This article at Publisher’s Weekly mentions Craig Alanson’s view of humanity’s chances against an advanced alien race. Hell, the modems of the time could barely connect to CompuServe reliably! Craig Alanson Creatively Solved the Problem! Sorry, but a Mac laptop’s asynchronous modem ain’t gonna do crap against an alien starship.

Movies like Independence Day just confirmed my bias. Without unrealistic Plot Armor, primitive humans were helpless.

Even the most basic alien security completely defeated our most brilliant scientists and engineers. My characters could see blinky lights, but they couldn’t do anything with them. No matter how I figured it, humans faced with hyper advanced technology were simply monkeys in a data center. I was a pantser at the time, so I had no idea where the story would go. This was before movies like Independence Day. Remember I said I tried to be honest? I attempted to write a novel about Earth encountering a hopelessly advanced civilization. I honestly looked to those works as inspiration, and I tried to bring my own voice to my fiction. I approached my craft with all of the honesty and realism I could, which means I copied a lot of what I saw in Star Trek and read in Dune. In ancient days, back when dinosaurs roam the Earth and I suffered through high school (in the 1980s), I pretended to write science fiction. IMPORTANT: From this point forward, there could be spoilers! Setting the Context for My Reaction to Expeditionary Force Expeditionary Force Book 10: Critical Mass.Expeditionary Force Book 1: Columbus Day.

Here are their full titles of the books currently available: Information about the Expeditionary Force SeriesĪs of this writing, there are eleven books that make up the Expeditionary Force Series. He soon learned that things were anything but peaceful among the stars. Earth’s power grid and manufacturing infrastructure in shambles, Bishop returned to the army, where he soon shipped out to help fight the Kristang’s wars as part of the United Nations Expeditionary Force. Starships representing the Kristang, a lizard-like race, arrived and pummeled their ancient enemy. The Ruhar soon left, but nothing humans had done drove them off. Imagine his surprise when, armed with only a few hunting weapons an an ice cream truck, they sprang their trap - and learned the Ruhar looked like giant hamsters! So, he decided capturing one of the aliens might help the military learn their weaknesses. Wanting to do the right thing, Bishop realized they were hopelessly outgunned. One transport touched down in a Maine, United States town where Army sergeant Joe Bishop happened to be visiting on leave. But for some inexplicable reason, they didn’t just rain fire from orbit. On Columbus Day, an alien race named the Ruhar struck Earth.

Craig alanson columbus day