Alien Universe (18 page)

The base looks a little like a big helipad, surrounded by cameras and klieg lights. A voice on the intercom tells them that there are radar contacts and the base bustles as scores of experts take their position. The familiar UFOs and foo fighters arrive. As they hover over the helipad, the humans play the five-note tone. The notes correspond to lights on a large display behind them. After a few attempts, the UFOs play the tones back, but then the UFOs leave.

While the experts begin congratulating themselves, a huge roiling of clouds appears on the other side of the mesa, heralding the arrival of the mother ship (
figure 4.4
). What follows is what one might call a high-tech version of “dueling banjos.” The humans and Alien craft play passage after musical passage, copying one another, all the while accompanied by synchronized colorful lights.

At the conclusion of the lightshow, the bottom of the mother ship opens, and many humans disembark, including World War II pilots, perhaps from Flight 19. None of the people have aged at all. Barry also leaves and is reunited with his mother. The door of the ship closes and reopens, this time with Aliens emerging. The first to emerge is a tall and very thin version of the familiar Grays, followed by dozens of more traditional Grays, perhaps 4 feet high (
figure 4.4
).

FIGURE 4.4
.
The mother ship in
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (left
) was huge, many hundreds of feet across, while the Aliens (
right
) were classic examples of the diminutive Grays. Two humans are shown for scale. The black-and-white figure showing the mother ship doesn’t do it justice. You really have to see the movie to appreciate the magnitude of the spectacle.
Columbia Pictures Corporation
.

The humans had prepared a group of astronauts who they hope will leave with the Aliens. At the last minute, it is decided that Roy will join them. Roy is welcomed by the Grays with open arms, and he is guided onto the ship. It is implied, but not obvious, that he is joined by the other astronauts. The Aliens all reenter the ship, and the door closes for a final time. As it rises majestically into the sky, Barry closes the movie by saying, “Bye!”

Close Encounters of the Third Kind
incorporates many of the “right” elements as believed by UFO enthusiasts, and it resonated well with that community, although, as always, there were purists who quibbled with this point or that. The movie was a huge commercial success, grossing more than $300 million worldwide.

The title came from a scale devised by astronomer and UFO researcher J. Allen Hynek and popularized in his 1972 book
The UFO Experience: A Scientific Inquiry
. His scale classified UFO sightings as close encounters of the first kind and sightings with physical evidence, like scorch marks or lost time (à la Betty and Barney Hill), to be the second kind. Close encounters of the third kind required that one encounter “animate beings” with the UFO. The name was vaguely chosen to allow for the possibility that perhaps UFOs were not extraterrestrial in origin. There have been subsequent extensions of the Hynek scale, but these are not universally accepted. Fourth is abduction with retained memory. Fifth is for regular conversations (like the Adamski experience). Sixth is an encounter that causes injury or death to a human.
Finally, close encounters of the seventh kind requires human/extraterrestrial mating that produces an offspring, often called a “star child.”

The idea of this interspecies mating has been reported by some of the post–Betty and Barney Hill abductees and also proposed by von Däniken and his contemporaries as possible explanation of, for example, the human/beast hybrid gods of ancient Egypt. Even a cursory knowledge of genetics shows how ludicrous this idea is. Think about it: humans and oranges share a genetic history and have appreciable genetic overlap, yet a human/orange hybrid is unthinkable. In contrast, Aliens and humans have no shared genetic history; indeed it is unlikely that the genetic material of Aliens looks much like the DNA of Earth-based life. From mankind’s recent advances in genetics, we know that it is possible for genetic material from one species to be transplanted to another, but the merging of human and Alien genetic material seems very unlikely.

Nonserious Depictions of Aliens

While we have spent a lot of time talking about Aliens as they are depicted in literature, radio, movies, and television, there is also a class of Aliens that we aren’t meant to take seriously. These are just representations that allow us to watch a charming or funny story.

Of the nonserious depictions of Aliens, perhaps the most serious is the 1982 movie
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
. A group of Alien botanists sampling the plant life on Earth are startled and they take off, leaving one of their members behind. The Alien encounters a ten-year-old boy who helps him get back to his own kind. The movie does utilize some of the classic Hollywood techniques to tell the story of Alien contact, for instance when the government gets involved and tries to capture E.T. for study. But, given its intended audience, it is difficult for the movie to seriously depict Aliens.

In television, Aliens are sometimes used as the basis for a sitcom. The silly behavior of creatures who have no idea how human society works can easily be exploited for laughs.
Mork and Mindy
(1978–1982) used the frantic humor of Robin Williams as Alien Mork tries to live among us. The eponymous
ALF
(for Alien Life Form, 1986) was played by a hand puppet. He was born on the Lower East Side of the planet Melmac. He crash-landed in California and moved in with a family he encountered. He is a sarcastic wise guy and is often trying to eat the family’s cat.
My Favorite Martian
was a 1963 television show with a similar premise. A Martian anthropologist crash-landed on Earth and
moved in with a human while he tried to repair his craft. Only his roommate knows he’s a Martian. To a degree, there is a similarity to the more famous
Bewitched
, in which Samantha the witch lives among us, known only to her husband.

One of the most iconic of the nonserious Aliens is Marvin the Martian. Marvin debuted in the 1948 cartoon
Haredevil Hare
opposite Bugs Bunny. He is dressed as a Roman centurion, in homage to the identification of the planet Mars with the Roman god of war. Marvin is an astronomer frequently bent on destroying the Earth “because it obstructs [his] view of Venus.” The way he will destroy the Earth is with “an Illudium Pu-36 Space Modulator” (sometimes “Illudium Q-36 Space Modulator”). As with any character that has a conflict with Bugs Bunny, Marvin has very little luck with his plans. A common phrase when he fails to blow up the Earth is, “Where’s the kaboom? There was supposed to be an earth-shattering kaboom!” Marvin the Martian cartoons are often quite funny, but he is never intended to be taken as representing a real Alien.

Another Alien who is somehow not an Alien at all is Superman. Superman, born Kal-El of the planet Krypton, was sent to Earth before his planet exploded. By virtue of having been born on the high-gravity planet Krypton, Superman is very strong. “Faster than a speeding bullet, stronger than a locomotive, and able to leap tall buildings in a single bound” was a literal description of his abilities, but these morphed over the years until Superman was indestructible. Superman is not an iconic Alien but rather a superhero.

The 1997 movie
Men in Black
taps into a little of the lore that surrounds “real” Aliens. A super-secret government organization of men in black suits regulates the comings and goings of Aliens living here on Earth. People who encounter the many Aliens among us are subjected to a “neuralizer,” a little gizmo that flashes a light and causes people to forget. In this movie there are dozens of different kinds of Aliens, from a bunch of partying cockroaches to a huge worm the size of a New York subway train. The movie, along with its sequels, is great fun. Aliens in movies are now commonplace. Rather than being alien, they are just part of the plot, like the inexperienced and grizzled partners in some cop/buddy movies, or the hopelessly mismatched couple in many romantic comedies. Aliens have evolved to the point where they are no longer a novelty.

Aliens Not Mentioned

In a genre as rich as science fiction, it is inevitable that some readers will object to Alien depictions not mentioned here. The 2009 movie
Avatar
was a
blockbuster success and a gorgeous movie, but it is too soon to see if the Na’vi will become an iconic fictional species.
Doctor Who
is a long-running series describing the antics of a “Time Lord,” a member of an alien species with the ability to travel through time. While wildly popular among a growing cult following,
Doctor Who
hasn’t made it into broad awareness of the general public outside the United Kingdom. The inability of a particular science fiction story to transition into common knowledge is the most frequent reason for why that particular story was not described here in detail.
Transformers, Predator, Independence Day, Third Rock from the Sun, The Coneheads, V, Battlestar Galactica, Starship Troopers, Blade Runner, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, The Fifth Element, Dune, Firefly, Lost in Space
; the list can go on for a long time. Similarly, there are brilliant authors of pulp (and contemporary) fiction that haven’t been mentioned: Fredrick Pohl’s
Heechee
, Larry Niven’s
Tales of the Known Universe
, Robert Heinlein’s
Stranger in a Strange Land
, along with his delightful body of work, Ray Bradbury’s
The Martian Chronicles
, Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle’s
The Mote in God’s Eye
, this list is also long.

I have also not mentioned Aliens from video games. From the original
Space Invaders
to the bad guys in
Starcraft, Quake, Halo
, and so on, the problem with video games is that the Aliens tend to be known by a small and enthusiastic band of gamers. It may yet happen that a video game Alien species will become generally known to the general public, but this has not yet happened.

So let me apologize to all readers for their favorite Alien I haven’t mentioned. I love them all too.

Alien Archetypes

Now that we’ve talked about the history of Aliens and how we met them, we’re ready to summarize the archetypical Aliens. This repeats an earlier exercise, but now includes creatures we encounter in both fiction and “true” Alien stories. There are many different types, and we now know their origins. Most of these are encountered in fiction, and only a few are significant players in the “real Alien” mythos.

Little green men
. These appeared more in the pulp fiction era and were precursors of Grays. They are found in some of the 1950s UFO movies, which, although often black and white, somehow convey a green-ness to their Aliens. Green Aliens are still found in children’s movies, like
Toy Story
.

The Grays
. These are the most common form of Aliens in reported encounters and in any movie in which the Aliens are nominally real. They are called
“Grays” because of the color of their skin. They typically have a large head and forehead, small chin, no nose and almond-shaped, black eyes. The origins of this variant of Alien appears to be the Betty and Barney Hill incident. The eponymous
Paul
is an alien of this type, as are the Asgard from
Stargate
, the Visitors from the book
Communion
, and the Aliens from
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
.

Angelic Space Brothers
. This type of Alien was first encountered by George Adamski. They vary somewhat, but they are described as tall, beautiful, and Nordic in appearance, generally with long hair. (Adamski’s Alien was actually relatively short.) These Aliens are very spiritual and have come to teach us about cosmic harmony. They tend to be a bit arrogant and their motivation for contacting us is to save us from self-destructive behavior. Occasionally they warn us to improve how we act or they will somehow keep us on Earth until we do. Some Alien skeptics have noted that this variant of Alien is very similar to the role that angels once played in society when religion was accepted more universally and that they really have the same function, which is providing an object lesson in knowing how we should behave. Those who believe that the Space Brothers are real point to our legends of angels as proof that they have visited the Earth in the past. One example of this type of Alien is Klaatu from
The Day the Earth Stood Still
.

Evil insects
. They vary in their range of intelligence, so it is ambiguous whether they count as Aliens or mere alien life-forms. Accordingly, whether they are evil or not depends on their intent. Typically they are hunters and killers of humans. The Aliens in the movie
Alien
and its sequels have an ambiguous intelligence. Perhaps they hunt just to eat and reproduce. The Aliens from
Starship Troopers
appear to have a sort of hive mentality, with some of the aliens encountered being swarming fighters, while others are more intelligent. We can also include the Formies from
Ender’s Game
here.