Well, I'm glad someone else picked up on my 'Resistance is futile' cue anyhow <g> A wonderful series... did the radio (the original source) or TV versions ever make it to the US?
Yes, that scene did cross my mind.
Highly advanced aliens might be authoritarian, or 'cosmic Buddhist'. They might also be chaotic, adventurous, or humorous. Or with similar mixed motivations and views to ours, but on a wider scale. Or just completely incomprehensible (Cherryh's methane-breathers, anyone?).
Of course, they could be interstellar missionaries for their theism... Intellectual conquest is a common human motif, at least; and IMO it's a viable supposition that an expansionary alien race be motivated by the need to spread the word of its religion. In which case, I suppose it might come to who'd be prepared to die for their faith, once more...
Incidentally, and on the SF theme, the ethics of being a carnivore - or making a livelihood from the exploitation of animals - and facing alien intervention because of it were covered wittily in an SF novella from 50's/60's. I can't remember the name or author, but it revolves around a group of alien abductees chosen because they exploit others in this way, from being knowing meat-eaters to slave-owners. The one wild card was a vegetarian Buddhist, returned to Earth when the anomaly of his presence was deduced... it finished with then reaching planetfall; and an epilogue depicted certain key genetic elements winning out (green eyes and red hair... dominant in the slaveholder and aware carnivore respectively).
And if anyone can tell me who wrote it...? Robert Young? Edmund Cooper? |
