Planet Looters: Difference between revisions
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== Literature ==
* [[Older Than Radio]]: The [[Ur Example]] is ''[[The War of the Worlds]]'', by [[H. G. Wells]], published in 1898. The book depicted a Martian invasion with overt analogies to European hegemony. The invaders have perfectly good reasons: according to contemporary theories, outer planets are the first to form and the first to die. With spaceflight in the [[Jules Verne]] steam cannon stage, the aliens have nowhere to go but inward. The novel heavily implies that when the invasion of Earth doesn't go well, the Martians take over Venus.
* Inverted (perhaps deliberately) in [[C. S. Lewis|CS Lewis]]' ''[[Out of the Silent Planet]]'', which has humans as the planet looters trying to conquer
* In a rare example of humans doing it to other humans, the [[People's Republic of Tyranny|People's Republic of Haven]] from ''[[Honor Harrington]]'' regularly conquers and loots other planets simply to prop up their own failing economy. Things turn ugly when they try to do it to the Star Kingdom of Manticore and their Short Victorious War turns into a long and bloody one. Making matters worse for Haven is the fact that unlike a lot of nonhuman
* [[L. Ron Hubbard]]'s [[Doorstopper]] novel ''[[Battlefield Earth]]'' is unusual in initially deflating the usual egotistic view of Humanity's place in the scheme of things: the Earth is one of hundreds of thousands of casually conquered and strip-mined planets, marginally notable for having plenty of gold.
** The Psychlos in the [[Film of the Book]] specifically mention how much they hate Earth with its blue skies, low gravity, and poisonous air (for them). Their homeworld is shown to be a large planet with purple smog-filled skies almost entirely covered by structures.
* Seriously explored, and eventually subverted, in [[H. Beam Piper]]'s novel ''Space Viking''. The Space Vikings of the title aren't much interested in raw resources; those are cheap. They want manufactured goods, the more sophisticated (and therefore valuable) the better. The only problem is that a planet with enough of an economy to have good loot can, by virtue of that self-same economy, also field a decent space navy, which can generally beat off a Viking raid, resulting in no loot, but lots of expensive damage to the Viking ships. The protagonist over the course of the novel gradually changes from plunder to peaceful trade mainly because it's more profitable (although he is troubled by the
* [[John Ringo]]'s Posleen from the ''[[Posleen War Series]]''. Driven by an extremely high birthrate and strong aggressive/acquisitive tendencies (both of which it's hinted were artificially induced), they want land to farm, humans for food, and refined metals just because.
* In Peter F. Hamilton's ''Fallen Dragon'' the mega-corporations on Earth which funded the establishment of intersteller colonies are beginning to decline, so they now make a profit by 'asset realization' -- turning up in orbit and implying they'll blast the colony if the colonists don't hand over various manufactured goods, leaving information on the latest Earth technologies as compensation, then returning several years later to do the same thing again once the colonists have upgraded their technology and gotten back on their feet.
* [[Stephen Baxter]] uses
* The Yeerks from ''[[Animorphs]]''. [[Justified Trope]] in that what they want from Earth is something that can only be found on Earth. ''Us''. Or more specifically, our bodies with our big, fat brains ripe for infestation.
** In the first book, it's stated that humans would give ''every'' Yeerk in the pools a host.
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* Subverted in [[Dougal Dixon]]'s ''Man After Man'': {{spoiler|the invaders in the end are ''descendants'', which recolonized the Earth after stripping other planets off their resources}}. Guess what happens afterwards.
* [[Neal Stephenson]]'s ''[[Anathem]]'': The Geometers/Cousins, in a roundabout way. Their actual goals are way too complicated to cram into a small example.
* [[Elliot S! Maggin]]'s novel ''[[Superman]]: [[Last Son of Krypton]]'' includes a scene in which [[Lex Luthor]] explains why so many aliens want to conquer the Earth. If you take over Earth you get six billion Earthlings to use as
* The free worlds of the galaxy are menaced by hordes of these in Olaf Stapledon's ''Starmaker,'' a novel that was written in 1936, [[Those Wacky Nazis|so you can probably guess who the "United Empires" were a metaphor for...]] This use of the trope made rather more sense than most, since the Empires were motivated by a desire to spread their deeply unpleasant militaristic culture, not plundering resources as such.
* ''[http://www.tor.com/stories/2010/08/the-fermi-paradox-is-our-business-model The Fermi Paradox Is Our Business Model]'', a short story by Charlie Jane Anders, offers an interesting and unusual, yet chillingly ''extreme'', example.
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* John Stith's novel ''[[Manhattan Transfer]]'' begins with aliens tossing a dome over and ripping out [[New York City|Manhattan Island]] without any obvious explanation, then stowing it inside their massive spacecraft. The people in Manhattan think they have been looted, but it eventually turns out {{spoiler|that the race which stole Manhattan is trying to save a sample of humanity from a soon-to-arrive [[Planet Killer]].}}
* In the ''[[Gaunt's Ghosts]]'' novel ''His Last Command'' we are told that Chaos uses jehgenesh, massive warp beasts, to strip resources from worlds closer to the front for backline worlds.
* A humorous short story by R.A. Lafferty called "Land of the Great Horses" pretends that the [[Romani]] are nomadic because extraterrestrials ''took their homeland'' (ripped it loose, apparently, right down to the bedrock). They weren't actually looters, though, but ''scientists'' who took it for geological examination, instilling a compulsion to wander so the Romani wouldn't settle anywhere else. When the aliens bring the land back in the late 20th Century, everyone with a significant degree of Romani blood feels impelled to return to India. "It's come back, you know." An epilogue reveals that the extraterrestrials sampled Los Angeles
* A central theme of the ''Planet Pirates'' series by [[Anne McCaffrey]], using the third variation (the planet's colony-safe environment is the resource).
* This is how corporations in ''Fallen Dragon'' recoup the massive investments required to build a colony; After the colony has had time to terraform, grow and actually start producing something, the corporation shows up with a well-armed fleet in orbit and start demanding dividends.
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== Live-Action TV ==
* ''[[Doctor Who]]'':
** This was the original motivation of the
** For that matter, a lot of aliens liked this plot. It turned up in "The Pirate Planet" (where quartz (!) was unique to Earth) and "The Dalek Invasion Of Earth" (where Earth is the ''only planet in the universe'' with a magnetic core).
** The first series of the revived Who returned to this trope immediately. The very first episode had a baddie, the Nestene Consciousness, who wanted to feed on the Earth after its own worlds were destroyed in the "Time War". In the episode "Aliens of London", an alien criminal family called the Slitheen took over [[Whitehall|10 Downing Street]] as the first step of a plan to melt the Earth down into a source of radioactive fuel for spacecraft. The titular Dominators of "The Dominators" tried to do the same thing to the planet Dulcis in the Second Doctor era of the original show. In that case the choice of planet was motivated by a conveniently thin crust.
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** In "Horror of Fang Rock", the Rutans (eternal enemies of the Sontarans) mention that Earth is valuable because it is strategically placed, rather than anything on the planet. This explanation is as good as any until we get to the subject of all those other rocks that are pretty much in the same place but put up less of a fight.
* 1983's ''[[V]]'', as well as the sequel miniseries ''The Final Battle'' and eventually ''The Series'', had aliens not only intent on strip-mining the planet (of water), but considered humanity as a food resource (along with small birds and rodents). The [[Novelization]] makes a rather worthy attempt to [[Justified Trope|justify]] it - it's not so much plain water and food they are after, but ''relatively pure'' water and ''meat''; in their experience, all civilizations [[Green Aesop|pollute their worlds irreversibly]] in the process of developing interstellar travel, and recycling technologies have trouble efficiently supporting millions, let alone billions of people. Starfaring civilizations are thus constantly warring over what little clean water and produce remains. When the "Visitors" discovered a life-sustaining world that had not yet developed even basic spaceflight... well, OM NOM NOM NOM.
* The Goa'uld from ''[[Stargate SG-1]]'' ''already'' did it to Earth thousands of years
** The [[Human Aliens|Aschen]] are worse about this. They're strong enough to fight off the Goa'uld and often use it as a pretext to begin the covert process of turning populated worlds into giant farming fields with a fraction of the original population via the use of sterility viruses. This also serves to eliminate any potential competitor.
* The Wraith, in ''[[Stargate Atlantis]]'', are constantly trying to get to
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* The ''[[Invader Zim]]'' episode "Planet Jackers" takes this idea to the extreme, featuring aliens who steal entire planets, throwing them into their sun to keep it from dying. They specifically prefer planets full of "critters," because "critters burns ''good.''" Aliens who are loosely based on the crooks from [[Fargo]], no less. And, since this is a [[Crapsack World]] where nobody thinks things through, don't bother wondering why [[Fridge Logic|they don't just use their planet-moving technology to move their own planet to another star]].
* Brainiac in ''[[Superman: The Animated Series]]'' is a purely intellectual looter. He would examine planets for all their knowledge, and then destroy them and all inhabitants on them so he can be the sole holder of that knowledge. Of course, when Superman learns of this method of cornering the information market, he responds with an outraged "[[You're Insane!]]" and leaps into battle to stop the robot.
* Subverted like almost every other "Evil Alien Invader" trope in ''[[Futurama]]'', where humans are the planet looters. They mined out one planet to the point of implosion, then refused to help the wildlife because of "Brannigan's Law"
** Only one planet? It was used at least twice: one for Dark Matter, another for ice. Both imploded.
*** I think the object they mined all the ice from was Halley's Comet; not sure if it imploded or not, but the trope remains.
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