The scenario is familiar: an enormous flying saucer hovers over a major world city. Modern man is forced to contend with with a powerful unknown. The great cosmic question with which we have struggled all of these years-Are We Alone?-is clearly and dramatically answered and humanity must finally contend not only with its place in the cosmos but with the fact that our history has taught us that in conflicts between technologically advanced and primitive civilizations, the advanced civilization is almost always the victor.
This is a spin on the First Contact story and it is a beloved and well-worn archetype in Science Fiction. My book, City of the Gods: The Return of Quetzalcoatl, begins with a situation much like this: a single but massive UFO appears over Mexico City. The ship has Mesoamerican symbols on its hull and begins communicating in Nahuatl, the language spoken in the Aztec Empire and still spoken by millions of people in Mexico. The ship is clearly connected to Mexican history and culture. Some see it as a New Age beacon or a fulfillment of ancient prophesy. Others see it as a crystallization of years of Ancient Astronaut theories that have centered upon the region.
Although they are not original scenarios, I have long had a soft spot for these "Looming UFO" stories. I chose to hang the sci-fi elements of City of the Gods on this particular idea for a few different reasons. First, there is a kind of existential suspense attached to it. A silent ship that is parked over a city is inherently terrifying and aggressive. When most people think about UFOs, they think about stealthy saucers zipping around in unpopulated areas. There is comfort in thinking that they are at least trying to stay unidentified. But the ship that parks itself over Central Park is saying, "We are here. What are you going to do about it?"
Secondly, I am fascinated by how people would really react in this situation. UFO debunkers often smugly make the argument, "Well, if they exist, why don't they just land somewhere and announce it?" To which my answer is, "Because you would loose your shit. That's why."
Let's not pretend that people would be okay with this. People would freak the hell out. I mean, a lot of people are terrified of illegal aliens. Can you imagine how they would deal with actual aliens? One could make a very compelling argument for covering up proof of alien life.
It wouldn't be anything like in the movies. There would be no angelic children staring up at a soft Speilberg-ian light. There would be no John Williams score. It would be panic and chaos. There's a reason they have a Prime Directive in Star Trek. We're not ready yet.
For the sake of telling my story in City of the Gods, I required my characters to keep it together a little more than they actually would in reality. After all, it wouldn't be a very interesting read if my protagonists were lying in a fetal position for the whole book. At the very least, proof of alien life would fundamentally change everything we believe.
Lastly, the "UFO-parked-over-the-city" imagery is so prevalent in pop culture that I would be able to play off all that has come before. Hopefully, being familiar with the books and movies that have utilized this premise before would allow me to offer some new twists and surprises along the way. City of the Gods: The Return of Quetzalcoatl is simply the latest in a long line to make use of this scenario.
The great grandaddy of these stories is the amazing Arthur C. Clarke novel Childhood's End. Published in 1953, Clarke's story begins when a fleet of mysterious ships park themselves over Earth's major cities. Clarke lets us cook for a while as to the occupants identity and intentions but the aliens soon impose a kind of benign dictatorship on the planet, ending the Cold War, the Space Race ("The stars are not for man."), and turning Earth into a forced utopia. These Overlords and their shadowy master have their own plans for humanity but it's not the predicable war into which most of these stories devolve. The ending of this book is every bit as profound and mind-boggling as that of Clarke's more famous story, 2001: A Space Odyssey. Sadly, Childhood's End has never been adapted for the screen.
In the 1980's, the closest one could get to Star Wars on TV were the V miniseries and its spinoff weekly series. V takes is opening premise from Childhood's End, in which Earth's cities are visited by massive UFOs, whose occupants are ostensibly here to improve life on Earth. One of the nice things about V is that, in its longer miniseries format, it takes time to explore how an alien presence on Earth affects humanity, using a wide swath of characters as a cross section of human society. Last year, V was re-imagined into a new series, but the characters in the new show seem strangely complacent about the aliens in their midst. The show barely deals with the existential shock that would result not only in alien contact but also with contact with a technologically superior race.
This premise was revisited in the 1990's in the big-budget alien invasion/disaster movie Independence Day, which again features a fleet of giant flying saucers over the world's cities. Unlike the at-first benevolent aliens of Arthur C. Clarke and V, these extraterrestrials don't even bother trying to make nice and immediately begin destroying the world's most popular tourist destinations, apparently for the hell of it. A rag-tag group of human survivors is forced to fight back using airplanes, computer viruses (!), and Will Smith. Independence Day is Childhood's End with a lobotomy.
The most interesting cinematic take on this kind of story is found in the 2009 South African movie, District 9, in which an alien ship ends up over Johannesburg. Unique to the sub genre, these aliens have not come to invade, but are desperate refugees who are soon rounded into a large camp. Taking a page from 1988's Alien Nation, the movie is very much concerned with the alien subculture and it's relationship with humanity. District 9 is the rare contemporary science fiction movie that is more concerned with using the genre to explore sociological ideas than making things blow up, although there is a big action sequence tacked on to the end
At it's heart, City of the Gods: The Return of Quetzalcoatl is a story about the nature of conquest and clashes of civilizations, which uses Mexico and it's history as a backdrop and counterpoint. Setting the "Looming UFO" story in Mexico City offered an interesting way to explore this theme and to juxtapose human history and and a science fiction scenario that holds the promise of conflict and invasion. The real question with which the book struggles is, have we really learned anything in the last five hundred years? Will we be better people in five hundred more years? Would we do it any differently if we had to do it again?
Patrick Garone
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