DeathDay: What Alien Invaders Must Do

An alien invading army must be able to do three things: move, shoot, and multiply. Multiply? Yes, as in 'be fruitful and'. An alien invading army that cannot do that might as well stay home. And that is the problem I found with the alien invaders of William C. Dietz's DeathDay.

DeathDay, published in 2001, and its sequel EarthRise, is a mashup between an alien invasion novel and a solemn tract on the overwhelming importance of racial political correctness. As you may have guessed, that bit didn't work for me.

The alien race, the Saurons, come in three color coded types, and for the purpose of educating us, the ruling type is black! and the menial caste is white! But the important thing about the Saurons is the way they reproduce--- and the fact they don't seem to be able to multiply.

With the Saurons, their reproductive phase begins when a nymph begins growing within their body. When the nymph is big enough, it emerges, killing its parent. But this doesn't matter because the nymph is identical and carries on.

This reproductive phase happens to the whole race at once. When that happens, they high-tail it to a planet, invade, and use slave labor to construct chambers for the change to happen in.

Now, there is an important mathematical bit here: there is only one nymph per Sauron. And 3% of Saurons are early changers and they, and their nymphs, won't survive. So that alone means that each new generation is 3% smaller than the last.

And then there is the factor of Saurons that die of other causes. Since their military force is overwhelming, they don't have battle deaths to worry about. But then they gather survivors to put them to slave labor, giving the angry slaves and other rebels plenty of cause and opportunity to kill a few Saurons. And there are natural causes and accidents as well.

So what we have here is a species that is incapable of population growth at any time, no matter how favorable the circumstances. A species, moreover (I love the word 'moreover', I had a blog named that once) that is locked into population shrinkage for all eternity.

The question becomes, why are there any Saurons left? How could they evolve from the slime when their biology means that the first little band of Saurons to evolve would have shrunk and become extinct long before they had time to develop the wheel, much less space travel. This species is non-viable. It cannot do what the author has it doing.

I fully understand how author William C. Dietz made this mistake. Population growth of any kind is a strong taboo in modern-day progressive circles, to the point that some even call for deliberate human extinction.

How could these aliens be fixed? I might have the aliens not be evolved creatures, but created ones. Now, don't get all bent out of shape over 'created', some alien genetics lab trying to create some perfect warrior race as a weapon will do just as well as Almighty God. In this scenario, the creators can make as many Saurons as they like in a lab for an original base population, and can teach them to use any technology they need to use to fulfill their purpose.

As for the population shrinkage thing: we might give Saurons the ability their creators had to build new Saurons in the lab. But that might change the nature of the race to give them that ability.

What I would do is introduce a concept of twinning. A certain percentage of Saurons would produce two nymphs. That means a certain number of living Saurons would have twins. Perhaps there would be a certain food supplement to adjust the twinning level to the amount desired: to keep the population the same when the living space on their spaceships was full-up, and to increase when they had extra living space--- perhaps from adding new ships to their fleet.

The lesson of DeathDay--- other than to avoid getting all preachy with your race relations politics--- is to think your alien societies through. Make sure you are not creating a non-viable, doomed race such as the Saurons when a little thought can make them realistic.