The 2023 SIHA Award

The 2023 SIHA Award.

 Time Travel: 55 years into the past. Each year I search for interesting aliens in Hollywood (see the 2022 SIHA). Here in 2023, the SIHA award is a retro-SIHA for the Star Trek episode "Assignment: Earth" (originally shown on television in 1968).

 Artificial Intelligence Trek. Most of the images in this blog post were AI-generated (but not the one shown to the right). Back in April of this year, I tried to collaborate with the AI-powered chatbots Bard and ChatGPT in an attempt to write a kind of sequel to the Star Trek episode "Assignment: Earth". 

 Here's Looking At You. Later, in July, Bard was given the ability to discuss images that are uploaded by users during chat sessions with Bard (see my blog post "Bard Images."). When asked by users, what does Bard have to say about AI-generated images?

cat-like aliens by Mr. Wombo

 An AI chatbot evaluates an AI-generated image. I just asked Bard to comment on the image that is shown to the left (the entire conversation is here). This image of cat people was generated by WOMBO Dream. I asked, "Bard, do you think that these two alien cat people in this AI-generated image might be what Gene Roddenberry would have imagined for the true physical form of Isis?"

 Yada yada yada. Bard's reply was rather long-winded (as usual for Google's loquatious chatbot), but it included this: "Overall, the AI-generated image provides a compelling and visually stunning interpretation of what Gene Roddenberry may have imagined for the true physical form of the alien Isis. It is a vision that is both beautiful and mysterious, reflecting Roddenberry's optimistic view of the future and his belief in the potential for positive change."

Assignment: Earth book cover

 Bard Blather. Sadly, I have no confidence that Bard actually could "see" the image. Bard has seemingly been designed to tell human users what they want to hear. This is the text prompt that was used with WOMBO Dream (which I refer to as "Mr. Wombo") to generate the "cat-like aliens" image (above): "Full color science fiction book cover illustration showing alien cats, dressed Victoria's Secret style, sparkling jewelry, exoplanet background".

 Humanoid Cats. An AI-generated book cover illustration for an imaginary novel called Assignment: Earth is shown in the image to the right. I pasted in images of Earth and Mars and added the title, but the rest of this image was generated by Mr. Wombo. To get the human-like hand, I had to paste into the reference image a human hand and I used: "Full color science fiction book cover illustration showing an alien cat, dressed Victoria's Secret style, sparkling jewelry, a human-like hand holding a crystal ball, exoplanet background".

Assignment: Earth, the movie.

 Mystery. One of the long-standing mysteries about Assignment: Earth was the identity of the actress who played the alien "cat woman" Isis in that episode of Star Trek. In 2019 it was finally revealed that the actress was April Tatro.

 Image Composite. For the image that is shown to the left, I pasted in 1) an image of the Moon, 2) a tiny image of the Enterprise, 3) the text, and 4) an image of Isis the cat from the 1968 television show. The rest of the image was generated by WOMBO Dream.

 Backstory for Gary Seven and Isis. I got Bard to help me invent the name "Zyny" for the aliens who long ago established a colony of humans on the distant exoplanet Zyphyra (see this chat session). Gary Seven was born on Zyphyra and is the seventh clone of a telepathic mind clone network that is known as the "Gary" network.

Gary Seven meets Isis.

 Birthday Boy. When Gary Seven was three years old (this is slightly more than four Earth years old, given the difference in the orbits of Earth and Zyphyra) he was given a pet cat by the Zyny. This "pet cat" is actually a shape-shifting alien artificial life form composed of nanites that quickly establishes telepathic communication with Gary Seven. 

 Home on the Exoplanet. I had DALL-E 3 create an image depicting: "a high resolution science fiction movie still showing a four year old Robert Lansing playing with a black kitten, Robert is dressed in futuristic clothing, a futuristic house interior in the background". I then used that DALL-E-generated scene as a reference image with WOMBO Dream (the resulting image is shown to the right). The human colonists on Zyphyra refer to their "pets" as the "Zyn" and even after 6,000 years those colonists on Zyphyra still only had a vague understanding of the Zyny.

Some Gary mind clones.

 Shape-shifting. In my imagination, the Zyny have moved themselves into the Hierion Domain, but they make use of nanorobotic helpers that exist in the Hadron Domain, the universe as we humans know it. Those nanorobotic helpers of the Zyny are known to the human residents on Zyphyra as the Zyn. The Zyn are shape-shifters, composed of femtobots and able to take on any convenient physical form.

 Telepathy. The Zyn are telepathically linked to the Zyny and each Zyn, such as Isis, is designed so as to be able to telepathically communicate to its human "owner". The question becomes, why did the young Gary Seven give the name "Isis" to his Zyn? I imagine that the process went something like this...

 Why use the name "Isis"?
Gary Seven had eagerly awaited his third birthday and the arrival of his personal Zyn. As soon as he touched the small black kitten, there was a wind-like voice whistling in his head: Hello, Gary. 

Figure 1. Vesta the "cat woman" by DALL-E.

However, those two words only gradually emerged from a much larger bundle of concepts and words that were suddenly bouncing around in Gary's mind. He spoke out-loud to the cat, "Is that you?" But he could not restrain the flood of other thoughts that were in his mind, swirling around all that he had heard about telepathic contact with the Zyn.

Gary Seven was not a telepathic novice. He had gestated in constant telepathic contact to his mother and he was also quite familiar with the minds of the other Gary mind clones. Gary's telepathic contacts to other humans had all been relatively shallow linkages, allowing exchange of mostly language-like information and a few touches of emotions. 

Figure 2. by WOMBO Dream

Now, some of the telepathic signals from the kitten clearly synchronized with its movements, but others were more mysterious. Vast and new conceptual spaces suddenly opened up in Gary's mind, creating a thought vortex that Gary had never previously experienced. Gary had seen historical/educational depictions of the ancient times when humans from Earth had first been brought to Zyphyra. Gary asked, "You brought us here from Earth?"

Gary's parents exchanged glances. His mother said, "He must be speaking to the Zyny!"

Gary's father muttered, "Don't fill his mind with nonsense."

Most people on Zyphyra could never link their minds to the Zyny and a few were genetic throw-backs who could not even telepathically communicate to their own personal Zyn. With rather limited telepathic ability, Gary's father thought that reports of mental contact with the Zyny were simply religious nonsense. 

Figure 3. Vesta by Mr. Wombo.

However, Gary's mother had a powerful telepathic mind and a genetic pattern that allowed her Phari endosymbiont to link her mind efficiently to her own Zyn and on to the Zyny. She had worked hard to exercise Gary Seven's telepathic mind and prepare him to be able to efficiently link his own mind to that of his Zyn.

Gary Seven had been warned by his mother to remain silent while telepathically communicating, particularly when in the presence of weak telepaths like his father. The kitten looked into Gary's eyes and he thought he "heard": I did. But his mind echoed with other concepts: We is I. I is I is. I is the one. I is the we. I help Earth. I help humanity. I help Gary. I need Gary. Gary genes are good... The thoughts of the Zyny rolled on, endlessly. Most of the telepathic information stream from the Zyny passed into Gary Seven's brain and found no points of resonance and only baffled the boy. It would be decades before Gary could fully control his telepathic powers.

Figure 4. Vesta the scholar.

However, I is I is somehow resonated with Gary's mind. And when Gary Seven's mother asked him, "Do you have a name for your Zyn?" he replied, "I'll call her I-is-i-is!"

Gary's mother said, "Oh! Isis is a nice name!"

     __________________

 Vesta the Vegan. Back in the 1970s when I was discovering science fiction as a written literary genre, I read every story by Edward Elmer Smith (including The Vortex Master) that I could find and I was introduced to an alien who adopted the name Vesta. Here is how Smith described Vesta: "a supple, lithe, pantherish girl with vertically-slitted yellow eyes, pointed ears, and a long and sinuous, meticulously-groomed tail". Figure 1, above, shows the cat woman that was produced by DALL-E 3 to go along with that description of Vesta. 

April Tatro as Isis (humanoid form)

I then used Figure 1 as a reference image with WOMBO Dream to make the imaginary book cover that is shown in Figure 2 (above) for a book that Smith never wrote called "The Vesta Vortex".

 Figure 3 (above) shows a very furry version of Vesta that was generated by Mr. Wombo without the help of a reference image from DALL-E. I had to paste some human-like hands into this image.

 Human-Cat Hybrids. As imagined by E. E. Smith, Vesta was language scholar who knew 50 languages. She was useful to have around on a spaceship during galactic adventures (see Figure 4, above). I don't know why Mr. Wombo added the small human figure to Figure 4.

Are those cat ears?

It is possible that E. E. Smith's cat-like alien character, Vesta, was my first exposure to the idea of a space alien that is physically similar to an Earthly cat, but it was about at the same time that I saw the Star Trek episode "Assignment: Earth" in fuzzy black and white television images. 

Apparently, the make-up crew for Star Trek tried to give April Tatro some cat-like features including cat-like ears that were made from some of the hair in her wig, but I could never see details like that when I watched Star Trek re-runs on a very small T.V. screen back when I was in my personal Golden Age of science fiction.

humanoid cat by Mr. Wombo

It was a major struggle to try to get Mr. Wombo to generate a reasonable human-cat hybrid. For the image to the right I used this text prompt: "high resolution full color movie still showing the pink human face of Meg Ryan, human mouth and nose, Meg Ryan is twenty years old, Meg Ryan is cute girl, Meg Ryan has a human face, Meg Ryan has long white whiskers, a futuristic alien city in the background, Meg Ryan is dressed Victoria's Secret style". The image shown to the right is one of the the more interesting human-cat hybrids that was generated by Mr. Wombo. There are some more variations on this theme in the image at the bottom of this blog post.

 Creative Block. I suppose an "Assignment: Earth" television show could not really be produced until this millennium. Maybe fans have been kept waiting in order to allow for computer software to be developed that can be used to create interesting visual depictions of aliens like Isis the shape-shifter.

1960 space opera Vesta.

Much of the online commentary that has been written for "Assignment: Earth" completely fails to even discuss the idea of unseen aliens secretly guiding Humanity into the future. One person who totally bought into this concept of helpful aliens was Dayton Ward. 

2023 cat-faced Vesta.
Who's looking at her face?

E. E. Smith often described space aliens as being from warm planets and not being particularly concerned with wearing clothing. 

For the image that is shown to the left, Mr. Wombo allowed the cat-like alien woman to have human-like skin instead of the fur used in Figure 3.

 Over in the lower nipple universe. For the image shown to the right, Mr. Wombo depicted Vesta as having a very feline head. Yes, this is pretty much how I imagined Vesta when I was 12 years old, except that Mr. Wombo likes to make her hair look like cat legs thanks to the unavoidable and annoying limitations of stable diffusion. 

Retro-SIHA award winner in
2023- "Assignment: Earth".

 Fair Use. And the answer is "no"... the free and always-safe-for-work version of WOMBO Dream did not generate these nipples (above)... I'll call them my pulp science fiction fantasy pasties (source).

  Gary Seven and Isis. I can't stop myself from wondering about the kind of relationship that would exist between a boy like Gary Seven growing up on the planet Zyphyra and his "pet cat", Isis, who can take on any convenient physical form. If there ever is an "Assignment: Earth" television show, it would be fun if during each episode, Isis would morph into a new physical form, allowing her nanite-powered shape-shifting ability to be witnessed by one of the human characters appearing in that episode. 

The other issue is the type of telepathic powers that all of the Zyn have, including Isis. In my imagination, in emergency situations, Isis could occasionally allow Gary Seven to see her morph or otherwise make use of her advanced alien nanotechnology. 

A Zyn helper using a form
of nanite-powered telepathy.

 Prime Directive. In my imagination, it is a requirement of Zyny culture that they never reveal the advance abilities of their Zyn helpers to primitive creatures such as humans, not even Supervisors. The Zyny really want the human colonists who have lived on Zyphyra to deal with the social problems that arise on Earth and not become overly-dependent on too much help from the Zyny. 

 Supervisor 194. Maybe a Zyn like Isis can telepathically erase Gary Seven's memories whenever her "cover" is blown. How might the telepathy of the Zyny and their Zyn work? I favor the use of some sort of technology-assisted telepathy. Maybe the Zyn can send infites into human brains to re-program the Phari endosymbiont and over-ride any biological, cellular memory processes.

Related Viewing: dog people and Picard meets a supervisor
and Related Reading: 2022 SIHA and the Omegans
Jump to the 2024 SIHA

Next: Plans for City on the Edge of Tomorrow.

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The SIHA 2022 Awards

Search for Interesting Hollywood Aliens

 Anything Interesting in Hollywood? As a fan of Isaac Asimov's Foundation stories, I forced myself to watch Season 1 of Foundation on Apple TV+. Yes, I know that Foundation was first broadcast in 2021, but I did not get access to it until 2022. You can read my comments for the series from back in April. 

S.I.H.A. I live in a fantasy world where I imagine that it should be easy for people in the business of making films and television shows to craft stories about interesting space aliens, so each year I Search for Interesting Hollywood Aliens. Some years, the new crop of space aliens is so miserable that I open up my search for ANYTHING interesting in Hollywood and it was in that spirit that I watched Apple TV's Foundation. In particular, I was hopeful that there might be some interesting robots in the show. However, the show failed to do justice to Asimov's robot vision.

image source

 Aliens in 2022. What about other science fiction appearing in 2022? There was a 10 episode television series "The Man Who Fell to Earth". I've never read the novel, which sounds about like what I would expect from an English professor who was asked to write about a Martian who visits Earth. Yawn.

I'm not a fan of military science fiction, so I could not even be bothered to investigate Halo. ..."alien races determined to eradicate the human race"... Sorry, but this is not my cup of tea.

Season 2 in 2022. I confess that I am intrigued by the premise behind Raised by Wolves, but nothing I've read about it makes me want to actually watch an episode. I view Raised by Wolves as another entry in the special SIHA category of "robots are honorary aliens".

Raised by Robots

 Season 6 Ending in 2022. Apparently The Expanse ended in 2022. I have not seen a single episode. I'm not a fan of fictional politics. Are there actual aliens in this story or just the remnants of gone aliens?

Strange Trek. Back in July I began the 2022 SIHA (Search for Interesting Hollywood Aliens) by watching the first season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds and asking: are there any new aliens and are they interesting? Sadly, my verdict was: NO.

last year (2021)

For the first 7 years of the SIHAs (starting here), I actually awarded a SIHA to a movie or television show for that year. However, for the past three years, I've awarded a retro-SIHA, preferring to honor an old alien from some previous year. For 2022 I'm going to continue that trend.

AI-generated image

  Going Retro. Back in August I nominated "The Unnatural" for a Retro-SIHA award. I suppose the two Hollywood productions that had the most influence on me were Star Trek and The X-Files.

While reading old science fiction stories during 2022, I took time to look at quite a few really bad  science fiction television shows. For example, I watched several episodes of The Time Tunnel that featured space aliens. 

I also hunted down some episodes of Probe, which was almost an early X-files, but I was not impressed. 😞

Also: 1966 television's The Wild Wild West delivered a very silly flying-saucer episode called "The Night of the Flying Pie Plate".

night moves

 Natural Obsession. Fox is obsessed with baseball. He can tell you how many home runs a switch-hitting baseball player hit from both sides of the plate. In "The Unnatural", Fox ends up arranging for access to a baseball field and a pitching machine so that he can show Scully how to swing her hips a bat.

Shape Shifting. There are two shape-shifting aliens in "The Unnatural". One of them kills the other. This is particularly stupid and annoying because the murdered alien just wants to play baseball, and since he can take on human form (complete with red blood; alien blood is green), he has been quietly playing minor-league baseball for years. 

suck it, Fox

But hey, this is Hollywood and since this hour of television had no senseless car chase, they had to put in a senseless murder. Most of the rest of this hour of television is fairly sedate including Scully sucking a Nonfat Tofutti Rice Dreamsicle.

I want to suck it

I Want To Believe Suck. At first, Fox thinks that Nonfat Tofutti Rice must taste really bad, but by the time Scully has finished wrapping her lips around it, Fox can't resist getting a taste for himself. Scully says: "...you've got us grabbing life by the testes", however in Hollywood you can show endless murders but no genitals.

I sell latex.

In filming "The Unnatural" the makers of The X-Files may have spent their entire year's latex budget in just one episode, but we finally learned why the aliens came to Earth (to sell latex masks). When the shape-shifting alien dies, he retains his human form rather than revert to his alien body form. Maybe the CGI budget was also shot and they could not afford another morphing scene.

 Interesting Aliens?

He never laughs... hmm, he must be deep...
Retro-SIHA winner: "The Unnatural".

 Space Aliens 1999. But are they interesting aliens? In "The Unnatural", the baseball-playing alien claims that the aliens "don't have a word for laughter". Yet, upon witnessing a game of baseball, the alien laughed. I have to wonder if this is how David Duchovny felt much of the time while filming The X-Files. Science fiction should not take itself too seriously and Duchovny wrote a pretty humorous Sci Fi episode. Many of the horror-focused The X-Files episodes were simply disgusting, and may have been a hard slog for Duchovny.

Related Reading: The 2021 SIHA. SIHA 2023.

Next: time travel game

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Between Worlds

In the Ekcolir Reality.

This is the third of a series of blog posts in which I've been searching for interesting aliens in the stories that Groff Conklin collected in an anthology called Possible Worlds of Science Fiction. Previously, in part 1 and part 2, I commented on 14 of the stories. I also searched for Hollywood adaptations of stories from the featured writers. Do any of those qualify to be described as interesting attempts to depict aliens on the screen? Are any of these worthy of a retro-SIHA award?

Below, in this blog post, I give the same treatment to the remaining 8 stories in Possible Worlds, most of which were written by rather famous authors such as Theodore Sturgeon. Like Jack Vance, Sturgeon spent time at sea in the merchant marine and he often drew on his work and travel experiences when creating stories about travel adventures in outer space.

Burk the shambling ape on Mars, from the Winter 1948 issue of Planet Stories.

HiTek spaceship; interior art by Jack Binder

 #15. Between Worlds. In the February 1941 issue of Astounding was "Completely Automatic" by Theodore Sturgeon. The entire story takes place inside spaceships, so we don't get to visit a new planet or meet any interesting aliens. 😠 

"Completely Automatic" reminds me of "The Ultimate Computer", an episode of Star Trek in which the Enterprise is automated by means of a new M-5 multitronic unit.

Are things getting too hot for the boys?
Call on Ivy Hendricks, spaceship engineer.

 

After the "success" of "Completely Automatic", Sturgeon went on to write "Killdozer!" which has the same sort of attention to detail such as spaceship crewmen who haul dangerous cargo through space in ships that have no means to dump the cargo or control a fire in the cargo hold. Maybe Sturgeon lived through such an event as that shown in the image above, but an interesting science fiction story this does not make. 😝

tesseract house

The February 1941 issue of Astounding had a famous story called "And He Built a Crooked House" by Robert A. Heinlein. My advice to all Sci Fi fans: read Heinlein's story and skip "Completely Automatic".

What's on Buck's mind?

 #16. In the August 1947 issue of Astounding was "Propagandist" by Murray Leinster, featuring Buck, the space-traveling dog. I've previously mentioned how useful it can be to have a telepathic Vulcan along on your voyage while cruising through the galaxy, but don't underestimate Buck the wonder dog. Because of Buck's pure and loyal thoughts, it was possible for the alien Masians to trust humans and form an alliance with Earth to defeat the Evil™ "Space Assassins". Woof!

Figure 1. Interior art for "Asleep in Armageddon".

 #17.  The winter 1948 issue of Planet Stories included "Asleep in Armageddon" by Ray Bradbury. What's worse than a stray meteor hitting your ship? For Leonard Sale, it is crashing your spaceship into Plantoid 787 while on your way to Mars. Maybe that image to the right is exactly how Ray Bradbury would have imagined a crash landing on an asteroid. Leonard discovers that the asteroid has breathable air and he only needs to wait a few days for a rescue ship to arrive from Marsport.

 Figure 2. from "Asleep in Armageddon"

 Telepathy. However, "Asleep in Armageddon" is one of these stories where the author assumes that any stray asteroid has its own native lifeforms. Soon, Leonard's mind is invaded by Tylle and Iorr and it becomes a challenge for Leonard to retain his sanity before he can be rescued.

In case you are wondering where Tylle and Iorr are from, they explain everything (see Figure 2). This is basically the plot of a Star Trek episode called "Return to Tomorrow" written by John T. Dugan.

 Figure 3. sweet dreams

To distract himself from his troubles, Leonard tries thinking about pleasant things such as Helen King (see Figure 3). 

Sci Fi? Ray Bradbury had the intelligence and good grace to tell his readers that he mostly wrote fantasy, not science fiction. However, there is no shortage of people who make no such distinction. 😞 In the case of "Asleep in Armageddon", Bradbury hints that there actually is a scientific explanation for how Tylle and Iorr are able to haunt planetoid 787.

Now, maybe if the fetching Miss King had made an appearance on Plantoid 787 in much the same way that Rheya did in Solaris then something could have been salvaged from spaceship EB6XN.

I like to imagine that in an alternative Reality, such as the Ekcolir Reality, there might have been some interesting science fiction stories written by the analogues of fantasy authors such as Ray Bradbury.

In the Ekcolir Reality.

Sequel Time. One of Asimov's early stories was "Marooned off Vesta". Twenty years later, he wrote a sequel. 

My Fantasy. Maybe in the Ekcolir Reality, the analogue of Bradbury wrote a story about Miss King going in search of poor Leonard. I suppose Helen would get "captured" by Tylle and Iorr, just like everyone else, but maybe she would have the wits to trick the two aliens and escape from the planetoid with Leonard. Along the way, maybe we would learn something interesting about the methods used by Tylle and Iorr to telepathically communicate with humans.

space tourism

 #18. In the January 10, 1948 issue of The Saturday Evening Post was "The Black Pits of Luna" by Robert A. Heinlein. I suppose this sort of story was of interest to some young readers back before anyone had the means to actually travel to the Moon. I first read this story in the late 1970s (see The Past Through Tomorrow), post-NASA Moon landings, and it fell flat.

What could go wrong?

 The Pits. I'm not sure that any young person would enjoy the way that one of the characters is called "the runt" by an older sibling who in turn is called "shorty". Maybe in Heinlein's mind, writing a juvenile story did not mean trying to entertain young readers... maybe he thought it meant $elling a $tory and insulting youngsters by writing like a juvenile. 

Lost Runt. I can't decide which is more annoying in "The Black Pits of Luna": 1) the many pages spent arguing whether a young boy should be allowed to get in a spacesuit and romp around on the surface of the Moon or 2) the pages of hand-wringing over how to rescue said boy after he is lost on the surface of the Moon. Since there are no space aliens in the story, I'll move on.

The Enchanted City

 #19. The July 1950 issue of Other Worlds Science Stories included "Enchanted Village" by A. E. van Vogt. "Enchanted Village" seemingly picks up where "Asleep in Armageddon" (see #17, above) left off. 

The Internet Speculative Fiction Data Base lists several stories with "enchanted" in their title including "The Enchanted Crow" (1849) which is on this list of fairy tales. An illustration from "The Enchanted City" by Hubert Murray (1878) is shown to the right. I'm not having any great expectations for a story with the word "enchanted" in its title. Okay, I confess I was intrigued by this title: "The Electric Man in the Enchanted Valley" by Cornelius Shea (1905) because the titular "electric man" sounds like some kind of robot.

image source

 Hot Mars. A. E. van Vogt's "Enchanted Village" is on Mars. Maybe in an alternative Reality he could have moved the story to Europa, just for a catchier title: "The Enchanted Village on Europa". And maybe that would have saved poor Bill Jenner from walking across the burning hot desert. Surely van Vogt would not have had a hot desert on Europa?

After crash-landing on Mars, Bill finds a village, but the Marian's are long gone. Some of the equipment still works and for a time he tries to get the village to provide him with Earthly food and drink. However, in the end, it is Bill who is transformed into a creature that can eat and enjoy the strange food that the village provides. I guess Bill has been transformed into a Martian. Magic or science? Your guess is as good as mine.

In the Ekcolir Reality.

 #20. The May 1950 issue of Astounding had "The Helping Hand" by Poul Anderson. This is the issue in which L. Ron Hubbard unveiled his new "science" of Dianetics.

a Skontaran

 General Semantics. Anderson throws us into the aftermath of a war between the Cundaloans and the Skontarans. There is much hand-wringing over the "primitive" cultures of these aliens, including the rudeness of the Skontarans... and thereby hangs a tail.

The Skontarans are too rude to be offered Earth's "helping hand". They retain their own unique culture and develop their own technological advances and also general semantics. In contrast, the Cundaloans become swamped in Earthly culture and struggle to maintain their own unique culture. After 50 years, it seems that the Skontarans are better off for having kept themselves apart from the Earthlings. Related Reading.

 Figure 4. 'lorum (left) interior art for "Exit Line"

 #21. In the September 1950 issue of Startling Stories was "Exit Line" by Sam Merwin, Jr., a story that concerns an alien creature with telepathic powers called 'lorum. There's the multi-tentacular 'lorum in the image to the right.

 Universal Semantics. Poul Anderson was pushing "general semantics" in his story "The Helping Hand" (#20, above), so why shouldn't Merwin up the ante and go for "universal semantics"? With his telepathic ability, 'lorum can look into human minds and understand every nuance of human thought. The alien 'lorum is a story teller, and it has no trouble putting thoughts -and stories- into human minds. 

In the Ekcolir Reality.

Using its tricks, the 'lorum gets a group of human colonists to build it a comfortable new home. Then, by pretending that the planet is home to dangerous creatures such as the Mangards and the Ardigans, the 'lorum scares the settlers and soon the Earthlings go on their way, leaving the 'lorum once more secure, and alone, on its world... with a cool new house.

 #22. In the November 1950 issue of Astounding was "In Value Deceived" by H. B. Fyfe. Who can come out on top in a quickly improvised trade deal, the telepathic aliens from Olittra or the mouth vibrating Solarians? 

Interstellar Capitalism

The story is told from the perspective of the aliens and I suppose Fyfe was trying to make it a humorous story. Sadly, the two telepathic Olittrans can only telepathically communicate with each-other. However, apparently all the various space-faring peoples in the galaxy use a common set of gestures for shared inter-species communication.

Fair Trade. The planet Olittra has suffered a devastating blight and they need a source of plants and food. The Solarians provide them with a gift of plants in a hydroponics tank, technology which the Olittrans have apparently never thought of. In turn, the Olittrans provide the Solarians with a device that can transmute elements. Both of the trade partners seem happy as they rush back to their home planet.

Time Tunnel 1964

 SIHA. While searching for interesting aliens in the stories collected in Possible Worlds, I've also been looking for interesting Hollywood aliens that were inspired by these science fiction authors. Apparently, Murray Leinster was paid for the use of the title "Time Tunnel"...

Time Tunnel; Visitors from Beyond the Stars. Starting in 1966, The Time Tunnel went 17 episodes before having an episode about space aliens. The aliens from Alpha 1 came to Earth to rustle cattle in the old West (Mullins, Arizona Territory, in 1885). 

alien from Canopus

Knowing that they had found a winning Sci Fi angle, the makers of The Time Tunnel made sure that there were more space aliens dressed in flashy silver for a 1967 episode called "The Kidnappers". The folks from Canopus were more sophisticated aliens than those featured in "Visitors from Beyond the Stars"... the humanoids of Canopus apparently eat just a few mineral supplements and get energy directly from Canopus light. 

Watching this silly TV show might damage your brain, but you can read an Episode review at the Time Travel Nexus.

Ann the electrobiologist.

 In the year 8433. Rather than round up cattle, the aliens from Canopus wisely recognize the good things that planet Earth has to offer and so they grab Miss America (A.K.A. Dr. Ann MacGregor). Watch this episode of The Time Tunnel here, if you dare. William Welch is given credit as a writer for this episode at the IMDB. The IMBD also says this about Welch: "...style-over-logic writer is mainly known, to some, as the guy who scripted many highly entertaining, and totally way out, color episodes of Irwin Allen's adventure series..." I have to wonder if Welch was the one who imagined the aliens as being like plants in getting energy from Canopus and becoming completely inactive at night. In any case, Ann escaped from Canopus by means of the alien interstellar teleporter device and returned to the Time Tunnel for the final two episodes of the show, also featuring space aliens. 

an alien from Aristos

In "Raiders from Outer Space", aliens from Aristos (see the image to the right) want to destroying the city of London in 1885, but when the aliens try to destroy the Time Tunnel with a bomb, our heroes send the bomb back to the alien's control room... BOOM... alien invasion averted.

 "Town of Terror". There are so many good lines in the last episode of The Time Tunnel such as: "The only thing I have on my mind is getting out of here."

 Don't turn your back on
the people of Cliffport...

...they are aliens in disguise!

 End of the World; 1978. Our time-traveling heroes travel into the future and visit Cabbot Cove Cliffport, Maine and discover an evil plot by purple space aliens which is aimed at stealing all of Earth's oxygen. It is good to watch at least one of these old episodes of The Time Tunnel just as a reminder of how much better Star Trek was.

 Figure 5. interior art for "The Sky Was Full of Ships"

Heinlein and Sturgeon? Apparently there was a 1951 television show called "Ordeal in Space" based on a short story by Heinlein and with the teleplay written by Sturgeon. Sadly, there were no space aliens in that story.

In the Star Trek episode "The City on the Edge of Forever" we see how the Guardian of Forever is able to display a complete record of the Earth's history. Viewers are not supposed to ask how that is possible, but in "The Sky Was Full of Ships" by Theodore Sturgeon, Alessandro Sykes breaks into a cave and finds an alien machine that has been recording all of human history (Figure 5).

Professor Sykes and the alien device.

I suppose "The Sky Was Full of Ships" must be called an alien invasion story. The Last line of the story is "The Sky Was Full of Ships", but we don't actually find out if those alien ships attack Earth... but why would you need a sky full of ships unless the aliens were expecting to have to fight a world with atomic powered technology, as the story implies.

The first episode of Tales of Tomorrow was called "Verdict from Space", which was based on Sturgeon's story "The Sky Was Full of Ships". The TV episode leaves no doubt about the intentions of the alien spaceships: at the end of the show, the aliens begin to destroy Earthly civilization.

 The Invaders came to Earth for our oil!

If "Verdict from Space" frustrates you by not actually showing an alien spaceship, go ahead and try "The Betrayed", an episode from The Invaders.

Earlier this year I blogged about The Door Into Summer and I think you will find it a big challenge to find a better Heinlein-inspired story on big screen or small. However, that story has no aliens. Similarly, there is a new take on Life-Line coming out soon, but again, no aliens. If you can tolerate cartoon animation Martians, then try Red Planet.

aliens in the attic

 Ray Bradbury fiction on Screen. Apparently, there is a video version of "Asleep in Armageddon" (see #17, above) that is currently being made. At the risk of brain damage from Hollywood mindlessness, you can try watching "Zero Hour". Description of "Zero Hour" from a fan. One of the most despised episodes of Star Trek is "And the Children Shall Lead" which uses the same plot as "Zero Hour".

It Came from Outer Space (1953) managed to reach the big screen with a significant amount of dignity, but this film did not even get on my list of 4 worthy 1950s films about aliens. I believe the original intention of the film makers was to completely avoid the task of putting an alien on screen. At the last minute, they put together an embarrassing, cobbled-together excuse for an alien that seems like something out of a Dr. Who episode.👎

 Figure 6. In the Ekcolir Reality.

If you insist on watching really cheesy Sci Fi television, there is "The Man with the Watch" by Sam Merwin. Science fiction is at its best when it does not take itself too seriously and "The Man with the Watch" has fun with the "Evil Alien Comes to Earth" plot. I want a sequel showing the further adventures of Ludovic Altimus. (Fig. 6)

 Just Do It. If Ray Bradbury originally had spider-like and/or morphing aliens for his story "A Matter of Taste" then maybe someone in Hollywood could remake It Came from Outer Space and give us the story that Bradbury imagined. 

If the original story was set on an exoplanet (and not on Earth) then why not give us a film about a visit to another planet with interesting aliens? Maybe that would have been a budget-breaking challenge for a film-maker in 1952, but not so in this millennium.

alien baseball player

 SIHA: a retro-SIHA nomination for 2022.

Related Reading: a visit to the Time Tunnel in 2017.

Next: celebrating the science fiction stories of Jack Vance in August 2022.

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