Stasia Miller has been very up front about being an advanced scout for an alien invasion since she was a child. (Or at least, since the time she disappeared in the woods and may or may not have been kidnapped.) Of course, no one believes her. At best they believe it’s a harmless delusion, at worst something that makes her dangerously Other, and therefore deserving of mockery and petty bullying.
She has had to deal with a lot of mockery and petty bullying growing up.
Of course, it turns out that she is absolutely correct, and the armada is coming. Our Protagonist is put in a situation where she has to find a way to protect her found family…from her actual family. While running from government agents. And while humanity loses its mind when they receive a message from that armada, that it’s coming.
Some of the interesting aspects of this story lie in the framing. The aliens are plants who acquire sapience by imprinting on sapient beings. Of course, the “imprinting” involves killing sapient beings and copying their brains and memories. This means their entire life cycle is engineered toward finding sapient beings, dropping their seeds, and those seeds engaging in some extreme brood parasitism.
Some fun (and disturbing) bits:
• The “pod people” are not in any way trying to conceal themselves. They are actively (horrifically) attempting to do due diligence and warning, “hi, we’re coming, don’t kill our kids, if you don’t act in [one specific way that you most likely won’t think of because we did not give our kids enough information to tell you] we will feel justified in eating you.”
• Stasia is possibly the only “human-fostered pod person” you can really feel sympathy for. (At least that was the case for me. Your mileage may vary.) The others are various levels of hostile toward humans. They are also kind of jerks, mostly because of trauma.
• It really is played as “family reunion as alien invasion.” Only Earth is a picnic basket.
• There’s a continuing refrain of “this is only a story, and it can’t hurt you anymore,” that is deeply haunting.
I very much recommend Overgrowth, for those who like alien invasion stories with unexpected takes and gut-punch endings! (I recommend all of Mira Grant’s horror works, even the ones I can’t read all the way through because the Inner Screaming they invoke gets too loud.)
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