Worldbuilding Week 2: The Unwelcome Guests

An American office district that was destroyed in the Alien Invasion. The Aliens were highly disorganized and seemed to strike cities and structures at random - it is believed they were intending to demoralize humanity with the power of their weapons, though the actual result was much less effective than the bombing campaigns of the Second World War, ended only a few years earlier.

The Great Alien Invasion of 1953 was an absolute catastrophe. Initially gaining a surprise advantage against unprepared local police forces and militias, who were as a general rule not armed to fight UFOs, the alien armies were absolutely crushed by the vastly superior militaries of the Earth, who ended the Alien War in a matter of days, leaving many aliens stranded.

Some aliens have found a new career path in Hollywood. Seen here is a Neptunian, carrying a pair of swimming flippers on his way to set.

The remaining, stranded aliens went to two main paths in the face of their new predicament. Some chose to carry on the war as saboteurs, attacking humans and their infrastructure in hope that a second invasion attempt would come, and should they be able to escape they would know that they at the very least left some mark against their enemy. Others chose to accept their fate and assimilate themselves into the societies of humanity, and perhaps find some new meaning in this strange new planet. This mixture of intentions among the aliens has made them something of a controversial topic, as no singular species can be associated with the saboteurs or the assimilating aliens.

These aliens, claiming themselves to be from Mercury, were high-ranking officials in the attempted invasion. After a very brief interrogation, the American Bureau of Investigation concluded that the invasion would have been completely doomed to failure even if they had arrived as early as the Middle Ages.

The aliens, while humanoid, are of a wide variety of species and races with many immediately identifiable characteristics that make them nigh impossible to confuse with humans. Though some have certain abilities that surpass those of humans, they do not possess any kind of 'super powers' that would make them any more dangerous a threat than the average man. Some even appear outright goofy to human eyes, which further humiliated their failed invasion.

A police officer wearing a gas mask after a failed alien gas attack. The alien saboteurs often rely on the postal services to deliver bombs, though recent advances in studying their own scanner technology has made such attacks much more difficult to carry out as they can be detected by the postmen themselves.

Humans have adapted their societies, particularly in police forces, to deal with the random acts of terror committed by alien saboteurs, whose attempts are already frustrated by their immediately obvious appearances. As much of their technology was salvaged and repurposed by eager human scientists, they no longer have the advantage in firepower that allowed them to once make their first sudden move.

Here a scientist and two of his assistants test out various prototypes for an advanced head-mounted computer, functioning both as eyeglasses and a sophisticated calculating device. In the streets, such a device would not only allow a man to check his schedule on the move, but also guide him to any place on Earth he would ever need to go.

While the revelation that there was indeed life on other planets was initially shocking, the discovery that humanity could not only match them but outright destroy them with minimal effort helped to offset the initial fear and turn human thought instead towards curiosity. Alien technology, combined with human ingenuity, has helped to propel humanity forward with new ideas and capabilities previously imagined impossible, and has moved them several steps closer to one day traveling the stars - perhaps to one day meet their would-be conquerors on their own doorsteps.

Some of the advances made with alien technology have had some unexpected side effects - here a man from Montana holds up a giant grasshopper, believed to have been mutated by the newer hybrid fertilizer used in commercial crops nearby.

The fate of the aliens remains uncertain, though it is believed by many that in a short few years the saboteurs will be fully accounted for, which raises the question of debate for all humans, hotly debated by politicians and radio hosts everywhere: What shall we do with the others? While some peaceful aliens have been welcomed into society, and even in some small towns hold offices such as sheriffs and mayors, they are met with suspicion in places where saboteur activity has been more rampant, sometimes even violence.