Humans as Alien-Assassins

[Jeff Gerke]

I get the best SF ideas by reading LiveScience.com.

Here's a new one: www.livescience.com/animals/assassin-bugs-fool-spiders-imitating-prey-101026.html

The story is about these bugs, called assassin bugs, that prey on spiders by deftly manipulating spiders' webs to mimic the vibrations of a bug caught in the web. The spider comes up, ready for dinner (and with all defenses down), and the assassin bug skewers it and kills it in 10 seconds or fewer. Except on those times when the spider kills the assassin bug.

So, since my mind always goes here anyway, I thought this is the model I would use if I ever decide to write a SF about human assassins who prey on aliens (who are normally the hunters).

With that idea in mind, go read the article. Great SF, I think! I can just see this grim human assassin, kind of like the lead character in The Hurt Locker. A little crazy but deadly serious and very good at playing an extremely dangerous game.

Jeff

[morganlbusse]

Fascinating article and idea. Now I have the creepy crawlies

[choosybeggar]

Assassin bugs! We have those things around our place. Sightings are rare but scary.

That sounds pretty cool for SF! Would it be a post-apocalypse type setting where the aliens have taken over and the good guys are fighting/biting back? Or would it be preemptive tactics with the aliens not on Earth yet? Or would it be humans somehow transported into an alien culture and they're avoiding the police? So many different permutations of ideas....

[newburydave]

Hmmmm. . . Interesting concept.

Thanks for the link Jeff, I saved it for future use.

SGD
dave

[almarquardt]

Assassin bugs are cool (and, yes, a little scary, too). I took a picture of a bright yellow one a few years ago that blended perfectly into a sunflower. It reminded me of the bugs in Starship Troopers.

I need to read more scientific journals. There's a lot of fodder for stories in them. Thanks for the link, Jeff!

[Jeff Gerke]

Yeah, fun stuff. Choosy, I'm not sure. I was imagining something futuristic and possibly space-based, but as you say, the idea has lots of possible uses.

I'm still geeked over the science article (detailed in another thread about zombies) in which a certain fungus or something takes over the brains of carpenter ants in the canopy of a rain forest, "commands" them to march down to the forest floor and latch on to something, whereupon they promptly die and more of the fungus grows out of their bodies, using the husks as a fertile bed. Now, make it alien spores doing that in humans...

Jeff

[almarquardt]

Reminds me of Invasion of the Body Snatchers with Donald Sutherland.

[myrthman]

I've tried to get a reaction from spiders by wiggling their webs with a twig or something. I've never been successful though. I guess I just don't have the finely tuned instincts and minuscule size to pull it off!

Cool link, Jeff!

[Heather Titus]

That is a cool (but creepy!) idea. What a thought to get the brain turning! Watch out, Jeff, before you know it, you're going to be flooded with novels all based on that same premise.

[newburydave]

I don't know if that's enough of premise to build a novel around, but it would make a good hostile environmental factor to hinder the Good Guys from accomplishing their goals.

Can't make things too easy and Tom Swiftish after all.

Speaking of Jeff being flooded with novels, I think I may polish up my NaNoWriMo novel and bounce it off MLP; I do believe I've got something worthwhile here.

Write on all.

SGD
dave

[Heather Titus]

I've come up with a full novel on less of a premise than that before. It just needs to keep spinning in my head until it becomes too big to ignore.

[choosybeggar]

Yeah. That, or playing Halo (the popular video game, you know) twenty years in the future with helmets that show you the view an actual view of a Spartan (the main characters in Halo). That's enough right there. Then throw in a malfunction in which the helmets turn real, and the MC has to fight off an alien invasion as a psuedo-spartan that's REAL! Something like that, you know?

[newburydave]

Like a swap between VR and Real Reality?

Sounds like a plot device of a million faces and directions.

Rock on

SGD
dave