Misplaced Pages

Latest revision as of 06:56, 4 October 2024

Extraterrestrials in fiction

Martian controlled Tripod, from H. G. Wells' 1898 novel The War of the Worlds
Grouping	Science fiction
Similar entities	Cryptids
Other name(s)	Aliens, space aliens

An extraterrestrial or alien is a lifeform that did not originate on Earth. The word extraterrestrial means "outside Earth". Extraterrestrials are a common theme in modern science-fiction, and also appeared in much earlier works such as the second-century parody True History by Lucian of Samosata.

History

The 2nd century writer of satires, Lucian, in his True History claims to have visited the Moon when his ship was sent up by a fountain, which was peopled and at war with the people of the Sun over colonisation of the Morning Star.

Antiquity

The way people have thought about extraterrestrials is tied to the development of actual sciences. One of the first steps in the history of astronomy was to realize that the objects seen in the night sky were not gods or lights, but physical objects like Earth. This notion was followed by the one that celestial objects should be inhabited as well. However, when people thought about such extraterrestrials, they thought of them simply as people, indistinguishable from humans. As people had never considered a scientific explanation for the origin of mankind or its relation with other lifeforms, any hypothetical rational lifeforms had by necessity to be humans. Even in mythology, all deities are mostly humanlike. For example, Voltaire's Micromégas features people from Saturn, who are simply of higher proportions.

This was changed by the 1859 book On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin, which proposed the theory of evolution. This book caused a revolution in fiction as much as it did in science, as authors began to imagine extraterrestrial races completely different from human beings. With the rationale that evolution in other worlds may take completely different directions than on Earth, aliens began to be described as creepy monsters. Usually, authors used features from other animals, such as insects, crabs, and octopuses. Some such aliens are the octopean Martians from The War of the Worlds (1898), the Selenites from First men in the Moon (1901), the birdlike Tweel from A Martian Odyssey (1934) and even a sentient star in Star Maker (1937).

Modern times

The Barney and Betty Hill incident took place in 1961 when the couple claimed that they were abducted by aliens and subjected to invasive experiments. It was the first recorded claim of an alien abduction, soon followed by others. The description of the aliens made by the Hills, with oversized heads, big eyes, pale grey skin, and small noses captivated the public imagination and was later used by TV shows and films. This started the grey alien archetype. According to Wade Roush, a science and technology writer, "The standard depiction of aliens at that point became the little grey man. So, when Steven Spielberg came along and made probably what are the two most influential movies about aliens – Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and ET the Extra-Terrestrial – the aliens and those movies were both basically variations on the 1950s and 1960s little green or little grey man image".

The advent of TV and films, with extraterrestrials played by actors, toned down the fantasy. For budget reasons, humanlike aliens with just some specific non-human body features became the new standard. This is especially noticeable in the Star Trek franchise; this would later be explained in-universe as a result of an ancient spacefaring humanoid civilization “seeding” its DNA across countless planets including Earth. This changed again since the 1990s with the advent of computer-generated imagery (CGI), and later on as CGI became more effective and less expensive, as it allows to generate bizarre lifeforms without being constrained to actors with costumes or mechanical effects.

See also

• History of science fiction
• Alien invasion
• Parasites in fiction
• List of fictional extraterrestrials
• List of films featuring extraterrestrials
• List of humanoid aliens
• Mars in fiction
• First contact (science fiction)

References

1. Doody, Margaret Anne (1996), A True Story of the Novel, New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, p. 26, ISBN 0-8135-2168-8, retrieved December 16, 2020
2. Richter, Daniel S. (2017). "Chapter 21: Lucian of Samosata". In Richter, Daniel S.; Johnson, William A. (eds.). The Oxford Handbook of the Second Sophistic. Vol. 1. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. pp. 328–329. doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199837472.013.26. ISBN 978-0-19-983747-2.
3. Grewell, Greg (2001). "Colonizing the Universe: Science Fictions Then, Now, and in the (Imagined) Future". Rocky Mountain Review of Language and Literature. 55 (2): 25–47. doi:10.2307/1348255. JSTOR 1348255. S2CID 171048588.
4. ^ Zaria Gorvett (October 22, 2023). "The weird aliens of early science fiction". BBC. Retrieved January 25, 2024.
5. "Alien encounters". Britannica. Retrieved January 28, 2024.

Further reading

• Baxter, Stephen (2011). "SETI in Science Fiction". In Shuch, H. Paul (ed.). Searching for Extraterrestrial Intelligence: SETI Past, Present, and Future. The Frontiers Collection. Springer Science & Business Media. pp. 351–372. doi:10.1007/978-3-642-13196-7_19. ISBN 978-3-642-13196-7.
• Killheffer, Robert K. J.; Stableford, Brian; Langford, David (2023). "Aliens". In Clute, John; Langford, David; Sleight, Graham (eds.). The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (4th ed.). Retrieved 2023-12-15.
• Levy, Michael M.; Mendlesohn, Farah, eds. (2019). Aliens in Popular Culture. Bloomsbury Publishing USA. ISBN 978-1-4408-3833-0.
• Roth, Christopher F., "Ufology as Anthropology: Race, Extraterrestrials, and the Occult." In E.T. Culture: Anthropology in Outerspaces, ed. by Debbora Battaglia. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2005.
• Sagan, Carl. 1996. The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark: chapter 4: "Aliens".
• Stableford, Brian (2006). "Alien". Science Fact and Science Fiction: An Encyclopedia. Taylor & Francis. pp. 13–16. ISBN 978-0-415-97460-8.
• Westfahl, Gary (2005). "Aliens in Space". In Westfahl, Gary (ed.). The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy: Themes, Works, and Wonders. Greenwood Publishing Group. pp. 14–16. ISBN 978-0-313-32951-7.
• Westfahl, Gary (2005). "Aliens on Earth". In Westfahl, Gary (ed.). The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy: Themes, Works, and Wonders. Greenwood Publishing Group. pp. 16–18. ISBN 978-0-313-32951-7.
• Westfahl, Gary (2021). "Aliens". Science Fiction Literature through History: An Encyclopedia. ABC-CLIO. ISBN 978-1-4408-6617-3.
• Westfahl, Gary (2022). "Aliens—The Company We Seek: Aliens in Fact and Fiction". The Stuff of Science Fiction: Hardware, Settings, Characters. McFarland. pp. 227–234. ISBN 978-1-4766-8659-2.

External links

• Best Use of Aliens As Metaphor

v t e Biology in fiction
Aspects of biology	Evolution in fiction Devolution Hindu views on evolution Social degeneration Speculative evolution Disease in fiction Huntington's disease in popular culture Tuberculosis in human culture Ecofiction Genetics in fiction Parasites in fiction Symbiosis in fiction
Fictional species	Arthropods in film Bug-eyed monster Extraterrestrials in fiction Triffid
Related	Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction Artificial intelligence in fiction Living things in culture Science fiction

• 1950s neologisms
• Fiction about outer space
• Science fiction themes
• Fiction about unidentified flying objects
• Fictional extraterrestrial characters
• Biology in fiction