A Genealogy of the Extraterrestrial in American Culture

cabal were not simply Old Nick, but something decidedly vaguer. Just as the messengers had
begun to take on a clearer form in the embodied visitations experienced by Ballard, the contours
of the evil side of the Other would soon acquire clearer contour as well.
The movement toward a clearer point of origin also lent an increasing concreteness to the
Other—increasingly appearing less as spectral parade than peripatetic advisors. With ascended
masters claiming homes of Mt. Shasta, Tibet and Venus, we are at this point not far from the
truly extraterrestrial. Pelley points the way with his sense that humans come from the stars. In
the ensuing chapter we will meet Others native to other planets. The late 30’s and the immediate
post-WWII era brought some significant changes to the cultural milieu in which narratives of
extraterrestrial communication unfurl. The first of these is Orson Welles’ famed 1938 broadcast
of The War of the Worlds; the second is the appearance of that simultaneously ominous and
kitschy emblem of the space age, the flying saucer.
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