Carl%20Sagan%20-%20The%20Demon%20Haunted%20World

The Demon-Haunted World
Long before the terms 'flying saucer' or 'UFOs' were invented,
science fiction was replete with 'little green men' and 'bug-eyed
monsters'. Somehow small hairless beings with big heads (and
eyes) have been our staple aliens for a long time. You could see
them routinely in the science fiction pulp magazines of the
twenties and thirties (and, for example, in an illustration of a
Martian sending radio messages to Earth in the December 1937
issue of the magazine Short Wave and Television). It goes back
perhaps to our remote descendants as depicted by the British
science fiction pioneer, H.G. Wells. Wells argued that humans
evolved from smaller-brained but hairier primates with an athleticism
far exceeding that of Victorian academics; extrapolating this
trend into the far future, he suggested that our descendants should
be nearly hairless, with immense heads, although barely able to
walk around on their own. Advanced beings from other worlds
might be similarly endowed.
The typical modern extraterrestrial reported in America in the
eighties and early nineties is small, with disproportionately large
head and eyes, undeveloped facial features, no visible eyebrows
or genitals, and smooth grey skin. It looks to me eerily like a
foetus in roughly the twelfth week of pregnancy, or a starving
child. Why so many of us might be obsessing on foetuses or
malnourished children, and imagining them attacking and sexually
manipulating us, is an interesting question.
In recent years in America, aliens different from the short grey
motif have been on the rise. One psychotherapist, Richard Boylan
of Sacramento, says:
You've got three-and-a-half-foot to four-foot types; you've
got five- to six-foot types; you've got seven- to eight-foot
types; you've got three-, four-, and five-finger types, pads on
the ends of fingers or suction cups; you've got webbed or
non-webbed fingers; you've got large almond-shape eyes
slanted upward, outward, or horizontally; in some cases large
ovoid eyes without the almond slant; you've got extraterrestrials
with slit pupils; you've got other different body types -
the so-called Praying Mantis type, the reptoid types . . .
These are the ones that I keep getting recurrently. There are
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