither am I. I think this is what I was always destined to do with my life. I just never knew it.

Zack uses those skills to help save Earth. And now, I’m lamenting the fact that I read science fiction. But have no videogame skills.

Maybe they seeded life on Earth millions of years ago, and now they’re here to punish us for turning out to be such a lame species and inventing reality TV and shit?

Fall in love: If being a god or fighting isn’t your thing, maybe try falling in love with the alien invaders. It’s what all the cool kids do. In Obsidian, Katy falls in love with not quite boy next door Daemon. Turns out that Daemon and his family (SPOILER ALERT) are undercover aliens.

‘You don’t look like an alien!’ It seemed important to point that out.
He arched a brow. ‘And what do aliens look like?’
‘Not…not like you,’ I sputtered. ‘They aren’t gorgeous–‘
‘You think I’m gorgeous?’ He smiled

It’s good to know that some aliens are sexy! Like Evan Walker. He’s the sexiest alien around. When he decided to save Cassie in Fifth Wave, I think women everywhere fell in love with him. Sure, he’s the one who shot her. But that’s beside the point!

‘I had it all wrong’, he says. ‘Before I found you, I thought the only way to hold on was to find something to live for. It isn’t. To hold on, you have to find something you’re willing to die for.’

What teenage girl wouldn’t fall for those lines. Heck, I’m out of my teenage years and I still fell for those lines!

In another case of love with an alien, we have the love triangle\square of Melanie\Wanderer and Jared and Ian. The Host is a bit of a confusing love story. With Wanderer inhabiting Melanie’s body. And Jared in love with Melanie. And Ian in love with Wanderer.

I, the soul called Wanderer, love you, human Ian. And that will never change, no matter what I might become.

But I think The Host is a great example of love with an alien because Wanderer really learns what it means to be a human. To live with humans. And in doing so, she works to save humans from her own kind.

This place was truly the highest and the lowest of all worlds – the most beautiful senses, the most exquisite emotions.. the most malevolent desires, the darkest deeds. Perhaps it was meant to be so. Perhaps without the lows, the highs could not be reached.

    

How about you? Do you know of any other ways to fight off the impending alien invasion?

 

 

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