District 9: "We have met the enemy, and they are us."

And what is science fiction at its best but just such a "new tool" as Mrs. Woolf had avowedly sought for fifty years ago, a crazy, protean, left-handed monkey wrench, which can be put to any use the craftsman has in mind - satire, extrapolation, prediction, absurdity, exactitude, exaggeration, warning, message-carrying, tale-telling, whatever you like.

- Ursula K. LeGuin, Science Fiction and Mrs. Brown

I've often spoken about the "what if" role of science fiction, but that glib tag ignores the power of the genre in terms of asking questions - and questioning answers. Now, I don't claim for a moment that every piece of science fiction in the world is the intellectual equivalent of 1984 or Brave New World, but as Ms. LeGuin points out in her essay, SF offers some unique tools to anyone who wants to take apart the world and see how it works. Personally, I prefer to think of it as a toolkit rather than a single wrench, since there are different themes in science fiction that offer different opportunities.

The Alien is one of the more useful tools in the science fiction kit, one that offers both a mirror to our existence, and a telescope through which to examine us from a distance. As an example, in The War of the Worlds, H. G. Well's Martians are a distorted reflection of the British Empire, allowing him to show England suffering from the same sort of technologically superior attack that the Empire had itself visited on its colonies in its ascent to power.

District 9 uses a similar technique in its tale of humanity's - specifically, South Africa's* - reaction to extraterrestrial castaways. We're all familiar with stories about single aliens being marooned on Earth - ET, Starman, K-Pax - Escape to Witch Mountain, if you're being charitable. But what if instead of one little alien with a glowing finger and a desire to call home, there are a million such visitors? How do we treat them?

This question is certainly not unique in the genre, and it's already been addressed on the big screen and on television with the 1988 film Alien Nation, and the TV series and made-for-TV movies using the same title. However, the freed Tenctonese slave race in Alien Nation is close enough to humanity that they are able to integrate themselves into Terran society, albeit with tensions on both sides of the equation.

District 9 paints a grimmer picture. The aliens here are grotesque arthropods, with faces that are a disgusting blend of insect and shrimp, giving rise to the derogatory nickname of "prawns". The exact nature of the catastrophe which has caused their massive starship to be stranded here is unknown, but when humanity fearfully cuts its way into the silently hovering craft after three months of mounting apprehension, the ship is found to be packed with starving, dying aliens.

The aliens are removed from the ship, and placed in crude temporary housing while they are treated and attempts are made to communicate with them. To everyone's frustration, the aliens seem to be some kind of worker caste, moody, unintelligent, and unpredictable, and the alien technology is tagged to their DNA and as a result completely unresponsive to the touch of humanity.

Over 20 years later, the temporary housing has become de facto permanent housing, and District 9, the alien "reservation", is a massive, sprawling, stinking slum, which has begun to strain at its boundaries. Violent encounters between the aliens and humans have become frequent, and human rioters are demanding that something be done. As a result, MNU, the corporation in charge of managing the aliens, has decided to forcibly relocate them.

Much of the action is presented in a documentary format, and the jerky, handheld footage gives it both a feel of realism and a different kind of dynamic energy. Admittedly, there are points where the switch from documentary to drama makes for some confusion, but for the most part the feeling of watching a live CNN feed works very well to connect District 9 with the way in which most of us experience current events.

As part of that connection, I have to acknowledge the amazing acting ability of South African actor Sharlto Copley. Copley brilliantly plays the role of Wikus van der Merwe, the clumsy, inept mid-level bureaucrat in charge of the brutal alien relocation, all of whose success is the result of patronage on the part of his father-in-law. From the moment we first see Wikus on the screen, he is a completely believable character, to the point that he doesn't appear to be a character at all, just another man on the street. However, when Wikus has an accidental encounter with an alien fuel source and begins to transform into a "prawn", that everyday existence is completely destroyed, along with his callous attitude toward the aliens.

As soon as Wikus is considered to be one of "them", his treatment sharply illustrates the brutal indifference with which the aliens have been treated. He is shunned, hunted, beaten, tortured, electroshocked, and forced to kill alien subjects with their own weapons. After his employers, including his father-in-law, determine that he is now capable of activating the alien technology, they decide to slice up his living body and harvest his mutating DNA in hopes of duplicating his newfound capabilities.

Wikus escapes, but his isolation from humanity forces him to take refuge in District 9. Once there, he becomes involved in a plan on the part of one of the aliens to activate their ship and make the three-year round trip to their homeworld for help.

District 9 is not a fully developed story in many ways, but I don't think that it needs or intends to be. It's really more of a thought experiment, a well-presented "what if" of alien contact, than an attempt to present a fully rounded and complete plotline, and as such I found that the various logical faults in the story didn't in any way stop me from enjoying the story.

Although a sequel is an obvious possibility, I hope that director Neill Blomkamp takes up new projects. The uncertain conclusion, with its unresolved issues, perfectly suits the ambiguous nature of the story. A movie that attempted to resolve the moral issues raised in this film with some kind of alien ex machina would seem to me to be some kind of a cheat, an easy way out instead of the sort of labourious societal process that led to the current South African political environment.

Or maybe not. Perhaps the arrival of an armada of angry alien molluscs would be the perfect next step in the thought experiment. How would Prime Minister Botha and the National Party have reacted if during his inauguration in 1978, a delegation of several million "Bantus" from Tau Ceti, armed with plasma rifles and sonic cannons, had shown up to discuss their policies regarding apartheid?

- Sid

* I've read a number of angry online comments that derided the film for its apparent blindness to the progress that's been made in South Africa since the collapse of apartheid, and equally angry responses pointing out that anyone who thinks racism is dead in South Africa is just as blind to the realities of everyday life there. Obviously I can't address either side of that question, but it's impossible to ignore the resonance of placing the story in that particular setting.