Life After Contact

What happens after first contact—when the ships have landed, the shooting has stopped, and the aliens aren’t going anywhere? Bryce Zabel and Brent Friedman explore the surprisingly complicated futures Hollywood has imagined for humanity once extraterrestrials become conquerors, occupiers, refugees, neighbors, employers, enemies—or even romantic partners. And they confront the question every one of us would eventually have to answer: would you join the resistance, collaborate with the new regime, try to play both sides—or just keep your head down and hope the lights stay on?

From the guerrilla warfare of Falling Skies and the fascist occupation of V to the surveillance state of Captive State and Colony, the stories keep returning to the same uncomfortable truth: alien invasion movies are usually talking about us. Alien Nation turns extraterrestrials into immigrants. District 9 makes them refugees trapped in an apartheid system. Defiance imagines multiple species attempting to build a society together, while Pluribus offers perhaps the strangest possibility of all—a peaceful hive mind that promises to eliminate fear, loneliness, and conflict by eliminating individuality along with them.

But beneath all the science fiction is a question that feels increasingly relevant to Sound, Light & Frequency: if contact is already taking place in some form, what might come next? Bryce and Brent consider whether decades of movies and television are simply exploiting one of humanity’s oldest fears—or whether, intentionally or otherwise, Hollywood has been rehearsing the possibilities for us. Because first contact may be an event. Life after contact is a civilization.

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