[Webstral]

This is a tough one. Alien invasion has enormous emotional and psychological appeal but a somewhat lesser basis in logic. However, I’ve often said that anyone can be a critic; so I’ll try to offer something supportive.

In human history what is possible and even practical often takes a back seat to psychology. Aliens capable of traveling across interstellar space could manufacture proteins under controlled conditions using sunlight and enclosed spaces made from asteroid materials. We could imagine, though, that the alien presence has one or a very few minds making the decisions. Perhaps the aliens are hive beings. Perhaps they are very few in number. Perhaps the decision-makers are of a rarefied caste, while the majority execute their assignments. With few decision-makers, the alien logic of acquiring resources for the cheapest investment in energy might give way to some sort of alternative thinking.

Years ago, I outlined a screenplay in response to the film version of “Starship Troopers”. In spirit of putting the bottom line up front, the bugs come to Earth to protect humanity from their bug brethren. The bugs are a hive species with an interstellar civilization over 250,000 years old. At some point in the recent past (around the start of the Agricultural Revolution), drones took over the formerly queen-run civilization and started to reshape things in their new vision. Part of the new vision was the extermination of all other sentient life within the boundaries of explored space. (Previously, planets with sentient or near-sentient life were made off-limits to bug development.) The bugs who arrive in Sol are part of a resistance movement in which queens still rule. Having seen the usurper bugs annihilate other sentient life, they have come to help humanity survive the inevitable usurper onslaught.

One of the questions that hangs over the while story is why. The engineers (the friendly bugs) arrive in Sol and swap a host of scientific knowledge and technology for ownership of Mars and a treaty on development of other resources in Sol. Why bother? Why not simply take Earth for themselves? The engineers show that the they have the biological technology to adapt to Earth’s microorganisms. No one can figure this one out. Towards the end of the story, as a usurper fleet approaches a semi-terraformed Mars, the queen herself reveals the answer: humanity may be the intelligence that fulfills God’s promise that good shall triumph over evil.

According to engineer theology, a Universe with laws of physics, matter, and energy yields organized patterns of matter and energy: atoms, stars, heavier atoms, dust, more stars, planets, and so on. A certain part of the organized matter and energy will yield life. Some examples of life will yield multicellular life. Some multicellular life will yield sentience. Some sentience will become transcendent. Some transcendence will reach the next stage in development, and the pattern will continue beyond the ability of the engineers to predict. Ultimately, a purposeful entity with knowledge and power spanning the Universe will emerge as a new God. New God will make decisions about starting a new Universe.

The catch is that none of the future developments are inevitable. Just as there is no guarantee that a given species will make the jump to the next level of development, there is no guarantee that any intentful entity will ever climb to the top of the pyramid. This is where good and evil come in, for the engineers. Good is the force that harnesses energies of all types in favor of orderliness. Evil is the force that diverts energies away from orderliness. Good is not freedom from stress or competition: indeed, the engineers recognize that stress and competition drive evolution and innovation. It’s complex, so I won’t go into it any further. For the engineers, goodness advances a species up the pyramid towards divinity—even as advancement changes a species into something else completely. The engineers accept that they don’t know enough about the process to figure out what it takes for a species at their level to become divine. However, since God created a Universe with many, many possibilities, She must have wanted natural selection to play its part in the formation of a new God. Here’s the tricky bit: if goodness matters, then the moral decisions made by intelligences capable of choosing between good and evil must play a part in God’s pattern. Therefore, those who would serve God’s intent for the Universe must make decisions for good. The broader each level of the pyramid leading to divinity, the greater the chance that the top of the pyramid will reach high enough for there to be a new God. Humanity broadens the mere sentience level of the pyramid; therefore, helping humanity survive the coming genocide is part of executing God’s intent for the Universe.

Phew.

One could imagine alien decisions being made based on factors other than pure logic. Heck, look at how we do things. Maybe the aliens who show up are refugees or criminals.