Say the words “alien invasion” and the stories most people think of are those told in movies like Roland Emmerich’s Independence Day (1996), in which the battle lines between good and evil are cleanly divided. HG Wells dreamed up this template in 1897, with Martian invaders laying waste the home counties in The War of the Worlds. Half a century later, John Wyndham’s The Kraken Wakes (1953) envisaged the melting of the ice caps not as the by-product of human negligence but as the result of a hostile intervention by alien forces.
In writing my novel Conquest, I was determined to subvert these violent stereotypes. What I find most compelling about earlier alien invasion narratives is the way they highlight how vulnerable we are, not to aliens so much as our own irrational behaviour in the face of the unknown. I wanted to reveal the theme of alien invasion as infinitely flexible, adapting itself to subtle, ambiguous stories in which the divide between human and alien is not always clear cut. My protagonist Frank Landau stands in permanent danger of losing his sanity to his obsessions. And yet Frank has a brilliant mind; in many ways, he is the most sensitive and compassionate individual in the novel. The tension between these two truths is the engine that drives Conquest, and it is this irreconcilable contradiction between delusion and epiphany I find most fascinating in other alien invasion stories. Here are 10 of my favourites:
1. Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer
Vandermeer’s Southern Reach trilogy charts the exploration of alien incursions in a remote, segregated area of wilderness that keeps expanding. The scientists who venture into Area X find it impossible to communicate the reality of their experiences there, a failure of language that makes the encounter all the more traumatic.
2. How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu
The alien presence in this book was on Earth all the time: a prehistoric virus, released from melting permafrost as the result of climate change. Nagamatsu’s subtle, heartfelt novel is constructed as a series of linked stories, beginning with the discovery of the virus and moving forward through time to reveal a world irrevocably altered by the resulting pandemic, and not always for the worse.
3. The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber
In Faber’s novel, we are the invading aliens, and the book’s protagonist, Peter Leigh, travels to the planet Oasis as a Christian missionary. His wife, Bea, is left behind on an Earth that is becoming increasingly divided through social upheavals resulting from climate change. Faber’s vision is bleak, alienating, even frightening, but there is redemption here too. This novel’s strange, hypnotic power poses questions that linger long after reading.
4. Agents of Dreamland by Caitlín R Kiernan
The first in a trilogy of taut novellas that combine the bitter essence of noir with the cosmic terror of Lovecraft, Agents of Dreamland recounts the secret history of shadowy operatives who wrestle, like angels and demons, for the soul and continuing existence of the human race. The battle takes place in a world grown stale and grubby from government corruption, where consensus reality is steadily becoming eroded. Kiernan’s language and manner of telling manages to be both lyrical and sharp as thorns.
5. Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky
At some point in the recent past, aliens visited Earth. They left no trace, other than the curiously altered “zones” littered with mysterious relics, some wondrous, some deadly. These objects have no apparent purpose, but exert a powerful influence on all who encounter them. Red Schuhart is a “stalker”, earning a perilous living guiding fortune-hunters and thrill-seekers through the zone. This book – translated from the Russian by Antonina W Bouis – is harsh, tender, magical and, like all Soviet science fiction, full of double meanings.
6. XX by Rian Hughes
A radio telescope at Jodrell Bank has picked up a signal believed to be of extra-terrestrial origin. Jack Fenwick, an expert in the developing science of artificial intelligence, is tasked with interpreting the signal and locating its source. The plotline of XX could be straight out of Fred Hoyle or Arthur C Clarke. But there the similarity ends, for Hughes, a comic book artist and designer of typefaces, knows science fiction well enough to push its boundaries. Hughes’s central interest lies with text itself, and how it might be manipulated to alter the reader’s perception of reality. To read XX is to glimpse the alien first-hand, if only from the corner of your eye.
7. The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again by M John Harrison
Harrison’s Goldsmiths prize-winning novel is ostensibly the story of Shaw and Victoria, two ex-lovers each caught in the jaws of a mid-life crisis. Their reality becomes gradually destabilised as each comes to suspect that they are witnessing the dawn of a new world order. Being characters in a Harrison narrative, their reaction to the catastrophe is somewhat muted. If you are not already a Harrison reader, this novel – as acute a portrait as any of the way we live now – is the place to start.
8. The Employees by Olga Ravn
This unfolds as a series of individual reports filed by crew members, both human and AI, working aboard an interdimensional spacecraft. The crew has been entrusted with the care of a number of alien artefacts, strange objects that might almost have come from the zone in Roadside Picnic. As their mysterious journey continues, the employees begin to experience altered states, hallucinations and separation anxiety, seemingly as a direct result of their contact with the alien. This exquisitely strange short novel, translated from the Danish by Martin Aitken, began life as the textual accompaniment to an art installation by Danish artist Lea Guldditte Hestelund. Its mission: to investigate the nature of being human.
9. Lagoon by Nnedi Okorafor
With its jump cuts and tessellations, Okorafor’s playful, almost filmic account of an alien expedition to the city of Lagos feels unlike any alien invasion story you might have read before. Science fiction cohabits with fantasy to produce a vigorous, gorgeous mutation teeming with deft postmodernist touches: chapters told from non-human points of view, snapshots of reportage, moments when Okorafor breaks the fourth wall to ask how readers might have reacted had they been there. A joyously experimental text, Lagoon shimmers with the delirium and chaos that might be expected from an alien visit.
10. Story of Your Life by Ted Chiang
Chiang’s 1999 novella is one of the most subtle and life-affirming explorations of language, time and perception to be found in all of science fiction. Linguist Louise Banks is attempting to unravel the seemingly insoluble mystery of how to communicate with the alien “heptapods” that have landed on Earth. At the same time, she is trying to come to terms with the death of her daughter. As with all Chiang’s fiction, the story unfolds through pursuing a deeper understanding of a stated reality, in this instance an entirely alien language that seems to have no human equivalent. Denis Villeneuve’s 2016 film adaptation Arrival is a fine piece of work, but Chiang’s original story is even better, engaging the emotions and the intellect with equal force.
• Conquest by Nina Allan is published by riverrun. To help the Guardian and Observer, order your copy from guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
