Sunnydale 5 and 6

Alien Nation

By Erik J Martin

If you were alive 62 years ago, the chances are good that you spent Halloween hiding under a table and crying your scared little eyes out. After all, ruthless Martians were taking over the planet. At least that's what thousands of Americans believed while listening to Orson Welles' infamous radio dramatization of H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds on October 30, 1938.

Welles' clever hoax underscores an essential truth about the entertainment hungry public in the modern media age we want to believe in extraterrestrial life, and the media, which continues to saturate our collective consciousness with science fiction films, TV shows, books and other offerings, is very good at making us believers.

Literay visionaries of the 19th century like Wells, Mary Shelley and Jules Verne sparked the cosmic curiousity of the masses. In 1902, George Melies created a landmark sci-fi short called A Trip to the Moon providing our first look at fictional aliens on the big screen a genre that explosed in the 1950's along with America's fears of communism and nuclear annihiliation.

If you want to know how popular extraterrestrials are these days, just open the movie section of your newspaper, stroll down the video game aisle at Wall-Mart, or turn on your TV. Practically everywhere you look for entertainment these days, a big-eyed alien is starring right back at you.

Why this growing cultural obsession and consumer feeding frenzy over UFOs and their otherworldly occupants? For one, there are more supposed alien encounters and UFO sightings reported today than ever before. Word of mouth, however fantastic or ridiculous in nature, gets around. And recent outer space explorations and scientific discoveries including the possibility of life on Mars are stoking our interest in uncovering the unknown truths of the universe. Hollywood, book publishers, television producers and other savvy media powers have their fingers on the pulse of what the public wants: Namely, more xenomorphs, interplanetary predators, little green men, x-file conspiracies, and even suffocating Queller demons known to cling to ceilings when the visit Sunnydale from outer space.

Media Make-believe

Psychologically speaking, why is it that we are so intriqued by aliens and their craft, especially considering we have no proof of life beyond this planet? Dr James E Gunn (no relation to Charles), Emeritus Professor of English and Director of the Center for the Study of Science Fiction at the University of Kansas, has his own theories.

"I have the feeling that the ready acceptance over the years of flying saucers and the aliens they involved was a kind of replacement religion," says Dr Gunn. "If God (was) dead, as some theologians claimed, then we had to look elsewhere fro some kind of superior creatrues that might save or damn us."

The notion in popular science fiction that aliens might covet our planet, our women or our bodies (even one like Eric Cartman's) is an old one, says Dr Gunn.

"It makes good fiction, but it isn't logical. In fact, it isn't even rational that aliens would ever come to our solar system or our planet. The distances are simply too great to make such a trip practical, even if it is practicable," he says. "We like to speculate about such matters because it is a great burden to imagine that we are the only intelligent creatures in the universe, and on our shoulders is the responsibility for making our existence matter."

"Believing in UFOs and aliens has a lot to do with our openness to identifying reality and asking the simple question, 'What is real?'" says Patricia Baker, a psychotherapist and sociologist who has investigated UFO cases and worked with people who claim to have been abducted by aliens. "To think that there is life out there on other worlds is a sign of our culture's intelligence. It's also a reflection of our yearning for 'wholeness,' the feeling that something call it a higher purpose or a deeper connection to explain the mysteries of life is missing in our lives, something bigger than ourselves."

Baker asserts that the media has the power to influence our image of and beliefs about aliens, and it certainly makes a lot of money off our enjoyment of science fiction. "But the consciousness of our culture has created the media's obsession with science fiction entertainement," she explains. "Once the media gives us a quality, credible program like The X-Files, the public respons and interest in extraterrestrials and making contact with them grows all the more. But the interest was there long before those savvy TV and film creatives introduced their sci-fi products."

The evolving face of aliens

We've seen all manner and species of aliens illustrated over the last hundred years everything from slimy martians to Klingons and Wookiees. And though their appearances vary wildly and their attitudes range from bloodthirsty to benevolent, we just can't get enough of them, no matter how boring the outer space stereotypes get.

"Hollywood has difficulty with aliens. To keep audiences watching, aliens are usually virtually human or monsters," says Josh Calder, consultant with Coates & Jarratt, a futurist consulting firm. "Most movies depict aliens as funny looking foreigners with different emotinal tendencies..We will share no DNA with aliens. Given the course of life on Earth, most aliens should either be primitive life forms, or fantastically advanced."

"The trend in the eighties was definitely more toward the benevolent alien, as you see in movies such as E.T., Starman, Brother From Another Planet, and The Abyss," says Ann Crispin, science fiction author of many Star Wars and Star Trek novels. In the late eighties and early nineties, Crispin says, aliens became more malevolent hence the Alien sequels and The X-Files.

"I think the science fiction genre is constantly redefining itself and going in and out of phases," says Crispin. "For a while there, books with fantastic stories set on Mars were all the rage. Today the focus of science fiction has shifted more inward. Instead of showcasing aliens from strange worlds, the spotlight and setting is more on our own planet and solar system. Movies like Contact, The Matrix, and Mission to Mars in which the aliens are dead or not shown demonstrate that."

Sci-fi tends, says Richard Schickel, film critic for Time magazine, "depend on what zeitgeist of the moment is whether or not we're feeling nervous or in control as a society. Like westerns, science fiction entertainment tries to plug into the themes of the day. That's why I believe we'll be seeing more movies like The Matrix and Contact, which explore virtual realities and alternative universes."

"Books about solar system exploration, robotic misisns, and the military are very popular nowadays because their themes mirror the recent news and scientific advancements we read about," says Crispin. "But the truth of the matter is that fantasy fiction is outselling written science fiction today, and we're seeing a shift toward more fantasy features in theaters."

Sneak Previews

Indeed, the future of the science fiction genre in entertainment appears to be at a crossroads. does it hold infinite possibilities, or will consumers eventually get bored with it all as sci-fi writers scramble for fresh settings and more fantasitc aliens and plots? And, as we learn more about the limits of time, space, and the laws of the universe, will this restrict sci-fi writers from penning creative yarns that science says aren't possible?

"I'd say the future of science fiction is infinite," says Dr Gunn. "Every advance in scientific understanding has had two consequences: either people suggesting that science fiction no longer has anything to write about, or the raising of new questions that made for even more dramatic and insightful stories. We have to go with what science says isn't impossible, not what it says is possible, and even the impossible looks more possible all the time, what with the uncertainty principle, quantam physics, nanotechnology, genetic and biological insights and techniques, and new discoveries in space and with advanced instrumentation."

As for the possibility of alien conceptualizers running out of ideas and sci-fi lovers running out of interest, Crispin says to relax. "Consumers and science fiction creators will continue to have wild imaginations that won't let the genre suffer."

The Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction

Five must see movies and the real life UFO cases they're based on

The UFO Incident 1975

This TV film tells the allegedly true story of Betty and Barney Hill (played by Estelle Parsons and James Earl Jones) and their purported abduction by aliens in September 1961. The E.T.'s who allegedly probed the couple's bodies (inside and out) on their spacecraft, are depicted as resembling the classic "Grey" alien.

Roswell: The UFO Cover-Up 1994

This film, broadcast as an original Showtime cable movie, is loosely based on the famous Roswell story, which made headlines across the world in July of 1947. Kyle MacLachlan stars as Jesse Marcel, an intelligence offer troubled by having been made to lie about having seen the debris of a crashed flying saucer in the New Mexico desert. Rumor has it that four classic Grey alien bodies originating from teh Zeta Reticuli system were recovered.

Fire In The Sky 1993

In the American northwest in 1975, Travis Walton and his timber-cutting coworkers claim they encountered an alien vessel. Walton supposedly was zapped up into the UFO and his buddies were accused of murdering their missing partner. The abductee returned days later, telling of his experience with Grey aliens. James Garner plays a skeptical police officer trying to debunk the account.

Communion 1990

Based on Whitley Streiber's alleged encounters with possible alien beings who have been abducting him throughout his entire life, as detailed in his wildly popular book Communion. Christopher Walken portrays Streiber in this choppy adaption of the bestseller that helped spark a interest in UFOs.

Alien Secrets: Area 51

A strange two-part Learning Channel documentary (also on video), Alien Secrets explores some of the most intriguing UFO cases of the 20th century. Bob Lazar's account of Area 51, the infamous military base outside of Las Vegas that the Air Force continues to deny even exists, is detailed in depth (he claims to have worked there reverse-engineering, UFO propulsion systems). Stanton Friedman, Glenn Campbell, and Bruce Maccabee are among the prominent figures who lend commentary.