It’s 1938. Folks are driving home when they decide to turn on their radios. It’s cold. It’s dark. It’s the night just before Halloween. They hear what sounds like a typical broadcast. However, over the course of this broadcast, hearts across the nation will pound as unsuspecting listeners tune into a story about a worldwide invasion stemming from the planet Mars.
The night lives in infamy even today. What “Mercury Theatre on the Air” was attempting to do was a radio adaptation of the book “The War of the Worlds” written by H.G. Wells in 1898, not to terrify anyone any more than through the story itself; more Halloween treat than Halloween trick.
Alien arrival stories are often contemplated in the stories that we hear, read, and see today. We think very often about whether there is life outside of Earth and what will happen if and when it is proven that there is life outside of the world we know and love. We should also contemplate what these stories have to say about us.
One of the more common stories about aliens are fear stories. “The War of the Worlds” is a common example of exactly that genre. Aliens come to Earth and are eventually defeated by humans. These are also stories about survival. Families are reunited after the threat of alien-induced violence is dispelled. “Independence Day” is also an example of this. The idea of it is that the human spirit can overcome any extraterrestrial issue.
Then there are stories that give more depth to this idea. Take examples from–both controversial authors–Liu Cixin and Orson Scott Card. In both the “Three Body Problem” and “Ender’s Game”, alien presence on Earth is a method of going through more philosophical questions. Questions of survival and questions about humanity include: What makes a human being beyond DNA? What is humanity, not as a group of people, but our standards for humanity? Does this rule apply to a theoretical group of people who seek the same existential drives that we do?
Wyatt Moss Wellington, author of “Narrative Humanism” says, “we proceed with the understanding of the unknowable nature of reality, but it behoves us to accept these limitations and make decisions based on our experience of what is real. At the same time, we understand our phenomenal perspective will always be bound to our experience as a human. In deeply understanding other things, thus, we ‘humanize’ them. We consistently need to imagine what it is like for them to be them in order to accept them as worthy of ethical inclusion.”
We have no way of knowing whether aliens exist or not, what they may be like, how different or similar they may be to us. One reason for alien arrival stories to be written human experiences go beyond what we understand as humans. We are able to accept the other. We are able to accept what was once unheard of to us.
While there may not be aliens to benefit from this inclusion, humans do benefit from this. We benefit in that we learn that there is no one ‘true’ way of experiencing life. What we may experience may just be one way to experience it. That includes the changes in our experiences over time. Maybe the change in connection from a more physical presence to a more digital one isn’t entirely terrible just because there is a new medium between two human beings. Yes, there are new problems, just as there were old ones to the former methods of communication which are still available to us–though now with digital media, many of the students reading this publication are able to talk to their families, keep up with them and feel connected despite the disconnection from sociality and nature that technology is often blamed for.
These stories are about us. Can we see humanity beyond the human? These stories are about the flexibility of our understanding. It’s a way of thinking that accepts that we don’t need for another person to be alike to us to see the value in them. Empathy is free and without condition.
When considering the story of arrival as an indescribable feeling of awe, surprise, excitement, and fear, these stories are made to say that no matter what happens, we will never be the same. Good or bad, usually both, these stories are vessels for a greater conversation about how are we to react to the new, impossible, scary future that awaits us upon arrival. The answer is clear. With faith in ourselves and hope for the future.
