Okay, we all know what this one is: hitherto unknown space-faring civilisation discovers the Earth, alien ships descend from the skies, out belch green-skinned armies of destruction wielding ray cannons, and humanity is in for a generally hard time.  This field is so ploughed over that the bedrock has got ruts cut in it a foot deep.  Ever since H. G. Wells sprang a Martian invasion on us in 1898 the front runner for setbacks in man's march into the future has been visits by unfriendly extraterrestrials with designs on our world.  Uh, huh.  Yeah.  Been there.  Done that. 

For something that is firmly in the realm of fantasy, the notion of alien invaders can produce some very definite opinions and after a hundred years, the topic has split neatly into three camps.  First, there are the popular science writers of the Asimov, Clarke, Sagan camp who frame aliens in the angelic template without an aggressive bone (if they have bones) in their bodies.  They tend to point out that anyone who had reached a level of development where they are capable of waging interstellar war will have got beyond war and will be terribly peaceful.  Yes, technological advancement as the touchstone of benign intent.  Yep.  Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union proved that one right.

Then there are the writers of science fiction, who have a more realistic approach-- at least as far as motives go.  Though it was generally for dramatic purposes, sci-fi understood that there isn't much of any link between how powerful and how moral you are.  In fact, their instinctive approach of ascribing human motives to alien invaders is probably closer to the truth in that they assume that reason is a universal quality rather than a human invention and is therefore similar throughout space and time.  C. S. Lewis even took this a step further in Out of the Silent Planet with his Martians who were peaceful, not because they had evolved into it, but because they had never shared the Fall which has been causing so much grief on Earth since that little incident in Eden. 

Finally, there are those who claim that the aliens are already here and giving us anal probes.

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