Beam Me Up Already

Now, as a preface to what you’re about to read, I am nothing but an alien enthusiast – a grounded ape whose focus turned skyward during childhood – and this is nothing but an opinion piece. Many of my views of the world are those of an outside observer who has never fit in with conventional norms and has no intentions of doing so; an alien amongst my own kind, if you will. I suppose that is why I, as well as many others, have an innate kinship with our interstellar cousins.

Philosophical Nonsense

“Often I was in some lonesome wilderness, suffering strange things and agonies. . .cosmic loneliness was my shadow. Nothing and nobody around me really touched me. It is one of the blessings of this world that few people see visions and dream dreams.”
-Zora Neale Hurston, Dust Tracks on a Road

Are aliens real? Or, more specifically, is there a possibility that there are other life forms somewhere in the universe that have undergone the same process that formed us, and if so, where are they? This is more or less the crux of the Fermi Paradox, which points out the discrepancy between the lack of human-alien interaction and the vastness of the universe (discussed later). For decades upon decades, people of all backgrounds have had that same burning question nestled into the backs of their minds. But what drives us to crave answers to these questions?

In my opinion, the true drivers behind our search for alien life lie in human nature itself. Two constants present in nearly every human being are curiosity and the desire for fellowship. These factors do not have to be intertwined; however, there are points at which they may converge.

How did life on Earth begin? What factor, pressure, or change caused molecules to come together to become the infamous primordial ooze? Finding the beginning of life would mean we could analyze the molecular content of interstellar dust clouds or determine whether planets have suitable conditions for forming life. Until we know the reason for our own existence, we may never really know if other life in the cosmos really exists.

While humans (or homosapiens, if you want to be fancy) have evolved quite far from our ape ancestors, we still cannot escape the fundamental constants of our biology. That said, we crave companionship. Humans are empathetic creatures that will connect with almost anything, including inanimate objects, movie and TV show characters, animals, or the ever-present voices in our head – most people do literally anything to avoid feeling alone. As hard as I’ve tried to develop my own poetic script about cosmic loneliness, I am nothing but unsophisticated. There is no better replacement for my ramblings than that given by famed astronomer Carl Sagan:

“Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life.”

Over the years, the United States government and NASA have sent out numerous transmissions to space in hopes that they will one day reach other civilizations. But who’s to say that if they do even exist, by the time these messages reach them, that they haven’t been overtaken by the death of their sun, or destroyed by global warfare, or have already died out eons ago? Who’s to say that if they do receive one of these transmissions, translate them, and send one back, that something wouldn’t have destroyed us? We are forced to grapple with the idea that no matter how hard we try, no matter the statistical probability, we might never be able to contact our space-brothers and sisters, as they are as unfamiliar to us as any person on the street.

What form of media best encapsulates the endless search for the unknown and the devastating isolation of space? Sci-fi. Science fiction has long been fascinated by extraterrestrials, as they are endlessly versatile vehicles for creative expression. They represent the ultimate unknown, embodying the mysteries of the cosmos and offering endless possibilities for exploration and discovery. They allow us to fill the emptiness of space with vibrant new worlds and beings, and act as outlets for cultural pressures.

But First, a Brief Introduction to Some (alien-related) Astrological Philosophy

”’Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by challenged by this point of pale light.” – Carl Sagan

Completely skippable, but totally interesting to the totally interested

Cultural Pluralism:

The philosophy surrounding the existence of other life forms has existed since the Ancient Greeks. One of the earliest known origins of ufology can be traced back to the Greek philosopher Anaximander. He was an early proponent of cosmic pluralism, with many of his writings dating back to the early Enlightenment era. Cosmic pluralism is basically the idea that numerous other worlds could possibly harbor life in the Milky Way galaxy; this is unlike our current understanding of solar systems and the universe and more akin to there being different universes on different planes of existence—kind of like how there are 280 different Spidermen.

This idea was put to ink in Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds, written in 1686 by philosopher and poet Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle. The book recounts the tale of a philosopher and a marquise going on evening walks, theorizing about the universe and the possibility of interstellar life. This book was immensely influential as it was accessible to most readers (i.e. the wealthy and literate, so not that many people). Bernard wrote the book in French, a popular language amongst the influential at the time, and in a narrative style so that any reader could understand its themes and implications. He even went on a small rant in the preface about how even a woman – a sex of lesser intellect, of course – could understand it.

“In these Conversations I have represented a woman receiving information on things with which she was entirely unacquainted. I thought this fiction would enable me to give the subject more ornament, and would encourage the female sex in the pursuit of knowledge, by the example of a woman who though ignorant of the sciences, is capable of understanding all she is told, and arranging in her ideas the worlds and vortices.
Why should any woman allow the superiority of this imaginary Marchioness, who only believes what she could not avoid understanding? ‘Tis true, she gives some attention to the subject, but what sort of attention is requisite? Not such as will laboriously penetrate into an obscure thing, or a thing that is spoken of in an obscure manner; it is needful only to read with sufficient application to render the ideas familiar. Women may understand this system of philosophy by giving it as much attention as they would bestow on the Princess of Cleves, in order to understand the story and see all the beauties of the work. I do not deny that the ideas contained in this book are less familiar to the generality of females than those in the Princess of Cleves, but they are not more abstruse, and I am convinced that on a second perusal they would be perfectly understood.”

Here is an example of his writing in which he describes cosmic plurality. Make sure to read closely, ladies:

“Let us suppose that no communication had ever been carried on between Paris and St. Dennis; and that a Parisian who had never gone out of his own city should stand on one of the towers of Notre-Dame, and at that distance view St. Dennis: were he asked if he believed that St. Dennis was inhabited like Paris, he would without hesitation answer, No; I see inhabitants in Paris, but I can discover none at St. Dennis, nor – 35 -did I ever hear of any being there. Somebody standing by, might answer, that we certainly cannot see them from the towers of Notre-Dame, but that is, because we are at too great a distance; that from all we can discern of St. Dennis it is very much like Paris; that it has steeples, houses, walls; and therefore is very probably inhabited. All this makes no impression on our citizen; he insists upon it that St. Dennis is uninhabited because he does not see any body in it. The moon is our St. Dennis, and each of us is this Parisian who has never left the city in which he resides.”

Stargate SG-1, while not explicitly based on Cosmic Pluralism, certainly ties many of its concepts into its premise. Basically, a group of scientists on Earth uncover an alien device capable of remotely accessing wormholes that lead to other worlds. The show follows a fairly standard format, featuring many episodic and formulaic storylines.; while still incorporating overarching narratives and significant character development that unfold over time.

These ideas went directly against various mainstream theories at the time; most importantly, they went against the Catholic church’s geocentric narrative. Luckily for Bernard, he faced little backlash for his ideas. This was likely due to other burgeoning Enlightenment-era research that implied a globe-earth rotating around a sun. Without the threat of censorship, his work was allowed to flourish, and his ideas would permeate throughout later astrological philosophy.

Panspermia:

While speculation on alien life persisted throughout later history, it really picked up steam in the 19th century. A similar Anaximander-based theory known as “panspermia” would co-evolve alongside Bernard’s ideas. The term was coined by Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius in 1908, and like Bernards’s theory, it follows the belief that life can exist throughout the universe, traveling on cosmic dust, which can then be propagated on different planets (sort of like Horton Hears a Who!).

The main idea is that life-holding microbes are transferred when life-bearing planets collide with meteors and other miscellaneous space objects. Microbes are then transferred to other planets throughout the universe, and new life begins. This also implies that humans and extraterrestrials are cousins, as we would have originated from the same groupings of microbes. While this is an absolutely magical idea, three main scientific discoveries turned panspermia on its head: the Nebular theory, Darwin’s theory of evolution, and the disproving of spontaneous generation. All of them are very long and would take much longer to explain. To summarize; all of them have to do with finding the origins of life, and all of them prove that life on Earth evolved on a singular planet from a single origin.

The Andromeda Strain is a 1971 movie, based off a book by the same name, that explores these themes. A U.S. military satellite that has been infected with a microscopic alien microorganism crash lands in New Mexico, and quickly starts infecting the local residents. It follows a group of scientists as the race to find a cure and stop a global pandemic.

Fermi Paradox and Related Theories:

The Fermi Paradox is the question when it comes to extraterrestrial life: Where are they? It basically describes the conflict between the statistical probability of other alien lifeforms existing in the Milky Way galaxy and the fact that we have no concrete proof of their existence. It was developed in the 1940s by Enrico Fermi and a group of other scientists. As the story goes, he was sitting around discussing big-brained space topics with his colleagues, when he suddenly asked, “Where is everybody?” (In case you’re wondering, this was asked in reference to aliens). It’s quite the conundrum, and with our current knowledge of the universe, it is completely unanswerable.

However, there are multiple proposed answers. The strongest may be that if alien civilizations do exist, reaching distant planets such as ours may be too costly. In order to reach Earth from a distant planet in a timely manner, a ship capable of traveling at least 1% of the speed of light would be required. To put that into perspective, the New Horizons spacecraft can travel up to 36,000 mph and reach Mars in 39 days; relative to the speed of light (186,000 miles per second(mps), it travels 0.000053682 mps. This doesn’t even account for the excess speed needed to escape a star system’s gravitational field.

Another – and way cooler – explanation comes to us through the Zoo hypothesis. It basically puts Earth in the context of an intergalactic wildlife preserve, where more sophisticated and advanced civilizations purposefully ignore us to prevent tainting our development while also observing us from a distance. This plays into notions of a Great Creator, a being other than the infamous God, who created Earth as a science experiment.  In this regard, we are more akin to a petri dish. It also suggests that there is some form of Galactic Order with a unified culture that has evolved far before us who are assumedly benevolent enough to not enslave us (as is the case in of All Tomorrows by C.M. Kösemen, in which a group of highly advanced aliens called the Qu change humans into grotesque monstrosities, pictured to the left).

This idea is closely related to creationism, which is the idea that a single omnipresent figure created all life and the universe. Beyond being another theory about aliens, it also seeks to find the origin of life itself, whether we were created by something, and if so, by what, exactly? One of the oldest mentions of this concept, at least that I could dig up, is in Olaf Stapledon’s 1930s sci-fi novel, Star Maker. It follows a British man as his consciousness is thrown through the universe, observing the lives of aliens on distant planets. On his journey, he meets the Star Maker, the creator of all life throughout the universe. While not directly scientific in nature, these ideas are, in essence, the Zoo hypothesis mixed with agnosticism and little anti-capitalism. 

“In this world, as in our own, nearly all the chief means of production, nearly all the land, mines, factories, railways, ships, were controlled for private profit by a small minority of the population. These privileged individuals were able to force the masses to work for them on pain of starvation. The tragic farce inherent in such a system was already approaching. The owners directed the energy of the workers increasingly towards the production of more means of production rather than to the fulfilment of the needs of individual life. For machinery might bring profit to the owners; bread would not. With the increasing competition of machine with machine, profits declined, and therefore wages, and therefore effective demand for goods. Marketless products were destroyed, though bellies were unfed and backs unclad. Unemployment, disorder, and stern repression increased as the economic system disintegrated. A familiar story! As conditions deteriorated, and the movements of charity and state-charity became less and less able to cope with the increasing mass of unemployment and destitution, the new pariah-race became more and more psychologically useful to the hate-needs of the sacred, but still powerful, prosperous. The theory was spread that these wretched beings were the result of secret systematic race-pollution by riff-raff immigrants, and that they deserved no consideration whatever. They were therefore allowed only the basest forms of employment and the harshest conditions of work. When unemployment had become a serious social problem, practically the whole pariah stock was workless and destitute. It was of course easily believed that unemployment, far from being due to the decline of capitalism, was due to the worthlessness of the pariahs.”

Another example is found in Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. A book, comic and movie that follows human Arthur Dent, and alien Ford Perfect as they hitchhike through the galaxy to find the meaning of life (42). While on thier journey, they meet Slartibartfast, the designer of worlds who boasts about designing many of the fjords on Earth.

Flying Dinner Plates?

As so briefly mentioned above, the idea of beyond our stars is nothing new, but something changed in the 20th century. Conversations around the extraterrestrial were no longer theories or fiction; the possibility of life beyond our solar system was becoming genuine. This can be attributed to developments in how information is portrayed through media; newspapers were becoming nationally unified, headlines were being sensationalized, and radio and television broadcasting meant information could be disseminated to a broader audience.

The event that really brought alien invasion into the forefront of pop culture was Orsen Welles’s 1938 radio broadcast of the book War of the Worlds, which details a Martian invasion in real time. What was special about this broadcast was that the script was rewritten to be presented as a series of emergency radio bulletins. It would cut between an orchestral performance and emergency news that featured strange happenings on Mars and the subsequent landing of an unknown entity that attacked New Jersey (If only!). While there was an introduction at the beginning of the broadcast stating its fictional content, listeners who tuned in midway through were met with this lovely audio:

In 1947, a U.S. Curtiss C-46 Commando went missing around the Cascade Range in Washington, and a $5000 bounty was set for its location. Private pilot Kenneth A. Arnold was flying to an airshow in the neighboring state when he decided to pass by the mountains, hoping to find the missing craft. As he approached Mt. Rainier, he spotted nine metallic “saucer-like” objects skipping through the air at what he estimated as around 1,200 miles per hour. The next day, his story was national news; it brought the extraterrestrial back into the mainstream astrological debates, and more importantly, Arnold’s description of a flying saucer homogenized itself into the American mind, and would even become the go-to umbrella term for UFOs.

Beyond the sensationalist headlines in newspapers, this event had a major influence on UFO depictions. As I stated previously, aliens are often used as allegories in the media to express cultural fears. In this case, the Mt. Rainier sighting occurred only months after the start of the Cold War. People were absolutely terrified of getting snapped out of existence by nukes, and even more terrified of communists.

Throughout the 20th and 21st centuries, flying saucers continued to captivate audiences in various forms of entertainment. Cylindrical flat objects became a popular fixture in movies  and were featured in films like Earth vs. the Flying Saucers (1956) and Godzilla 2000 (1999). These concepts were further explored in comics such as Avon’s “Flying Saucers” in the 1950s and Gold Key’s “UFO: Flying Saucers” in 1967. I could continue, but my main point is that the Mt. Rainier incident and the subsequent media frenzy forever altered our culture’s collective imagination of UFOs.

Like most pop-culture phenomena, the classic flying saucer attacks had begun to stale after awhile. But, like the flu virus on the hands of a toddler, depictions of aliens began to evolve into something much greater and more complex. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, alien abduction stories began to circulate through national news when Betty and Barney Hill were supposedly abducted by a flying saucer. Before I begin, though, I want to bring attention to the fantastical tale of George Adamski.

George Adamski is widely known in the extraterrestrial community as a bit of a fraudster. But I’d argue that, while he is absolutely a grifter of a galactic scale, he is also a pioneer in alien fiction. He began his extraterrestrial journey in the 1930s, when he founded his own science-based religion called The Royal Order of Tibet, in which he was the head philosopher, giving otherworldly guidance to his followers. This religion (or cult, as most would call it) focuses mainly on expanding the teachings of the Bible to explain science and the mysteries of the universe:

“God, as we have been taught, is the holiness of all and outside of Him there is nothing; meaning all wisdom, all intelligence, and all power and all creative. Universal Consciousness means the same. Universe means not just our solar system but space without circumference in which dwell billions of our solar systems.
The Royal Order of Tibet Is interested only in revealing what is through to be mysteries so that they may be used practically in the present field of life where man may understand his fellowman by understanding the laws which rule all creatures, thereby awakening from the dream-life to the reality which leads to Mastery.” – an excerpt from George Adamski’s Wisdom of The Masters of the Far East

Just in case you’re planning on joining this religion, its true purpose was a front to sell wine during the prohibition, as alcohol was permitted for religious practice. He was quoted as saying, “I made enough wine for all of Southern California … I was making a fortune!”

When prohibition ended, so did The Royal Order of Tibet. Luckily for him, there was a new media sensation sweeping headlines: the flying saucer. He decided this was his new route to make bank. Throughout the 50s and 60s, he wrote and published a wide variety of UFO books, claiming that he had continued personal contact with humanoid creatures from Mars, Venus, Jupiter, and beyond. His most popular book, written in 1952, is Flying Saucers Have Landed, in which he recounts his encounters with an alien from Venus – a Venusian, if you will. He described this creature in great detail, with a tone that can only be described as passionate and longing.

Both Betty and Barney reported feeling a tingling sensation and witnessing a bright flash before blacking out. They were returned to their vehicle and regained consciousness hours later, around 35 miles from their original location. The pair reported experiencing terrible nightmares of small, alien creatures visiting them while they slept. Under hypnosis, the pair recounted their time on the craft; both stating they had been led into an examination room where they were poked and prodded with needles, and samples were collected of their hair and nails. No longer were aliens seen as the friendly and helpful beings described in Adamski’s works; they were now being depicted as hostile creatures that kidnapped unsuspecting people from their homes and vehicles.

In the mid-80s, there was another, stranger shift in extraterrestrial portrayals. Alien depictions had done another 180, but instead of being friendly, they were instead depicted as being apathetic to the plights of humans. And, even weirder, they wanted to get us pregnant. No, this section is not about porn but instead follows the conspiracy that aliens are abducting us in order to harvest our DNA to aid in their own reproduction. This idea comes to us through the author and artist Budd Hopkins’s 1981 book Missing Time: Documented Stories of People Kidnapped By UFOs And Then Returned With Their Memories Erased. Honestly, I’d give you a summary of the book, but the title does  a more-than-apt job of doing it for me.

More interestingly, though, he recounts the story of Virginia Horton, in which she claims to have been abducted multiple times throughout her life, starting in childhood. This story was the first time that the concept of one person experiencing multiple abductions has occurred. This then led Hopkins to the obvious – and totally not absurd – conclusion that aliens must desire something more from humans than just some of our hair and nail clippings. They, in fact, wanted our genetics.

In his second book, Intruders: The Incredible Visitations at Copley Woods focuses more on the topic of alien-human hybridization. He explains his theory thusly:

“An individual, male or female, is first abducted as a child, at a time possibly as early as the third year. During that experience a small incision is often made in the child’s body, apparently for sample taking purposes, and then the child is given some kind of physical examination. There will often follow a series of contacts or abductions extending through the years of puberty. In some cases sperm samples will be taken from young males….and ova samples taken from young females. In the cases in which artificial insemination is attempted, the women are apparently re-abducted after two or three months of pregnancy, and the fetus is removed from the uterus”

Beyond his wacky theories, his book lent some credibility to abductees’ accounts, often portraying them as victims rather than crazy people. Many of the abductees he interviewed portrayed their encounters with the aliens as mostly positive, with many of them claiming to have formed bonds with their abductors.

For the media example of this section, I’m not going to be summarizing the plot of another movie. This time, I want to tell you about my favorite alien abduction story: that of the Intergalactic Diva, Pamela Stonebrook. Pamela is an accomplished singer, opening for jazz talents like Kenny G, The Pointer Sisters, and the Neville Brothers, and has done various tours through Europe as a solo artist. She even played for Gene Roddenberry, the creator of Star Trek. But there is a whole lot more to her story.

According to her accounts, she was abducted multiple times beginning in childhood, blacking out for many of these events. When she returned, she experienced multiple phantom pregnancies along with severe hemorrhaging. She recounts how, on one occasion, her spirit was lifted from her body and brought to the deck of an alien spacecraft. Waiting there for her were her self-described “spirit daughters” who referred to her as Mommy. These, similar to Dobb’s theory, were human-Gray hybrid children. She describes these hybrids as smaller than your average child, with wispy hair and eyes that were larger than that of humans but smaller than the traditional Grays.

Aliens are the ultimate blank slate in which to depict cultural and societal tension. But we now live in a globalized society, where societal issues are becoming more and more apparent. As opposed to the Cold War era alien movies that mainly held the same messages seeking to purely explore a fear of the unknown, we now have a wide variety of extraterrestrial topics to choose from in the media. Additionally, advancement of CGI technology has allowed for more vivid and unique depictions of otherworldly creatures and planets.

To finally end this tirade, I will be discussing a few of the more unusual and creative films.

After Blue:

A French movie written and directed by Bertrand Mandico in 2021, it follows a young girl named Zora, as she and her mother traverse After Blue to kill Kate Bush. It would be foolish to advise you that this movie has a plethora of sexual depictions. 

This movie is extremely strange, but also absolutely hilarious if you have the right mind for it. It is a surrealist, psychedelic take on a more traditionally masculine sci-fi bounty hunter movie. To set the scene, the movie first depicts humans that are forced to relocate to a planet called After Blue after the Earth gets poisoned. The atmosphere on After Blue causes hair to grow in excess on women (which is important to the plot); for men, it causes hair to grow inward, killing them all within a few days. As all technology was banned from this planet (except razors, it seems), the remaining women live natural lifestyles, hunting their own food, traveling by horse, and doing that sort of thing.

Annihilation:

5000 SPACE ALIENS: