Sakulich

'Gray' aliens product of past popular imagination

By: Aaron Sakulich

Posted: 5/20/05

One of the things that has always bugged me as I write these articles is how to explain the similarities. How could a rural farmer know that aliens are supposed to look like little gray men with light bulb shaped heads and enormous eyes? How could someone in some far removed country know what they're supposed to look like when the X-Files hasn't even aired yet over there?

My friends, take comfort, for this question has been answered. My problem was that I believed that the descriptions of little gray space people was something recent, something that had entered pop culture during the era of Betty and Barney Hill (roughly the 1960s-ish.) In truth, the descriptions of little gray men go farther back - a lot farther back. So sit back, relax, and we'll take a look at the evolution of these little monsters in popular culture. At the end, I think we'll all be able to agree: Descriptions of tiny gray aliens as nighttime kidnappers or flying saucer pilots are purely the product of a combination of pop culture and being crazy.

So, when I said that the image of the little gray alien, with his lightbulb shaped head, big, black, almond-shaped eyes, no mouth or nose, and diminutive, almost fragile body went way back, how far back did you think I meant? The 1940s? Not even close. The 1920s? Keep going. 1900? You're almost there.

The first appearance of little gray aliens, though at the time they were not known as such, was in 1891. That's right. The UFO enthusiast would have you believe that this image is a recent phenomenon, from when spaceships began sneaking down and snatching people, but this is simply not correct. More than 110 years ago a book was published called Meda: A Tale of the Future by a Mr. Kenneth Folingsby.

The book described tiny gray men with heads shaped like hot air balloons, some of who needed sandbags strapped to their small bodies to keep them from floating away. It doesn't take a vivid imagination to see that his book contains the descriptions of the little beasties that much more recently took an interest in cruising our darkened country lanes.

Around 1892, apparently, people took an interest in what human beings would look like after another million or so years of evolution. They concluded that the "Human of the Year 10 Million" would have no hair, mouth, or nose, an enormous light bulb shaped head, and a small body. Since we'd develop machinery to do all our heavy labor, we'd become more intelligent organisms, thus making out bodies get smaller and our brains get larger. I don't think there's an evolutionary reason for it, but in drawings of that era the "people of the future" usually don't have ears, lips, or noses, and have large or oddly shaped eyes.

If you think that these writings are just some obscure references, think again: In 1892, H.G. Wells, the famous sci-fi author, wrote a story called "Of a Book Unwritten, The Man of the Year Million." A month later, similar stories (copyright law was not very well enforced in those days) appeared in most every newspaper on the face of the earth.

Newspapers were then, as they are now, afraid of not covering a story the public was interested in, so when one paper did something that sold a lot of copies, everyone else mimicked them. Almost all included pictures, and thus was the concept of the big headed space alien born.

I know that right now many people who have an interest in space aliens are reading this. I know that they will accuse me of trying to tie together relatively ancient history with the modern times. But I have a silver bullet of an argument with which to counter such claims: The little gray men have not left pop culture since their introduction in the 1890s.

In the 1890s, the theme seemed to be what humankind would evolve to on a long enough timeline. In the early 1900s, a book called The Invasion of Mars (which seems to have been a sequel to War of the Worlds, written without Well's knowledge) featured the little gray men. So did such fantastic early science-fiction books such as The First Men in the Moon and The Hampdenshire Wonder. The simple fact of the matter is that in the early days the little gray men were a staple of the original science-fiction books by Verne, Welles, and the other founders of the genre.

The general trend seems to have gone something like this: People asked themselves what highly evolved humans would look like. They came up with the answer that a more advanced species would have huge heads and small bodies, then books and movies were made about alien invaders, such as War of the Worlds, and the more highly evolved invaders had this peculiar physiology. Then, the books, movies, magazines, comic books, and so on became so popular that everyone in the world would recognize the form; then people began saying that these fictional entities kidnapped them and stuck things up their butts.

In the 30s and 40s, the little gray men were the solid foundation of such comic books as Amazing Stories, Wonder Stories, and Science Wonder Stories. Unless you were living in a cave, you couldn't turn around without bumping into a representation of big-headed little gray men. The simple fact is that they've been a part of popular culture, an especially well-recognized part of popular culture, since the 1890s.

The crux of the UFO enthusiast's argument to prove that space aliens are real is this: So many people encounter them, and they all give similar descriptions, so it must be a real phenomenon. They will claim that such creatures have never been seen in pop culture, therefore the "abductees" have no way of fabricating their experiences.

Yet as we've just seen, this is not true. The little gray space alien is something anyone would recognize. History contradicts the outrageous, exotic claims of the UFO enthusiast, and it torpedoes what few logical arguments could be made in favor of their position. The "alien abduction" phenomenon is the product of bad hypnosis, diseased minds, and general confusion; the sighting of little gray space aliens is the product of more than a hundred years of seeing their form in culture. End of story. Be seeing you.

Aaron Sakulich is a senior majoring in materials science and engineering.