Alien Universe (12 page)

Amazing Stories
and
Analog
were by no means the only science fiction magazines out there. Over the years (and especially in the 1930s and 1940s), more than a hundred different magazines were published in this genre and that doesn’t include their cousin pulps, the horror magazines.

However, while the pulp magazines were very popular among the diehard science fiction audience, they were not considered serious literature and had a relatively small direct impact on the public. Serious people did serious things and certainly didn’t spend their time reading spectacular hoo-hah, although many budding scientists certainly enjoyed the pulps when they were young.

Flash and Buck

In order to make a greater impact on the public, science fiction writers had to exploit other media. The big ones in the period of 1920 to 1940 were newspapers, radio, and newsreels. Among the first forays of science fiction into these venues were Buck Rogers and subsequently Flash Gordon.

Buck Rogers was introduced in
Armageddon 2419 A.D
., published in the August 1928 issue of
Amazing Stories
. The story was translated into a syndicated comic strip in January 1929 as
Buck Rogers in the 25th Century A.D
., by pure coincidence, the same month that
Tarzan
began as a newspaper comic. While the original Buck Rogers article told the tale of warfare on postapocalyptic Earth, the stories expanded over time. By the 1930s, short films were made, including one for the 1933–1934 World’s Fair called
Buck Rogers in the 25th Century: An Interplanetary Battle with the Tiger Men of Mars
. Serialization was soon to follow.

If Buck Rogers was the first in this genre, Flash Gordon led the way into the world of Aliens. Flash Gordon was introduced to the public as a hero in a science fiction comic strip that began in January 1934. The comic was inspired by the earlier and successful Buck Rogers strip and was intended to compete directly with it. When the Earth was bombarded by meteors, Flash
Gordon and his companions Dale Arden and Doctor Hans Zarkov set out to investigate. Zarkov invented a rocket that allowed them to head into space to determine the meteor’s origin. Originally Zarkov kidnapped Flash and Dale, but Flash quickly became the leader.

The meteors originated from the planet Mongo, which was led by the despotic and cruel Ming the Merciless. Ming, although an alien, was essentially human with flamboyant dress and classical Persian (Iranian) features of dark skin and a dark and neatly trimmed beard. Fans of the original
Star Trek
series would recognize Ming as looking like the classic (i.e., original series) Klingon. While Ming the Merciless is the most famous enemy of Flash Gordon, the three companions travelled Mongo for years, encountering the Shark Men, the Hawk Men, and the Lion Men.

Flash Gordon was also serialized on radio in April 1935 in
The Amazing Interplanetary Adventures of Flash Gordon
, which was an adaptation of the comic strip. Three film serials were created starring Buster Crabbe:
Flash Gordon
(1936),
Flash Gordon’s Trip to Mars
(1938), and
Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe
(1940).

In the 1930s and even later, movie serials were short films, perhaps 10 minutes long, that told a piece of the story and ended with a cliffhanger. The following week would show the next installment of the story. Moviegoers would attend a movie and see a couple short films, including newsreels, followed by the week’s main attraction or maybe a double feature. In a world in which there was no television, people would go to the movies for entertainment. Even if they weren’t interested in Flash Gordon or Buck Rogers, they would see the serial. Through these newspaper comics, film serials, and radio shows, science fiction was being introduced to the general public.

The 1930s were a dark time for the world. The stock market crash of 1929 had signaled the beginning of the Great Depression. This was followed by a decade of war. Times were harsh, and the movies of the time were used for escape. Science fiction was pure escape, adventures without any real connection to the real world.

Aliens and the Iron Curtain

During World War II, people were focused more on defeating the Germans and Japanese than they were questions of outer space. Some people’s priorities remained unchanged, as then-radar instructor and eventually leading science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke bemoaned the failure to ship his beloved issue
of
Analog
(then
Astounding Stories
) from the United States to Britain, “owing to the war, regular supplies of
Astounding Stories
had been cut off by the British authorities, who foolishly imagined that there were better uses for shipping space.”

However, during the war, mankind had heard about foo fighters. Given the hundreds of stories in the press about flying saucers in the late 1940s, it was entirely natural that imaginative Aliens would begin to appear in the public eye. Science fiction was about to become far closer to the mainstream.

The late 1940s and 1950s were a time of economic strength but also of considerable uncertainty. In March of 1946, Winston Churchill gave his “Iron Curtain” speech, “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an ‘iron curtain’ has descended across the continent … in what I must call the Soviet sphere, and all are subject, in one form or another, not only to Soviet influence but to a very high and in some cases increasing measure of control from Moscow.” The era of Red Fear had begun. Let’s spend a little while thinking about the world in which people of the 1950s lived.

The German and Japanese empires had been defeated. But mankind now lived in a nuclear age, in which a single bomb could incinerate a city. In 1952, the United States detonated the first fusion bomb, with a yield about five hundred times more powerful than the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs. The Soviet Union detonated its first fission bomb in 1949, followed by a fusion bomb in 1953. The two major power blocks on the planet had unleashed the power stored in the nucleus of the atom and could kill a million people in an instant. Were these two great powers allies or enemies?

Well, it’s not quite fair to call the Soviets and the Americans enemies, but they certainly were rivals and potential combatants. Diametrically opposed political and economic viewpoints (and more than a little self-interest) guided their thinking, and the propaganda of both sides painted the other as an evil enemy, just waiting to invade and destroy the people that had elected to follow the “right” way of life. The year 1948 saw the Berlin Blockade, while 1950 brought the proxy war in Korea. Also in 1950, an undistinguished Wisconsin senator named Joseph McCarthy made the blockbuster statement in a speech, “While I cannot take the time to name all the men in the State Department who have been named as members of the Communist Party and members of a spy ring, I have here in my hand a list of 205.” For the next several years, American politics was dominated by a witch hunt. People were accused of being communist sympathizers, lives were ruined, and the Red Menace was seen to be everywhere.

Classic Alien Films of the Fifties

So, outside and hostile infiltrators could be anywhere and everywhere. An atomic war could vaporize millions and a flying saucer craze was a recent memory. These problems were in the back of the mind of the audience who experienced the world of 1950s science fiction.

And what a world it was. The 1950s brought dozens and dozens of Alien movies. Many “B-quality” flying saucer and invasion movies appeared at the time and have long since been forgotten. A few were iconic and are still remembered today. We will talk about some of these in order of the year that they were released.

The Day the Earth Stood Still

One of the first of the Alien movies of the 1950s is
The Day the Earth Stood Still
(1951), which was a cautionary tale about the dangers of nuclear war. The movie starts out quickly, with a radar blip circling the Earth at high altitudes at a speed of 4,000 mph. The opening sequence has word of the high altitude object being spread across the world essentially immediately, with scenes being shown of radio announcers in India, Great Britain, the United States, and others telling of the observation. The U.S. announcer says, “This is not another flying saucer scare. Scientists and military men are in agreement that, whatever it is, it’s real.” We should keep in mind that radar was less than a decade old, having been used in a military environment in World War II and, in addition, the flying saucer frenzy of 1947 had occurred just a few years before. This was a timely and high-tech touch to the movie.

The radar blip closes on Washington, D.C., and is revealed to be a classic flying saucer, flat on the bottom, with a smooth upper curve, like a squashed bell. The saucer is the color of brushed aluminum, and it lands on a park field dotted with baseball diamonds near the Washington Mall.

In an unrealistic display of governmental organization and efficiency, the saucer is surrounded unbelievably quickly with tanks, antiaircraft guns, and troops, setting up the first drama. Two hours after landing, the saucer opens and a humanoid figure walks out, dressed in a jumpsuit. An antsy soldier pulls a trigger and a shot rings out, hitting the Alien in a shoulder.

As the Alien lies on the ground, another figure appears in the door of the saucer, an ominous eight foot tall silver robot named Gort. Gort has a visor, which can open and from which a laser-like weapon can shoot. Gort shoots at rifles, an antiaircraft gun, and a tank with his beam, disintegrating them all.

By now, the Alien, who introduced himself as Klaatu, has been helped to his feet. He stops Gort from doing further damage, and the robot seems to turn off, going into some sort of sentry mode. As Klaatu is brought to a hospital, the door of the saucer closes, sealing the inside from prying human eyes.

In the hospital, the Alien talks with a representative of the U.S. president, telling the representative that he needs to speak with all the leaders of the world, but he is told that it is highly unlikely that this can be arranged. When Klaatu insists that his message is too important to be given to just one group, the representative tells him that “our world is full of tension and suspicion.” The real-world Cold War is reflected in the film.

Klaatu then escapes from the hospital, stealing a suit that allows him to blend into the population. He rents a room in a boarding house, befriending a young widow of World War II and her son. Over the next days, Klaatu determines that the smartest man alive is a physics professor and manages to arrange a meeting with him. During the meeting, Klaatu identifies himself and again asks for help in arranging a meeting with world leaders, but the professor isn’t confident of his ability to do so, noting that scientists are often ignored. Klaatu tells him that if he doesn’t speak with the leaders, “the Earth is in danger of being eliminated.” They agree that Klaatu will arrange some sort of nonlethal demonstration of his power. He does so by disabling electricity across the entire planet for a half hour, except for things like hospitals and planes in the air.

The meeting with scientists is arranged but, on the way to the meeting, Klaatu is killed. Before he dies, he gives the woman he has befriended a phrase that she must tell the robot Gort. When she arrives at the saucer, Gort has awakened and has already killed two soldiers guarding him. As Gort advances on the woman, she utters one of the most famous phrases of movie science fiction, “Klaatu barada niktu.” This phrase is never translated in the movie but seems to be some sort of “safe phrase.” Gort reacts by taking the woman into the saucer. Gort then retrieves Klaatu’s body and temporarily revives him from the dead. Klaatu tells the woman that the revival is only temporary, as the power of life is reserved for a “higher spirit.”

The movie comes to its dramatic conclusion, with Klaatu exiting the saucer with the woman and Gort as guard and addressing the assembled crowd (
figure 3.2
). He tells them that the Earth’s internal affairs are our business, but, if we take our wars into space, that the community of alien worlds will then take action. The alien community has built the robots as policemen of the cosmos and that power cannot be taken back. The band of civilized space-faring races has given up weapons and war, knowing that the reaction of the robots would be immediate and terrible. Klaatu closes the movie with, “I came here to give you these facts. It is no concern of ours how you run your own planet. But if you threaten to extend your violence, this Earth of yours will be reduced to a burned out cinder. Your choice is simple. Join us, and live in peace or pursue your present course and face obliteration. We shall be waiting for your answer. The decision rests with you.”

FIGURE 3.2
.
In the closing scene of the movie
The Day the Earth Stood Still
, Klaatu and the robot Gort stand on their saucer and warn mankind of the dangers of bringing the Earth’s conflict into space.
20th Century Fox
.