I watched this movie as a kid and then as an adult and it holds up. I’d purchase it if I’d watch it more than once every other decade because it is SUPER creepy. Still love the hell out of it, though.
Well, Arthur Dent DID have to submit to Vogon poetry; so there's that -- which might might be a mitigating factor, unfortunately Earth was already destroyed by then; so sad.
But hey! No more income taxes!
(I always try to look on the bright side)
This is what I came here to say. Was humanity rescued or enslaved? Did they have a future or were they only something the Oankali had consumed?
In the rest of the trilogy we see a possible solution for humanity, though most of the surviving humans won't be able to take it.
The conquest is ambiguous because Oankali don't have an urge to dominance, as humans do. So they don't think of themselves as conquering or destroying - they're just trading, as they always have. Yet between the lines we can guess what they leave behind.
In the XCOM games by Firaxis, the premise of the second game is that the alien invasion from the first game, then 20 years in the past, has succeeded. Aliens are ruling Earth.
In Dungeon Crawler Carl every single building on earth is instantly crushed, the interior of the planet is transformed into an 18-floor World Dungeon, and anyone lucky(?) enough to be outside at that moment can choose to enter "The Crawl" for a chance to "reclaim their mined materials". The Crawl is a mandated part of the galactic legal system's Indigenous Species Protection Act which has been exploited and turned into massive entertainment product, the most popular show in the universe.
And thats just the surface-level lore. Fair warning, DCC is sci-fi presented as LitRPG with a fantasy style, so its gonna be way different that your average sci-fi book
To add to this if ever a book HAS to be done by audiobook it's this one. Narrator Jeff Hays is an immensely talented voice actor and the humor with which he gives voices and delivers lines is what makes the book. I've listened to thousands of audiobooks and most narrators are merely serviceable and I forget them soon after. With Hays the voices stay you and you'll thereafter automatically hear certain words or phrases in a specific voice. For instance, I saw the phrase "kill, kill, kill" in a complete non DCC related thing but my brain automatically heard it the way a certain character in DCC says it.
Its... unreal how good they are. His ability to go from Carls gruff voice to a cat aristocrat seamlessly is so impressive, not to mention the zillion other voices and sounds. I love his BLAM
Well, that too. Never forget the Mormon and Ancient Aliens influences on the show... but they use stock news footage from Vietnam and WWII in that first episode to show the destruction of Caprica and the other colonies.
A great movie, except that it fell for the typical trope "The aliens are here to steal our water". This trope never makes sense, because the aliens could just go to Saturn and scoop up part of the rings.
Plenty of people buy "designer water" at $8 per half liter bottle instead of just buying a cheap effective filter for tap water & using a reusable bottle.
Who's to say an advanced alien race wouldn't have some factions that only want to harvest "organic water" from life-supporting planets because it's more chique?
This is my first thought. It's a bit of a spoiler to know that happens, so no one click it or you'll be spoiled. You just have to guess the book without looking.
That rules out books written by multiple authors, at least (assuming that we use, what’s it called, “relevancy logic” where all logical statements are assumed to be relevant)
John Varley has an entire series about this, starting with “Steel Beach.” Aliens conquer Earth with painful ease (they apparently don’t even notice any resistance), but leave the rest of the human inhabited Solar System alone. It’s just background, though, there’s no communication and their motives are never revealed.
I read that a very long time ago, but wasn't the speculation from the survivors that the aliens had saved the whales? Didn't care about humans enough to wipe them out, just trying to protect the whales. But as I said that was decades ago, so maybe I have that mixed up with something else.
I bought that at an airport bookstore when i was 16 or 17 a million years ago and it blew my little gen x mind when the main character “changed” half way through the book because that was something they did every now and then when they wanted to.
Also the idea of the super computer that runs the moon going crazy and deciding it needed its legions of nanobots to give everyone minty morning breath freaked me out more than amused me. All in all i’d like to read it again.
In Footfall, and John Ringo's Aldentata series humanity faces some serious setback. Also Marko Kloos's Terms of Enlistment series.
And, while not alien invasion, Earth Abides is pretty sad. Also Level 7.
And, in John Carpenter's *The Thing* it's kind of suggested the the aliens might finally win.
Late edit:
Look at this way: At the end of *The Thing,* maybe Kurrt Russle in infected, maybe Keith David, maybe both; but one of then surely is. So here we are, two Hollywood movie stars, Working in lots of pictures. How's that 6 degrees of separation thing working out now?
All of Hollywood is *The Thing*!
And don't try to confound me that with some spurious argument that *The Thing* is fiction,
Cheers!
We threatened to nuke it.
But it's true the humans do win in the end of that one. It liked it because it was the only time a 'technologically advanced aliens invade earth but the humans win' ever seemed even remotely plausible.
The middle series was the best--the aliens had control over half of Earth but by the 1960s were in a four-way nuclear standoff with the USA, USSR, and Third Reich who all hated each other too. (The aliens are most fun when used as sarcastic commentary on humans)
After the aliens kill billions of people, decimate every military on the planet, and change Earth's climate.
On the plus side humanity now has access to alien technology at the end.
That's what libraries are for! So you don't have to spend your hard earned money on a book that is so badly edited that a character is a Major on a left-hand page and is magically a Captain on the very next right hand page.
So, yeah; I pretty much concur.
But: You've gotta love BunBun and was that the USS Salem (CA-139)?
Footfall ends with the Fithp rolling over for the humans. Their early advantage of high ground and technological superiority is hampered by an inability to adapt to human thinking, whereas the humans suffer no such handicap. Each side draws on the input of captives; humans are far more flexible.
Extinction >!Except that it turns out that the alien invaders are actually humans who were driven off of Earth, and the main characters are the humanoid robots who rebelled and did it!<
It's ambiguous, the Overmind could be eating all the delicious psychic energy and humanity was just a meal for it.
The Overmind does not seem to be a morally good entity, the Overseers are basically an eternally enslaved race to do it's bidding and the reason it uses them is because they're a failed evolutionary path that can't develop psychic powers.
Karellan seems to be a good/moral character. And he hates doing whatever it is he's doing and thanks the last human food sacrificing himself to tell Karellan what exactly the overmind does to a planet when he destroys it.
If it was a pure good ending where humanity just reached the next plane of existence, there's an awful lot of Ambiguity to leave open they were just fattened up for a juicy slaughter.
In the Worldwar Series by Harry Turtledove, aliens invade during WW2 and the war ends in a sort-of draw. One of my favorites from Turtledove.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worldwar_series
I loved the middle trilogy with the cold war standoff between the four powers. The last book could have had more chaos, from the alien colonists overpopulating their section of Earth and changing the climate, and Straha or some other colonist leading a more risk-taking, fast-advancing human-like society that is a threat to the humans and the Emperor alike. The Emperor still sending kamikaze ships at Earth and having them change course last minute just in case he needs to eliminate either humans or the colonists. Or the USA and Emperor may have had a good reason to make nice.
I like how he balanced things out to give Humans a more realistic chance to beat them over the long haul, instead of the ID4 solution or others like it.
There’s always the homoerotic subtext. I loved it as a sci-fi deprived teenager. What can I say. 20 mile trip to a bookshop so I read what I could find.
I remember a short story where humanity has definitely lost to the alien invaders but have persevered by learning to live as sort of pests or parasites to their society, eventually finally going to the stars by infesting the aliens' ships and going where they go.
In the Man-Kzin Wars anthology series set in Larry Nivens Known Space, one of our colony worlds has been conquered and occupied with humans being slaves and menu items. A number of the stories in that thread use Bogart movies as a template, like Casablanca and Treasure of the Sierra Madre.
It isn't released until Aug. 6, but I've read an advanced reader's copy of James S.A. Corey's (author of *The Expanse*) new book, *The Mercy of Gods*, which is the first of a series called *The Captive's War*. The whole premise of it seems to be exactly what you're looking for—it kicks off with humanity's planet (no longer Earth, for reasons unknown) being invaded by aliens, and humanity loses badly. Most of the book focuses on a group of human biologists who've been enslaved to perform scientific experiments for their now alien overlords, and it's got Corey's typical blend of science, action, both existential and visceral horror, and mystery. Keep an eye out for it!
The Killing Star. Humanity is wiped out faster than the speed of light in the very beginning. Except for a few stragglers. There isn’t really any winning
Vamipre Earth series by E.E. Knight. An eleven book series about how an alien species called the Kurians tricked humanity into letting them invade Earth to save us from a plague and practically apocalyptic events that they caused. The whole story is mostly from the point of view of one man, David Valentine, and his efforts to help in the fight against the Kur and the vast amount of humanity that follows them blindly. It’s a bit long winded, but overall a fantastic story.
The Ember War series starts with humanity being wiped out, but for a small fleet of ships which was accidentally/on purpose hidden, with the rest of the series showing them trying to rebuild and defeat the invaders, who are trying to wipe out all life in the galaxy. It's not high literature but I enjoyed them.
*Way of the Pilgrim*, Gordon R Dickson. Opens well after Earth was easily conquered and occupied by a relative handful of aliens. The description of the conquest is barely a page and it's brilliant. The revelation of why they conquered Earth in the first place is stunning.
Edit: stupid autocorrect
*Gordon R. Dickson.
His Childe cycle novels of the Dorsai military caste are also excellent, though not relevant to OP's question. I don't often see him mentioned on Reddit.
A significant number of episodes from the new The outer limits series end this way.
The deprogrammers starring Brent spiner, and the episode with Wil Wheaton both meet your criteria
Ah, *Blindsight!* That's a dark and brutal little gem that one is. Can't remember being creeped out by a novel in quite the same way. And yeah, the ending is *grim.*
The author Peter Watts goes into some great meditations on the nature of consciousness, all whilst engaged in what feels like a cognitive-science based version of *Alien*.
"In Space, no one can tell if you're a philosophical zombie..."
Pandora's Planet by Christopher Anvil, a somewhat humorous take on aliens that conquer earth then discover humans are "smarter" than they are. It is pretty dated "comedy" so keep that in mind.
[The Mount](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/94702.The_Mount) by Carol Emshwiller.
humanity is overrun by aliens and turned into... racehorses.
i have never read a book that had a more stupid-sounding premise but which was absolutely mind-blowingly good. people talk alot (justifiably) about stories like "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas"--*The Mount* is just as deep and great at getting under your skin.
Mmmm...
The War Against the Chtorr as a maybe. There's no stereotypical aliens and it is more like an invasion by an alien ecosystem.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The\_War\_Against\_the\_Chtorr](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_War_Against_the_Chtorr)
I'm finished with book three and enough passages have filtered over the years about book four where it's implied that Humanity is done for and will be absorbed as part of an ecosystem. I have not read Book Four so I can't say for sure.
That said... the series has been stalled for 3 decades, and books 5 - 7 have been supposedly coming out for years and we're still at Book 4. Shame because it has a really interesting premise and world-building.
It's very apparent after a while that the Chtorrans pretty much won before the beginning of book 1 IMHO. The best ending scenario I can imagine based on what Gerrold's said about his plans for 5+ is that the protagonist manages to get in contact with the emergent sentience of the entire network of Chtorran biology *and* co-opted Earth biology, gets it attention, and it says something like "OH, SORRY, I DIDN'T SEE YOU THERE. WHOOPS. GUESS WE'RE STUCK WITH EACH OTHER NOW. UM. THIS IS REALLY AWKWARD. I WASN'T EXPECTING TO HAVE A CHAT WITH MY NEW GUT FLORA HERE."
Realistically I'm not holding out hope that we're ever going to see the last one published. Gerrold's a lot more professional than, say, Pat Rothfuss, but he's eighty, and he's been wrestling with ending Chtorr for a *long* time.
Do not expect an ending. But if you want a tour through the entire world being invaded by an ecology that's much more vicious and efficient than the native one, with absolutely nobody we recognize as *sentient* there to talk to, negotiate, or threaten our way into some sort of compromise... yeah, it's a heck of an invasion story where humanity loses, and loses *big*.
Vilcabamba, by Harry Turtledove. Technically, humanity does manage to hold out, but it's made clear at the end that the odds are very much against them.
Humanity doesn't lose. All aliens on Earth are killed, the alien domed cities destroyed, and the arriving colony ship turns around and leaves. The third book ends with human governments being reestablished.
“To Serve Man” Twilight Zone, season 3, episode 24. It’s the story of an alien cookbook left behind on Earth by an alien. The cookbook contains recipes for dishes containing human flesh.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To\_Serve\_Man\_(The\_Twilight\_Zone)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Serve_Man_(The_Twilight_Zone))
If games count, XCOM 2 is based on real world player data where two thirds of XCOM 1 plays failed to defend Earth from alien invasion. It picks up twenty years into the alien occupation of Earth.
It was so corny and hackneyed I couldn't get past the first book. Johnny Goodboy Tyler (yes, that's his given name) is such a trite protagonist that it just curdled my gut trying to slog thru it.
It's probably not going to be your cup of tea, but the *Human Domestication Guide* setting has a dystopian human interstellar empire, the Terran Accord, picking a fight with an alien polity, the Affini Compact, thinking it'll be an easy fight (based on the experience with another alien species that humanity had already encountered and colonized).
The Affini, as you might expect from the title, turn out to be a *wee bit* more numerous and powerful than the Accord expected, and it does NOT go well for the Terran government.
(Individual humans do all right, as long as they don't do something foolish like keep fighting the Affini months or years after the peace treaty was signed; the first order of business for the plant aliens is "make sure everyone in their new ward species has food, water, shelter, medical care, and whatever material supplies are needed".)
Best estimates are that in the *entire* Terran-Affini war, against the full wrath of the star-spanning Terran navy, the Affini lose...one ship. Not even a particularly valuable ship.
[The Day of the Triffids](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_of_the_Triffids) has humans fall back to tiny enclaves; it's not clear they'll ever succeed in getting Earth back
They Live- "I have come here to chew bubble gum and kick ass. And I'm all out of bubblegum" one of the greatest movie lines every, imo
A Quiet Place
Annihilation- I think. It was to weird for me to fully get it
Colony the TV show has humans under alien occupation and split into collaborators, neutrals, and insurgence.
That was pretty good but they cancelled it just as it was ramping up which was a pity. Worth a watch though.
A Planet for Rent by Yoss; Earth has been conquered and is now one big tourist resort for the affluent alien species of the galaxy, while the humans can at best hope to work in hospitality serving them. Great novel!
Falling skies definitely starts with humanity on the backfoot I'm not sure if they're ever wiped out or anything but they're definitely losing in the first season
It had some interesting elements that could have been really interesting if they explored more of them but who knows what they were thinking. I didn't finish that last season, I couldn't stand it
Same.
I just wanted more... Aliens in a show about Aliens, not how a dad was looking after his disfunctional family during an alien invasion... Again and again.
Also, Terra Nova. Going back to the past millions of years ago with dinosaurs, i want to see dinosaurs. And not how a dysfunctional family is trying to work together... While sometimes surrounded by dinosaurs
Under Alien Skies. It starts out with humanity having lost an invasion and Earth being occupied by the Tsorian empire. It's actually pretty upbeat considering what happens.
Though not “winning” in the way you’re meaning, Arthur C. Clarke’s Childhood’s End is a novel about an alien race taking over in more caretaker role than anything truly malicious and what makes it interesting is that it takes place over the course of decades so you can see the long term implications of the alien’s oversight. It’s definitely a good read that I don’t see recommended often enough. I believe the term “alien overlord” actually came from this book.
Uplift War, not in the sense that the aliens kick our door down but in the sense that they're so advanced, the only possible interaction is on their terms. Any attempt to assert ourselves is a desperate rebellion.
It was the starting premise of the original 1970s era Captain Harlock anime. Earth was occupied by alien troops and yet one human pilot decides to begin a campaign of piracy in resistance. The anime is however in many ways a quiet rebuke of Japanese surrender. Harlock is actually a descendant of a WWII German pilot and his chief engineer is a descendant of a WWII Japanese navigator, and one story is their ancestors “heroic” resistance against the allies… while the author of the anime is also known for a same universe anime about a starship that is the rebuilt flagship of the Japanese Imperial Navy brought into space a millennia after it was sunk by US forces in WWII…
So…
It’s a cool resistance against alien occupation story until you realize the “aliens” are proxy Americans…
If you stumble upon a Harlock movie on Netflix from 2013 it’s different. The same character in a different universe premise.
The 2013 Captain Harlock movie has a radically different and amazingly cool premise: There are no aliens, anywhere. And having explored the entire universe Humanity’s aloneness has caused an existential crisis where only the pirate Harlock stands in the way of Earth setting off a reality bomb to end an existence they have decided has no meaning.
'Invasion of the Body Snatchers'
This is the correct answer. I'm thinking of re-watching it to pay homage to the great Donald S.
His version is my favorite. The ending is just brutal, and brilliant.
Kick the baby.
Say hi to Spock for me. Tell 'em both I miss 'em.
isn’t he in The Puppet Masters as well? Time for a double feature I think.
Came to suggest that and say this. Donald weekend at my house. RIP old friend.
Starring the recently deceased Donald Sutherland. One of my faves.
That dog/human face scene though
That scene still haunt me till today
It is a Caper. No it is a rat turd. A CAPER! Then eat it.
Very first thing that came to mind.
I watched this movie as a kid and then as an adult and it holds up. I’d purchase it if I’d watch it more than once every other decade because it is SUPER creepy. Still love the hell out of it, though.
Next best familiar scenario (imho) is 'The Thing' from J.C..
One of my absolute favorites.
Hitchhikers guide. Earth destroyed, not by invasion. Just bureaucracy.
And you can’t even act surprised about it. All the plans and charts have been on display for 50 of your earth years
On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.
That's the display department.
With a torch..
The lights had probably gone.
So had the stairs...
Well they had a spare.
That’s the display department.
Well, Arthur Dent DID have to submit to Vogon poetry; so there's that -- which might might be a mitigating factor, unfortunately Earth was already destroyed by then; so sad. But hey! No more income taxes! (I always try to look on the bright side)
Childhoods End by Arthur C Clarke. Incredible book.
Such a great book.
Depends on how you look at it
I wouldn't say humanity loses.. more like it evolves
I would say >!the Overlords are the real loosers in that book, unable to evolve further.!<
Damn that book hits hard!
They did a pretty nice limited series a few years ago.
Lilith's Brood by Octavia Butler (sort of)
...Very sort of. Showing up after the party isn't conquest.
Those opportunistic gene artists
This is what I came here to say. Was humanity rescued or enslaved? Did they have a future or were they only something the Oankali had consumed? In the rest of the trilogy we see a possible solution for humanity, though most of the surviving humans won't be able to take it. The conquest is ambiguous because Oankali don't have an urge to dominance, as humans do. So they don't think of themselves as conquering or destroying - they're just trading, as they always have. Yet between the lines we can guess what they leave behind.
In the XCOM games by Firaxis, the premise of the second game is that the alien invasion from the first game, then 20 years in the past, has succeeded. Aliens are ruling Earth.
I scrolled through the comments to suggest this as well. Great games in and of themselves but also an excellent storyline in this vein.
Greg Bear. The Forge of God.
Anvil of Stars isn't quite as good but still a banger.
In Dungeon Crawler Carl every single building on earth is instantly crushed, the interior of the planet is transformed into an 18-floor World Dungeon, and anyone lucky(?) enough to be outside at that moment can choose to enter "The Crawl" for a chance to "reclaim their mined materials". The Crawl is a mandated part of the galactic legal system's Indigenous Species Protection Act which has been exploited and turned into massive entertainment product, the most popular show in the universe. And thats just the surface-level lore. Fair warning, DCC is sci-fi presented as LitRPG with a fantasy style, so its gonna be way different that your average sci-fi book
To add to this if ever a book HAS to be done by audiobook it's this one. Narrator Jeff Hays is an immensely talented voice actor and the humor with which he gives voices and delivers lines is what makes the book. I've listened to thousands of audiobooks and most narrators are merely serviceable and I forget them soon after. With Hays the voices stay you and you'll thereafter automatically hear certain words or phrases in a specific voice. For instance, I saw the phrase "kill, kill, kill" in a complete non DCC related thing but my brain automatically heard it the way a certain character in DCC says it.
Its... unreal how good they are. His ability to go from Carls gruff voice to a cat aristocrat seamlessly is so impressive, not to mention the zillion other voices and sounds. I love his BLAM
Wait, you're saying he voices Doughnut too?
I *know* right?! I only realized after about a hundred pages, he's so good i legit thought there was a whole va cast
Thats Princess Donut the Queen Anne Chonk to you.
I’ve been putting this series off… but now I’m adding it to my queue! LitRPG is sort of a guilty pleasure (I’ve never done DnD either)
Its incredibly fun
First episode of Battlestar galactic.
It's not really an alien invasion in Battlestar Galactica, though. They are wiped out by their former robot slaves.
Battlestar Galactica in either version, really. The original is a Vietnam allegory while the reboot from 2003 is more of an allegory for 9/11 no less
It's an allegory for the Mormon migration to North America. Seriously.
Well, that too. Never forget the Mormon and Ancient Aliens influences on the show... but they use stock news footage from Vietnam and WWII in that first episode to show the destruction of Caprica and the other colonies.
The half life series.
We win in Half-life 3! /s
don't... don't do this to me....
[удалено]
A great movie, except that it fell for the typical trope "The aliens are here to steal our water". This trope never makes sense, because the aliens could just go to Saturn and scoop up part of the rings.
Plenty of people buy "designer water" at $8 per half liter bottle instead of just buying a cheap effective filter for tap water & using a reusable bottle. Who's to say an advanced alien race wouldn't have some factions that only want to harvest "organic water" from life-supporting planets because it's more chique?
"Earth Water! You can really taste the human!"
...taste the plastic.
don't they first discover the "aliens" in orbit around one of Saturn's moons?
Arguably in Titan AE.
Terribly underrated movie imho
>! Three Body Problem !<
>!But not the first aliens we meet!<
This is my first thought. It's a bit of a spoiler to know that happens, so no one click it or you'll be spoiled. You just have to guess the book without looking.
A hint that doesn't give away too much: it was written by an author.
That rules out books written by multiple authors, at least (assuming that we use, what’s it called, “relevancy logic” where all logical statements are assumed to be relevant)
If it was written by two authors then it was written by an author and another author.
John Varley has an entire series about this, starting with “Steel Beach.” Aliens conquer Earth with painful ease (they apparently don’t even notice any resistance), but leave the rest of the human inhabited Solar System alone. It’s just background, though, there’s no communication and their motives are never revealed.
I read that a very long time ago, but wasn't the speculation from the survivors that the aliens had saved the whales? Didn't care about humans enough to wipe them out, just trying to protect the whales. But as I said that was decades ago, so maybe I have that mixed up with something else.
Yep. The Ophiuchi Hotline provides answers. Officially, it's not part of the nine world series, but it's close enough that I treat it as Canon
They were preserving the Earth's ecosystem for its only true intelligence, the whales.
I bought that at an airport bookstore when i was 16 or 17 a million years ago and it blew my little gen x mind when the main character “changed” half way through the book because that was something they did every now and then when they wanted to. Also the idea of the super computer that runs the moon going crazy and deciding it needed its legions of nanobots to give everyone minty morning breath freaked me out more than amused me. All in all i’d like to read it again.
It started with The Ophiuchi Hotline.
In Footfall, and John Ringo's Aldentata series humanity faces some serious setback. Also Marko Kloos's Terms of Enlistment series. And, while not alien invasion, Earth Abides is pretty sad. Also Level 7. And, in John Carpenter's *The Thing* it's kind of suggested the the aliens might finally win. Late edit: Look at this way: At the end of *The Thing,* maybe Kurrt Russle in infected, maybe Keith David, maybe both; but one of then surely is. So here we are, two Hollywood movie stars, Working in lots of pictures. How's that 6 degrees of separation thing working out now? All of Hollywood is *The Thing*! And don't try to confound me that with some spurious argument that *The Thing* is fiction, Cheers!
I thought Footfall ends with the aliens submitting to the “Human Heard” after we nuked their ship.
We threatened to nuke it. But it's true the humans do win in the end of that one. It liked it because it was the only time a 'technologically advanced aliens invade earth but the humans win' ever seemed even remotely plausible.
You ever read the World War books by Harry Turtledove?
The middle series was the best--the aliens had control over half of Earth but by the 1960s were in a four-way nuclear standoff with the USA, USSR, and Third Reich who all hated each other too. (The aliens are most fun when used as sarcastic commentary on humans)
After the aliens kill billions of people, decimate every military on the planet, and change Earth's climate. On the plus side humanity now has access to alien technology at the end.
Well, yeah, but as I said: "after many setbacks" (by the humans)
Man I can’t take anything John Ringo writes seriously all I can think of is [‘oh John ringo, no!’](https://hradzka.livejournal.com/194753.html).
That's what libraries are for! So you don't have to spend your hard earned money on a book that is so badly edited that a character is a Major on a left-hand page and is magically a Captain on the very next right hand page. So, yeah; I pretty much concur. But: You've gotta love BunBun and was that the USS Salem (CA-139)?
Standby to repel boarders!
Footfall ends with the Fithp rolling over for the humans. Their early advantage of high ground and technological superiority is hampered by an inability to adapt to human thinking, whereas the humans suffer no such handicap. Each side draws on the input of captives; humans are far more flexible.
Extinction >!Except that it turns out that the alien invaders are actually humans who were driven off of Earth, and the main characters are the humanoid robots who rebelled and did it!<
I love that movie.
To Serve Man - except we didn't know what was happening.
"Wait! There's still more space dust on here!"
Falling Skies. Kinda' meh acting but fits the description.
Knowing Childhood’s End
I wouldn’t say humanity loses in childhoods end.
I'd say it does lose but it has very little to do with the aliens. Great book.
Dire outlook if that’s a victory condition
It's ambiguous, the Overmind could be eating all the delicious psychic energy and humanity was just a meal for it. The Overmind does not seem to be a morally good entity, the Overseers are basically an eternally enslaved race to do it's bidding and the reason it uses them is because they're a failed evolutionary path that can't develop psychic powers. Karellan seems to be a good/moral character. And he hates doing whatever it is he's doing and thanks the last human food sacrificing himself to tell Karellan what exactly the overmind does to a planet when he destroys it. If it was a pure good ending where humanity just reached the next plane of existence, there's an awful lot of Ambiguity to leave open they were just fattened up for a juicy slaughter.
Skyline
The Xeelee do a solid job and making sure the baryonic universe is kept to their liking.
>!They lose anyways. And barionic life goes extinct. I, for, one, salute our new photino bird overlords!<.
Little Shop of Horrors
The original cut.
In the Worldwar Series by Harry Turtledove, aliens invade during WW2 and the war ends in a sort-of draw. One of my favorites from Turtledove. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worldwar_series
I absolutely adored the LIVING SHIT out of the “Worldwar” series, especially the final book that wasn’t part of the two trilogies, “Homeward Bound”.
I loved the middle trilogy with the cold war standoff between the four powers. The last book could have had more chaos, from the alien colonists overpopulating their section of Earth and changing the climate, and Straha or some other colonist leading a more risk-taking, fast-advancing human-like society that is a threat to the humans and the Emperor alike. The Emperor still sending kamikaze ships at Earth and having them change course last minute just in case he needs to eliminate either humans or the colonists. Or the USA and Emperor may have had a good reason to make nice.
Came here to say this. I really need to get the rest of them because In The Balance is such a classic.
I like how he balanced things out to give Humans a more realistic chance to beat them over the long haul, instead of the ID4 solution or others like it.
Greg Bear, *The* *~~Hammer~~* ***Forge*** *of God* First contact starts chill, gets worse.
You're thinking of the Forge of God there. The Hammer of God is an asteroid impact novel by Arthur C. Clarke.
The old collection of novellas *Chains of the Sea* features humanity losing pretty bad in all three stories.
The Simpsons - Citizen Kang (Treehouse of Horror VII)
If you can stand the cheesy pulp writing Battlefield Earth starts where humanity has been conquered....
There’s always the homoerotic subtext. I loved it as a sci-fi deprived teenager. What can I say. 20 mile trip to a bookshop so I read what I could find.
Is that a thing in the book? I didn't notice it when I saw the movie.
I remember a short story where humanity has definitely lost to the alien invaders but have persevered by learning to live as sort of pests or parasites to their society, eventually finally going to the stars by infesting the aliens' ships and going where they go.
The people in the walls? EDIT: I think this is the story that OP is referring to. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/62228701-the-humans-in-the-walls
In the Man-Kzin Wars anthology series set in Larry Nivens Known Space, one of our colony worlds has been conquered and occupied with humans being slaves and menu items. A number of the stories in that thread use Bogart movies as a template, like Casablanca and Treasure of the Sierra Madre.
It isn't released until Aug. 6, but I've read an advanced reader's copy of James S.A. Corey's (author of *The Expanse*) new book, *The Mercy of Gods*, which is the first of a series called *The Captive's War*. The whole premise of it seems to be exactly what you're looking for—it kicks off with humanity's planet (no longer Earth, for reasons unknown) being invaded by aliens, and humanity loses badly. Most of the book focuses on a group of human biologists who've been enslaved to perform scientific experiments for their now alien overlords, and it's got Corey's typical blend of science, action, both existential and visceral horror, and mystery. Keep an eye out for it!
The Killing Star. Humanity is wiped out faster than the speed of light in the very beginning. Except for a few stragglers. There isn’t really any winning
Vamipre Earth series by E.E. Knight. An eleven book series about how an alien species called the Kurians tricked humanity into letting them invade Earth to save us from a plague and practically apocalyptic events that they caused. The whole story is mostly from the point of view of one man, David Valentine, and his efforts to help in the fight against the Kur and the vast amount of humanity that follows them blindly. It’s a bit long winded, but overall a fantastic story.
"Don't blame me, i voted for Kodos!"
The Ember War series starts with humanity being wiped out, but for a small fleet of ships which was accidentally/on purpose hidden, with the rest of the series showing them trying to rebuild and defeat the invaders, who are trying to wipe out all life in the galaxy. It's not high literature but I enjoyed them.
Andromeda takes place after humans lost
Not really “losing” but I’m gonna say roadside picnic just cause everyone should read it.
*Way of the Pilgrim*, Gordon R Dickson. Opens well after Earth was easily conquered and occupied by a relative handful of aliens. The description of the conquest is barely a page and it's brilliant. The revelation of why they conquered Earth in the first place is stunning. Edit: stupid autocorrect
*Gordon R. Dickson. His Childe cycle novels of the Dorsai military caste are also excellent, though not relevant to OP's question. I don't often see him mentioned on Reddit.
A significant number of episodes from the new The outer limits series end this way. The deprogrammers starring Brent spiner, and the episode with Wil Wheaton both meet your criteria
That 90s/00s Outer Limits run is super underrated, I'd put it up there as Black Mirror before Black Mirror
That show was amazing. So many good episodes.
Absolutely, some of the best sci-fi/horror to ever air on television
Not Aliens, but "Planet of the Apes"
Blindsight.
Ah, *Blindsight!* That's a dark and brutal little gem that one is. Can't remember being creeped out by a novel in quite the same way. And yeah, the ending is *grim.* The author Peter Watts goes into some great meditations on the nature of consciousness, all whilst engaged in what feels like a cognitive-science based version of *Alien*. "In Space, no one can tell if you're a philosophical zombie..."
Pandora's Planet by Christopher Anvil, a somewhat humorous take on aliens that conquer earth then discover humans are "smarter" than they are. It is pretty dated "comedy" so keep that in mind.
Captive State.
[The Mount](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/94702.The_Mount) by Carol Emshwiller. humanity is overrun by aliens and turned into... racehorses. i have never read a book that had a more stupid-sounding premise but which was absolutely mind-blowingly good. people talk alot (justifiably) about stories like "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas"--*The Mount* is just as deep and great at getting under your skin.
Mmmm... The War Against the Chtorr as a maybe. There's no stereotypical aliens and it is more like an invasion by an alien ecosystem. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The\_War\_Against\_the\_Chtorr](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_War_Against_the_Chtorr) I'm finished with book three and enough passages have filtered over the years about book four where it's implied that Humanity is done for and will be absorbed as part of an ecosystem. I have not read Book Four so I can't say for sure. That said... the series has been stalled for 3 decades, and books 5 - 7 have been supposedly coming out for years and we're still at Book 4. Shame because it has a really interesting premise and world-building.
The delay is driving me nuts.
It's very apparent after a while that the Chtorrans pretty much won before the beginning of book 1 IMHO. The best ending scenario I can imagine based on what Gerrold's said about his plans for 5+ is that the protagonist manages to get in contact with the emergent sentience of the entire network of Chtorran biology *and* co-opted Earth biology, gets it attention, and it says something like "OH, SORRY, I DIDN'T SEE YOU THERE. WHOOPS. GUESS WE'RE STUCK WITH EACH OTHER NOW. UM. THIS IS REALLY AWKWARD. I WASN'T EXPECTING TO HAVE A CHAT WITH MY NEW GUT FLORA HERE." Realistically I'm not holding out hope that we're ever going to see the last one published. Gerrold's a lot more professional than, say, Pat Rothfuss, but he's eighty, and he's been wrestling with ending Chtorr for a *long* time. Do not expect an ending. But if you want a tour through the entire world being invaded by an ecology that's much more vicious and efficient than the native one, with absolutely nobody we recognize as *sentient* there to talk to, negotiate, or threaten our way into some sort of compromise... yeah, it's a heck of an invasion story where humanity loses, and loses *big*.
Vilcabamba, by Harry Turtledove. Technically, humanity does manage to hold out, but it's made clear at the end that the odds are very much against them.
Host by Stephanie Meyer.
I read this young adult series as a teenager: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The\_Tripods](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tripods)
Humanity doesn't lose. All aliens on Earth are killed, the alien domed cities destroyed, and the arriving colony ship turns around and leaves. The third book ends with human governments being reestablished.
“To Serve Man” Twilight Zone, season 3, episode 24. It’s the story of an alien cookbook left behind on Earth by an alien. The cookbook contains recipes for dishes containing human flesh. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To\_Serve\_Man\_(The\_Twilight\_Zone)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Serve_Man_(The_Twilight_Zone))
Defiance? They don't so much lose as not win, but it's a fun little romp. Oblivion maybe?
If games count, XCOM 2 is based on real world player data where two thirds of XCOM 1 plays failed to defend Earth from alien invasion. It picks up twenty years into the alien occupation of Earth.
Battlefield Earth. The Book despite the author and that horrible movie, is actually really good.
[удалено]
It was a trainwreck. I couldn't stop reading just to see how bad it got. Only book I've ever done that.
It was so corny and hackneyed I couldn't get past the first book. Johnny Goodboy Tyler (yes, that's his given name) is such a trite protagonist that it just curdled my gut trying to slog thru it.
Have you read *Snow Crash* by Neil Stephenson? The main character's name is Hiro Protagonist. Yep. No subtlety there.
I wouldn’t say it’s really good. The writing is rough, but it’s a good story.
It's probably not going to be your cup of tea, but the *Human Domestication Guide* setting has a dystopian human interstellar empire, the Terran Accord, picking a fight with an alien polity, the Affini Compact, thinking it'll be an easy fight (based on the experience with another alien species that humanity had already encountered and colonized). The Affini, as you might expect from the title, turn out to be a *wee bit* more numerous and powerful than the Accord expected, and it does NOT go well for the Terran government. (Individual humans do all right, as long as they don't do something foolish like keep fighting the Affini months or years after the peace treaty was signed; the first order of business for the plant aliens is "make sure everyone in their new ward species has food, water, shelter, medical care, and whatever material supplies are needed".) Best estimates are that in the *entire* Terran-Affini war, against the full wrath of the star-spanning Terran navy, the Affini lose...one ship. Not even a particularly valuable ship.
[The Day of the Triffids](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_of_the_Triffids) has humans fall back to tiny enclaves; it's not clear they'll ever succeed in getting Earth back
Not an alien invasion story though. >!The triffids are genetically engineered organisms developed by the Soviets.!<
I didn't realize that different forms of the story (TV series/film/novel) have different origins for the Triffids!
Rakka by oats studios
It’s not a full length movie but the short film called “ Rakka” by Neil Blomkamp is next level .
Captive State (2019) Excellent, underrated movie that requires a second-watching.
All Tomorrows is a wonderfully creative take on this. I come back to it once a year or so.
This is good. And free
They Live- "I have come here to chew bubble gum and kick ass. And I'm all out of bubblegum" one of the greatest movie lines every, imo A Quiet Place Annihilation- I think. It was to weird for me to fully get it
Twilight Zone. "To Serve Man"
Colony the TV show has humans under alien occupation and split into collaborators, neutrals, and insurgence. That was pretty good but they cancelled it just as it was ramping up which was a pity. Worth a watch though.
It's suggested Humanity loses in the Cloverfield movies.
Quiet place, Half Life
It's a cookbook!
Little Shop of Horrors does not end well for humanity.
Battlestar Galactica
Tripods. Does no one else remember this?
A Planet for Rent by Yoss; Earth has been conquered and is now one big tourist resort for the affluent alien species of the galaxy, while the humans can at best hope to work in hospitality serving them. Great novel!
Sort of... Einstein's Bridge by John Cramer.
Yes, I read that one several times!
The Alien Years, by Robert Silverberg. Depressing f'ing book.
Shards of Earth is set in a universe where a very powerful alien race has reduced the planet Earth to... well it's right there in the title
Falling skies definitely starts with humanity on the backfoot I'm not sure if they're ever wiped out or anything but they're definitely losing in the first season
it started good but then went WTF? in later seasons
And way too much "Spielberg Family Drama Movie #32837"...
It had some interesting elements that could have been really interesting if they explored more of them but who knows what they were thinking. I didn't finish that last season, I couldn't stand it
Same. I just wanted more... Aliens in a show about Aliens, not how a dad was looking after his disfunctional family during an alien invasion... Again and again. Also, Terra Nova. Going back to the past millions of years ago with dinosaurs, i want to see dinosaurs. And not how a dysfunctional family is trying to work together... While sometimes surrounded by dinosaurs
*Of Men and Monsters* aka *The Men in the Walls* by William Tenn.
The Forge of God by Greg Bear
The Thing, maybe
Under Alien Skies. It starts out with humanity having lost an invasion and Earth being occupied by the Tsorian empire. It's actually pretty upbeat considering what happens.
Nightwings by Robert Silverberg
Though not “winning” in the way you’re meaning, Arthur C. Clarke’s Childhood’s End is a novel about an alien race taking over in more caretaker role than anything truly malicious and what makes it interesting is that it takes place over the course of decades so you can see the long term implications of the alien’s oversight. It’s definitely a good read that I don’t see recommended often enough. I believe the term “alien overlord” actually came from this book.
The Frontlines series by Marko Kloos is seven books of humanity getting absolutely bodied
Uplift War, not in the sense that the aliens kick our door down but in the sense that they're so advanced, the only possible interaction is on their terms. Any attempt to assert ourselves is a desperate rebellion.
Every time I play Xcom. If it happens, don't put me in charge.
Thomas Disch- "The Genocides".
Titan AE (intro) is the first that comes to mind.
Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke. Three body problem by Liu Cixin
It is STRONGLY hinted the human lose in Blindsight.
“Columbus Day” first book in a great series.
Skyline, I think is what the movie is called. It's been years since I've seen it.
How about The Midnight Meat Train? It's ending proposes ritual sacrifice to appease an alien overlord.
It was the starting premise of the original 1970s era Captain Harlock anime. Earth was occupied by alien troops and yet one human pilot decides to begin a campaign of piracy in resistance. The anime is however in many ways a quiet rebuke of Japanese surrender. Harlock is actually a descendant of a WWII German pilot and his chief engineer is a descendant of a WWII Japanese navigator, and one story is their ancestors “heroic” resistance against the allies… while the author of the anime is also known for a same universe anime about a starship that is the rebuilt flagship of the Japanese Imperial Navy brought into space a millennia after it was sunk by US forces in WWII… So… It’s a cool resistance against alien occupation story until you realize the “aliens” are proxy Americans… If you stumble upon a Harlock movie on Netflix from 2013 it’s different. The same character in a different universe premise. The 2013 Captain Harlock movie has a radically different and amazingly cool premise: There are no aliens, anywhere. And having explored the entire universe Humanity’s aloneness has caused an existential crisis where only the pirate Harlock stands in the way of Earth setting off a reality bomb to end an existence they have decided has no meaning.
Octavia Butler's Lilith's Brood.
The Three-Body Problem Trilogy