Sense of Wonder: A Century of Science Fiction (267 page)

Many days later, the skipper saw Tommy Dort poring over one of the strange objects which were the equivalent of books. It was, fascinating to puzzle over. The skipper was pleased with himself. The technicians of the
Llanvabon
’s former crew were finding out desirable things about the ship almost momently. Doubtless the aliens were as pleased with their discoveries in the
Llanvabon
. But the black ship would be enormously worth while—and the solution that had been found was by any standard much superior even to combat in which the Earthmen had been overwhelmingly victorious.

“Hm-m-m. Mr. Dort,” said the skipper profoundly. “You’ve no equipment to make another photographic record on the way back. It was left on the
Llanvabon
. But fortunately, we have your record taken on the way out, and I shall report most favorably on your suggestion and your assistance in carrying it out. I think very well of you, sir.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Tommy.

He waited. The skipper cleared his throat.

“You…ah…first realized the close similarity of mental processes between the aliens and ourselves,” he observed. “What do you think of the prospects of a friendly arrangement if we keep a rendezvous with them at the nebula as agreed?”

“Oh, we’ll get along all right, sir,” said Tommy. “We’ve got a good start toward friendship. After all, since they see by infrared, the planets they’d want to make use of wouldn’t suit us. There’s no reason why we shouldn’t get along. We’re almost alike in psychology.”

“Hm-m-m. Now just what do you mean by that?” demanded the skipper.

“Why, they’re just like us, sir!” said Tommy. “Of course they breathe through gills and they see by heat waves, and their blood has a copper base instead of iron and a few little details like that. But otherwise we’re just alike! There were only men in their crew, sir, but they have two sexes as we have and they have families, and…er… their sense of humor— In fact—” Tommy hesitated.

“Go on, sir,” said the skipper.

“Well— There was the one I call Buck, sir, because he hasn’t any name that goes into sound waves,” said Tommy. “We got along very well. I’d really call him my friend, sir. And we were together for a couple of hours just before the two ships separated and we’d nothing in particular to do. So I became convinced that humans and aliens are bound to be good friends if they have only half a chance. You see, sir, we spent those two hours telling dirty jokes.”

* * * *

Copyright © 1945, 1973 by the Estate of Will F. Jenkins; first appeared in Astounding Science Fiction; from THE BEST OF MURRAY LEINSTER; reprinted by permission of the author’s Estate and the Estate’s agent, the Virginia Kidd Agency, Inc.

The strange, dangerous, and mysterious figure of the alien is perhaps the most familiar trope of science fiction. From the ten-foot-tall blue Na’vi of the 2009 blockbuster film
Avatar
, to the terrifying, acid-spitting creatures of Ridley Scott’s 1979 sci-fi horror film
Alien
, or the golden-skinned, gentle telepaths of Ray Bradbury’s
The Martian Chronicles
, the alien embodies both our fears of the unknown and our desire to know it. Likewise, the worlds of these creatures present humanity with at once familiar and strange landscapes, arenas in which mankind may test their fortitude, as well as find potential new homes as space back on Earth grows increasingly precious. Indeed, as Gwyneth Jones notes,

The career of ‘aliens’ in sf has reflected (as all sf concepts must) changes and developments in the real world. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century there was sober, Darwinian speculation about life and ecology on other planets, with the sensational corrective of H.G. Wells’s
The War of the Worlds
(1898). Aliens became competitors, and therefore our deadly enemies. In the chastened, exhausted years after the Second World War, and even more so in the 1960s, the decade of the Vietnam debacle and the Civil Rights Movement, peace was the message and aliens could be pitied, admired or defended, in print—though remaining monstrous invaders in the movies, battle providing better spectacle than trade missions. More recently, colourful (sic) (but conveniently humanoid) sf aliens—such as the aliens or demons in TV sci-fi and fantasy shows, such as Star Trek, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel—have taken on a range of topical, dramatically useful roles: immigrants, ethnic minorities, underprivileged guest workers, wily diplomatic opponents. (168)

Jones’s sweeping, but quite useful, overview of the ways in which aliens have been used throughout the history of science fiction, is just one starting point for establishing the function and meaning of the alien in the genre. As Ronnie D. Lipschultz notes, the term “alien” has “three common uses:”

The first, of course, the creature, whether extraterrestrial or of this earth, who confounds “normalcy.” The second applies to those individuals who are not native to the country in which they reside, a conception that connotes, as well, a sense of unbridgeable cultural difference. The third means “out of place,” a definition that encompasses as well “alienation,” a notion that generally refers to those who feel that they do not belong to the society of which they are members. (80)

All three definitions that Lipschultz outlines are linked by the specter of difference. Aliens are not “us,” they are intrinsically different: physiologically, linguistically, technologically, even ethically. Whether we perceive them as inferior to ourselves or frighteningly advanced, the primary function of aliens—that is, the “Other”—is to remind us of what (and who) we are. In other words, the alien Other serves as a counterpoint, a way for humanity to define itself in opposition to the Other. Accepting an alien race as an ally, like the Vulcans in the Star Trek universe, does not mean that their otherness has been forgotten, however. Entire episodes throughout the Star Trek series have been devoted to just the sexuality of the Vulcans; thus while they may be our ally, they are still radically different from us.

What the work of Lipschultz and Jones directs us towards is a specific function of the alien (and even their worlds) in science fiction, and that is their usefulness on an allegorical level. While it would be dangerous to assign an allegorical function to
every
alien in the science fiction pantheon, this lens has proven especially helpful in analyzing science fiction texts, as allegorical readings of H. G. Wells’s
The War of the Worlds
shows, for example. Wells’s celebrated and highly influential novel presents an Earth under attack by blood-sucking Martians who terrorize the English countryside. Human weapons are no match for superior Martian technology, and all looks lost for humanity until a simple fact of biology saves the day: the Martians are not immune to the simplest of Earth germs. The Martians’ ruthlessness is not based in their otherness, however: They are, quite simply, mankind. Specifically, the Martians are imperialistic Great Britain, which is now at the receiving end of its own brutal imperialist practices. No longer the technological superior, England has been relegated to the position of the native / colonized that cannot protect itself from the greed of the Martian Empire. Once again, the allegorical function of the alien in science fiction is abundantly clear in Wells’s text, just as it is in the 1996 film Independence Day, a reimagining of Wells’s classic. Here the allegory resides not in a commentary on nineteenth-century imperialism, but rather on modern-day environmental devastation. The aliens’ sole focus is to deplete the Earth of every natural resource it has, and once done, the aliens move on to another planet. The aliens then are a not so subtle code for the rapaciousness of humanity, their very presence is a warning to protect Earth not just from external, extraterrestrial threat, but from humanity’s own thoughtlessness.

First Contact

The alien encounter is at the heart of most science fiction, and the encounter’s most typical expression is the “first contact” story. The first contact story is frequently driven by anxiety, paranoia, and fear, mostly of the unknown: This is grippingly captured in the classic story by Murray Leinster which coined the now familiar SF phrase. The Earthship
Llanvabon
and an alien spaceship surprise one another in the Crab Nebula. Both ships have come to the nebula to study it, but are now faced with a dilemma: is the other ship hostile or friendly? “The first contact of humanity with an alien race,” the skipper of the Llanvabon reflects,

was a situation which had been foreseen in many fashions, but never one quite so hopeless of solution as this. A solitary Earth-ship and a solitary alien, meeting in a nebula which must be remote from the home planet of each. They might wish peace, but the line of conduct which best prepared a treacherous attack was just the seeming of friendliness. Failure to be suspicious might doom the human race—and a peaceful exchange of the fruits of civilization would be the greatest benefit imaginable. Any mistake would be irreparable, but a failure to be on guard would be fatal. (89)

Each race is understandably cautious, but also curious. After some tentative communications in which one of the
Llanvabon’s
crew, Tommy Dorst (who provides the story’s central point of view) determines that the aliens are not quite as different as their appearances suggest, the two crews come to a creative solution to their quandary: switch ships. In that way, each race can learn much about the other, being sure to remove any information that would reveal the locations of their homes, and should the two “alien” groups decide to continue communications, they will return after an agreed upon time to the neutral Crab Nebula.

Leinster’s own neutral treatment of the intense first contact, recognizing the shared concerns of each race and emphasizing the similarities between them, is sharply contrasted by the more common presentation of first contact, in which the suspicion of one group (and sometimes both) is soon verified. While Leinster’s treatment is rather atypical of this story type, his story tells the reader much the same that the frequent portrayal of aliens as bloodthirsty menaces does: Fear of the unknown continues to pervade. However, not every first contact is doomed to violence or failure, as long as cooler heads prevail. If they do not, humanity may miss out on unimaginable gifts, like “immortality under the stars,” as the aliens in Frank Belknap Long’s “Invasion” reveal to Earth after humanity has failed to show trust and openness to their automaton representative (727).

Bug-Eyed Monsters and Little Green Men

Upon shedding his “Edgar suit” that has allowed him to pass as human, the alien villain of the 1997 science fiction comedy
Men in Black
reveals his true form: a huge cockroach, complete with drooling mandibles. In his two forms, the alien, known simply as the “Bug,” represents the two most typical representations of the alien in science fiction, both on screen and on the page: the humanoid and the non-humanoid (typically either reptilian or insectlike). While non-humanoid aliens can, and do, take on other forms, such as the Golans in Leslie Stone’s “The Conquest of Gola”—circular bodies with hand and foot pads, covered in golden coats, able to take in food and drink through any part of the body—the reptilian and insect bodies frequently assigned to the non-humanoid alien serves a dual purpose: to present the Other in a somewhat familiar form, and, by casting them as reptiles or enormous bugs, the non-humanoid alien is immediately positioned as, at the very least, physically inferior to humanity, even if their technology is not. This type of alien flourished particularly during what is considered the “Golden Age” of science fiction (roughly the 1930s to the 1950s) in the form of pulp magazine stories, and gained a rather endearing name: the bug-eyed monster. With the word “monster” there was no question what the motives of this kind of alien were, and from that point on, bug-eyed monsters (or BEMs) have regularly been depicted as hostile aliens, with few exceptions (such as the bug-eyed, but hardly monstrous E.T.).

Being humanoid, however, has never guaranteed benevolent purpose. The alien pantheon of the various Star Trek television series and films abound with hostile humanoid aliens, perhaps the most terrifying being the cybernetic humanoids known as the Borg. Likewise, while “little green men” are sometimes the stuff of abduction nightmares and twisted governmental cover-up plots (like the central plotline of The X-Files), they are also the incredibly helpful Asgaard of Stargate: SG-1, or the ethereal beings of James Cameron’s 1989 film The Abyss, who, in an alternate version of the film’s ending, choose to spare humanity based on the self-sacrifice of one of the main characters. What this brief exercise shows, then, is that physical form is never a guarantee of an alien’s intent, and thus it is more useful to focus on that intent and what it means for humanity.

As such, the peacebringer/peacekeeper alien, like those depicted in the classic science fiction film
The Day the Earth Stood Still
, represents quite simply mankind’s desire for peace, a desire that some aliens, such as those in Damon Knight’s classic short story “To Serve Man,” exploit to their own ends. Under the auspices of the peacebringer alien, the Kanamit are actually an example of one of the sub-types of the hostile alien: the invasion force, the most popular representation of alien life. In Knight’s story invasion is presented as peace: the Kanamit offer humanity longer, healthier lives, unlimited power, and a device that protects countries from weapons, such as missiles and bombs. What a few humans discover to their great horror, however, is that the Kanamit are merely protecting their newfound food source: humanity itself. The Kanamit’s outward benevolence belies their malevolent intent, thus making them on some level more terrifying than the outwardly hostile alien, such as the Martians in H. G. Wells’s
War of the Worlds
.

At its root, the threat that hostile aliens pose speaks to mankind’s deep fears of powerlessness and mortality, just as the promise of a peaceful future represented by friendly aliens reflects our wish that the kinder side of the human spirit will one day be triumphant. That the former can be found more readily in science fiction than the latter suggests several possible, equally plausible conclusions about the state of humanity. First, mankind’s fear of the other, here on in earth and beyond, remains strong. Second, mankind’s visions of interstellar interaction, and the future such interaction may be bring, is based in violence and suspicion, not unlike how mankind’s dealings with itself continue to play themselves out. And when mankind is the hostile alien, as in the 2009 film Avatar, that fear of difference is used as a rationale for suppression and preemptive aggression, as well as economic and physical gain.

There are, however, aliens that do not fit into either category: hostile or friendly. Take, for example, the strange oceanic planet Solaris, from Stanislaw Lem’s novel of the same name. Solaris is both an alien world and a sentient being. Because communication with the planet has yielded no discernible sense of the planet’s motives or intent, and there has been no clearly hostile or benign actions on the part of the planet, Solaris is an alien outside of the traditional dichotomy, and as such serves as an uncomfortable reminder that mankind’s attempts to know and quantify the other has its limits. For the humans in Octavia Butler’s short story “Bloodchild,” the intent of the aliens, the Tlic, a race of large, sentient insects, is clear: they desperately need the Terrans, specifically males, in order to reproduce. Humans are kept on a “Preserve;” these humans are those who have been “adopted” by a Tlic family for reproductive purposes. In exchange, the humans who have come to the Tlic homeworld to escape the violence of Earth are given homes and longer lives. This seemingly symbiotic relationship is hardly ideal, however: some of the humans resent the Tlic and the treatment of humans as little more than animals, while the Tlic are ever fearful of the humans revolting, as such an act could mean the end of the Tlic race. Butler’s story raises a very difficult question about alien motives and the alien encounter: what if one’s very survival is dependent on the other, but must be achieved through less than appealing methods? Not surprisingly, when it is difficult to discern a clear motive on the part of an alien, such as the “prawns” in the 2009 film District 9, humanity invariably chooses to believe that the aliens are a threat; this is even true of the oddly cuddly E.T., whose only desire, like the prawns, is to go home. Neither alien has any expressed interest in man, but mankind’s interest in them and what dangers (real or imagined) they pose dictates in turn how the aliens are defined and treated.