Olympics: the alien invaders that destroy our cities

(Image by Smuzz)

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

MORE: Civlib • Copyfight • corporatism • corruption • illustration • london • london 2012 • olympics • uk

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Andrew Singleton

Nice take on the design of the Independence Day poster.
Matthew Stone

Why is England going crazy like the USA is today? This can’t be the same country that made Danger Mouse and Paddington possible when I was a tot.
- Tynam
  
  I always had my suspicions about Paddington.
  - fuzzyfuzzyfungus
    
    Did the fact that he’s a foreign sleeper agent with a shadowy past and an unwholesome interest in Britain’s vital infrastructure tip you off?
- fuzzyfuzzyfungus
  
  In fairness, while the US has some downright disturbing homegrown pathologies of its own, the UK’s spot of Trouble with the IRA gave it some decades of head start in the vital areas of fortress urbanism, antiterror paranoia, and distinctly questionable use of force…
  
  We picked up some of that on our own, from other sources, but one cannot deny the UK’s excellence in the area. (Whoever managed to sell a post-cold-war public on a ‘ring of steel’ as a good thing has my grudging respect for a master of his craft…)
fuzzyfuzzyfungus

I love the poster; but I think that there is one important inaccuracy in the depiction of the Olympics as an alien invasion(especially if we consider the aliens from Independence Day, not all of alien-lore):

While IOC is(at best) a lawful-evil organization with which reasoning is futile; they, unlike the aliens, can only show up in your city if there are quislings on the ground to pave the way…

The IOC is a writeoff, even if you care about ‘olympianism’, it’d be easier to set it on fire and build a new one than the reform the present one. However, even if the IOC didn’t exist at all, the local political forces that allow local collaborators to invite the Olympics in to bulldoze a few unimportant constituents and feed at the trough would still be a menace.

It seems that, unlike in alien invasions, which are exogenous events that have to be solved after the fact by some mixture of implausible heroics and narrative causality, an attack of the Olympics is really a malignant symptom of late-stage political rot getting to the point where the smell starts to attract scavengers.
- http://twitter.com/rvitelli Romeo Vitelli
  
  So, Jeff Goldblum won’t be saving London by hacking into the IOC’s computers and uploading a virus? Pity.
  - Moriarty
    
    Not unless they’re running Windows 95.
- http://www.disoriented.net/ angusm
  
  Evidently, the Olympics are like vampires: they can’t enter your house unless you invite them in.
Tim Drage

http://cementimental.tumblr.com/post/27626283512
Tim Drage

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m7gpkxE2561r19yszo1_1280.jpg
- Andrew Singleton
  
  Would have been nice if you’d rejiggered the yellow text at the bottom, but nice poster anyhow.
  
  Edit: Also since we’re in 2012 now using the Escape from LA poster might have been a little more appropriate. Then again since LA was basically a rip of New York either works I suppose.
awjt

It’s just a front for the OOSS [Olympic OSS], which is trying vehemently to topple Communism. They were behind the Korean flag mix-up yesterday. Stay tuned for more amazing capers.
Wreckrob8

So I didn’t just hear Boris Johnson making Olympic announcements on my bus. It was only aliens. Phew. Had me scared there for a minute.
- http://darkmobius.com Andrew Molloy
  
  They’re not mutually exclusive, it can be Boris Johnson AND an alien. In fact that really would explain so much.
  - Felton / Moderator
    
    It’s just Boris!
millie fink

I heard on Democracy Now! this morning that the Olympics will cost British taxpayers about the equivalent of $16 billion.

I wonder what they’ll end up with in return?
- SomeGuyNamedMark
  
  Just ask the folks in Athens how it worked out for them. Most of the expensive facilities in Beijing are weed choked shells now too.
http://profiles.google.com/callypowers California Powers

Where’s Torchwood? I’d think they’d be all over this threat…. ;-)
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=583005967 Yiannis K. Eipame

worry not! you will hear the music 4-6 years after the olympics. ;)
buchacho

The IOC is pathetic and out of control .
Paulo Ugolini

Nobody noticed the sponsoring by Dow Chemicals? For me, it spoils the whole campaign (I am anti-olympics).