Pandora's Planet

I originally read a shorter version of this when I was young, and enjoyed it immensely. I still think it I fun but if I took it seriously I would say it was not credible. The concept is that an aggressive interspace empire conquers --or thinks it has conquered --earth and then finds the natives are waging a very clever guerrilla warfare against them. They find that earthlings actually are smarter than they are, or at least more clever at inventing things, though perhaps also too prone to argument for their own good. The empire solves the problem (or thinks it solves the problem) by taking the earthlings into partnership. That was about as far as the original story got. The novel expands on the consequences. The extent to which the show more earthlings are smarter than the aliens is not really credible (how likely is it that a militaristic empire would not have even invented a socket bayonet?) but it is funny in a rather heavy-handed way, mostly poking fun at the alien intellectuals who are supposed to integrate earthlings into the empire. When I was young, it did teach me one useful expression "exaggeration for conversational effect." I suppose I and people around me had been using it all my life, but I had not thought of it as a specific concept until it was used here (by a supercilious alien intellectual who cannot believe a soldier is serious about the accuracy of earth weapons.) show less

An alien invasion novel, with several twists. The aliens have a more advanced technology, but aren't as intelligent as humans overall. Dedicated to making this 'Earth' conform and fit into their interstellar empire leads to numerous unpleasant encounters, and the aliens have to keep changing their goals as the 'lop-tails' make hash of various schemes. Not a great book (the final twist is pretty obvious), but fun to read. The description of the alien soldiers' first and only attempt to use 'fang-wire' is the best of several very funny scenes.

Pretty funny. It's rare that we're smarter than the aliens that conquer us.