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. 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. 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. Lagoon by Nnedi OkoraforWith 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.

Source: The Guardian May 18, 2023 05:21 UTC