War of the Worlds and Alien "First Contact" Scenarios

1. And Alien First Contact Scenarios

2. Alien Invasion Scenarios
 Predator/Prey
 Conquest
 Parasites who feed on / take over our
physical forms
 Transform us—beyond our power to resist
 Attempt to transform us for our own good?

3. Invasion of the Body Snatchers
(dir. Don Siegel, 1956)
 “pod people”—aliens replace human beings…take
our form after period of time in a “pod”
 People you know act strangely, lack emotion…
 “Red scare”--fears of communist takeover. . .

4. What if their ships broke down
and they got stuck here by
accident?

5. Close Encounters of the Third
Kind (dir. Steven Spielberg, 1977)
 The “Mothership”
 “Close Encounter of the First Kind - Sighting of a UFO. Close
Encounter of the Second Kind - Physical Evidence. Close Encounter of
the Third Kind - Contact. WE ARE NOT ALONE” –imdb.com (film’s
tagline)

6. E. T.: the Extraterrestrial (1982)
(Spielberg again)

7. District 9 (dir. Neill Blomkamp;
2009)
 Alien “prawns”--disoriented and
confusedsegregated slum dwellers in
Jo’berg (apartheid)

8. What if we get mixed up with
aliens by attempting to colonize
their worlds?
 Alien series (1979 – 1997) –
full physical contact:
“facehuggers” and
“chestbursters”
 genetic manipulation:
hybridization, pregnancy,
cloning

9. Alternative POV: We colonize
and threaten—we become
“alien”
Avatar (dir. James
Cameron, 2009)
Consider the forms,
shapes, sizes, and
colors of “aliens”. . .
Humanoid?
Adaptable?
How do humans look in
this new context?

10. Sci Fi as “Cognitive
Estrangement”
Darko Suvin (1979): science fiction =
estranged fiction, as opposed to
realistic fiction
 “literature of cognitive estrangement”
 introduces “a strange newness, a
novum”
 sounds possible (whether it is or not)
 rational and coherent, presented as
if it were scientific

11. Suvin’s definition of Science
Fiction:
 “a literary genre whose necessary and
sufficient conditions are the presence and
interaction of estrangement and cognition,
and whose main formal device is an
imaginative framework alternative to the
author’s empirical environment.”
 (empirical = what can be observed in the
real world. Here, Sci Fi must be outside the
empirical world of the author.)
Source: Darko Suvin, Metamorphoses of Science Fiction: On the Poetics and
History of a Literary Genre (Yale UP, 1979), 4, 7-8.

12. H. G. Wells as “alien” starting
point in 1898:
 Cognitive estrangement:
 Sci Fi as critique of militant imperialism
 Brute force impact on native populations
and cultures
 British / European Empirescheapening
of human lives
 See intro in Wells book, p. xi
 Empirical / Observable “Reality” in
Wells
 Technology: spectroscope, telescope

13. Mars in the 1890s
Percival Lowell’s book,
Mars (1894)
 Speculation based on
telescope views:
 Canal “system”??—
perhaps sign of an
organized, globally
unified society on the
planet!
 Idea of an older, more
advanced civilization
than ours
Javelle of the Nice
Observatory (see p. 10)
• Observes “luminous
projection on the southern
edge of the planet”
• H. G. Wells’ article,
“Intelligence on Mars”
(1896)—see p. 254

14.  Spectroscope: used
to study the light
emitted by objects
in space
 Colors of light can
reveal chemical
composition—
indicating elements,
compounds present
 Javelle of Nice—
studies colors that
seem to be emitted
from Mars—are
they signals??
 Spectroscope at the
Royal Greenwich
Observatory, 1890s

15. 1938: War of the Worlds—for real?
 radio broadcast, Oct. 30, 1938: meteorite devastates NJ,
and NYC under attack by Martians!
 Orson Welles’ Mercury Theater Group: radio drama
adaptation of H. G. Wells’ novel: made to sound like real
CBS radio broadcast of breaking news!
 Thousands of terrified listeners phone newspaper offices,
police stations, radio stations asking about escape routes,
gas masks, emergency shelters, etc!
 Welles’s voice heard in many other radio shows on SF,
action adventure, crime fighting:
 also the voice of the radio character “The Shadow” (“Only the
Shadow knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men!”)