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| War of the Worlds illustrated by Henrique Alvim Corrêa (1876-1910) |
“How about you, you still on earth or on the ship with me? It doesn’t make very much difference because sooner or later all of us will be on the menu—all of us.” ~ Michael Chambers (Lloyd Bochner), To Serve Man
My friends love sharing bizarre news stories—the more outlandish and conspiratorial they are the better. So it was only a matter of time before the latest upsurge in alien and UFO sightings would start making the rounds.
Generally, I enjoy conspiracy theories and depending on the theory in question, I find them interesting, entertaining and/or scary. Obviously, this doesn’t mean I have to believe them.
Also, I really enjoy science fiction. Ever since I was a child the thrilling stories of H.G. Wells (War of the Worlds), Edgar Rice Burroughs (John Carter of Mars), Frank Herbert (Dune), and many others captivated my imagination. Who among us didn't get gooseflesh while watching the To Serve Man (1962) episode on the Twilight Zone?
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| Scene from To Serve Man, where Patty (Susan Cummings) reveals the aliens' true intentions to Michael Chambers (Lloyd Bochner) |
Since then, countless movies (Star Wars, Aliens, Predator, etc.), television shows (Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, X-Files, etc.), video games (Space Invaders, StarCraft, Warhammer 40K, etc.) and other pop cultural means of expression have contributed mightily to the masses notion of intelligent life on distant planets.
The Fascist connection to extraterrestrials was renewed earlier this year with the “shocking” revelation that the first UFO actually crashed outside Magenta in Northern Italy in 1933—fourteen years before Roswell (1947). Benito Mussolini allegedly created a secret agency to study the retrieved wreckage but the ship and classified government files were confiscated by the Americans during WWII.
Personally, I am not convinced of their existence, but, in my humble opinion, one of the more compelling anecdotes for the possibility of other higher-order beings in the universe (aside from angels and faeries, of course) was historian and comedian Charles A. Coulombe’s tongue-in-cheek account of the Battle of Los Angeles on his highly informative podcast Off the Menu (17 July 2017). According to conspiracists, in 1942 the US Civil Defense was on high alert against a possible air raid by Imperial Japanese bombers and fortuitously staved off an attack by an invading squadron of alien spacecraft. Miraculously, neither side sustained any casualties in the assault.
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| Searchlights and anti-aircraft guns comb the sky during the Battle of Los Angeles, 26 February 1942, Los Angeles Times |
Whatever the reason behind the recent slew of sightings and coverage, the one thing that is for certain, our government and media cannot be trusted to tell us the truth about anything. If I'm wrong and little green spacemen do exist, I hope they abduct and probe our leaders. Naturally, I want this to be a punishment for their corruption and betrayal, but unfortunately, some of these deviants may actually enjoy it.
Anyway, the persistence of the UFO stories reminded me of a pertinent passage from Ernst Jünger’s 1983 novella Aladdin’s Problem (Marsilio Publishers, 1990, pp.119-120), an insightful exposé about the spiritual decline of the West:
“A nebulous yearning for other worlds is as ancient as man himself. Today it has technological features; our expectations of alien guests and their landing have been haunting our imaginations for some time now. We must take this seriously, firstly as a symptom.
“Bizarre aircraft are depicted, challenged, exposed as mirages. They serve as a bait and a mechanism for the imagination; on the other hand, they indicate wishful thinking. The automatic apparatus is consistent with the spirit of the times. The end of the world, a vision at every millennium, likewise presents itself as a technological catastrophe.
“How bizarre that alien guests are expected now of all times, when astronomical investigations seem to have demonstrated that the stars not only are not, but cannot be, inhabited. This simply indicates the depth of our yearning. People feel more and more strongly that pure power and the enjoyment of technology leave them unsatisfied. They miss what used to be angels and what angels gave them.
“A propos, I do not think that technology contradicts the great change. It will lead to the wall of time and it will be intrinsically transformed. Rockets are not destined for alien worlds, their purpose is to shake the old faith; its hereafter has been shown wanting.”
