Alien field guide
The 1961 Betty and Barney Hill story and the 1987 book "Communion". Today's default alien face.
1950s pulp magazines and cartoons. Astronomers nicknamed the first pulsar LGM-1.
1950s "contactees" like George Adamski, who said kind space brothers warned of nuclear war.
Pulp sci-fi and the 1983 series "V". Later a conspiracy theory with no evidence at all.
The 1958 film "The Blob". Biologists say real alien life would most likely be microbes.
The alien timeline
- 1898The War of the Worlds Novel
H. G. Wells invents the alien invasion: Martian tripods, heat rays, and Earth saved by germs.
- 1938The War of the Worlds radio show Radio
Orson Welles' fake news bulletins. The "mass panic" was mostly invented by newspapers, which makes it a great myth too.
▶ Watch on YouTube - 1947"Flying saucers" Headline
Pilot Kenneth Arnold said objects moved "like a saucer skipping on water". Newspapers coined the phrase, and Roswell followed two weeks later.
- 1951The Day the Earth Stood Still Film
The calm alien who warns humanity. "Klaatu barada nikto."
- 1961The Betty and Barney Hill story Abduction
The first famous abduction account; the big-eyed "Grey" alien starts here.
- 1977Close Encounters of the Third Kind Film
Spielberg's five-note greeting and the mothership. The title uses UFO researcher J. Allen Hynek's scale.
▶ Watch on YouTube - 1979Alien Film
"In space no one can hear you scream." The alien as pure horror.
▶ Watch on YouTube - 1982E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial Film
The friendliest alien ever: phone home, Reese's Pieces and a flying bike.
▶ Watch on YouTube - 1993The X-Files TV
"The truth is out there" and "I want to believe": a believer and a skeptic, like this site.
- 1996Independence Day Film
City-sized saucers, Area 51 and the White House blown up.
▶ Watch on YouTube - 1997Men in Black Film
A secret agency in black suits that hides aliens living among us and wipes witnesses' memories with a flash.
▶ Watch on YouTube - 1997Contact Film
From Carl Sagan's novel: a SETI astronomer receives a real signal. The most realistic alien film.
▶ Watch on YouTube - 2009Ancient Aliens TV
The History channel series behind the "I'm not saying it was aliens... but it was aliens" meme. 20+ seasons.
- 2016Arrival Film
A linguist learns to talk to aliens whose language changes how she sees time.
▶ Watch on YouTube - 2019Storm Area 51 Meme
Two million people signed up online to "see them aliens". A few thousand turned up at festivals in the desert.
- 2022Nope Film
Jordan Peele's UFO is not a ship at all.
▶ Watch on YouTube
Did films shape the sightings?
Researchers have noticed that what people report tends to follow what's on screen. Saucers dominated after 1947, big-eyed Greys after the 1960s and 1970s abduction stories and films, and black triangles in the 1990s, around the time stealth aircraft became famous. That doesn't explain every case, but it's a good reason to ask where a description came from.
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