Well, we're now well into 2000, and most of the science fictional promises we received as children haven't come to pass. No hover cars, no manned Mars bases, no learning pills. Not that we needed most of these (although learning pills, properly applied, might guarantee that more frat boys leave school with something besides a blasted liver and a police record for date rape), but it's the principle of the thing that's at issue. Most of all, we still haven't made contact with extraterrestrials, and we should be glad of this.

Several years ago, I wrote a paper for the "Annals of Improbable Research," a widely respected scientific publication for those with a touch of wit and entirely too much time on their hands, on the subject of understanding dinosaurian behavior by using unorthodox sources. Specifically, by indulging in incessant viewing of television and movies, I was able to advance scientific knowledge on dinosaurs to unknown levels. Not only did I discover, via "King Kong," "Valley of Gwangi," and "Jurassic Park," that theropod dinosaurs were attracted to blondes, caught brunettes far more often than statistically likely, and ignored redheads, but I named several previously unknown Japanese dinosaurs. Even without a type specimen--Godzilla animatronicus--was a masterpiece of research, but I regret that another AIR writer beat me to the discovery of the century, and that the species name--Barney nonsapiens imbecilis--is currently invalid.

Even so, the basic research was valid, and it saw use again in trying to understand extraterrestrials before they ever communicated with humanity. In the past hundred years of books, movies, and television programs about aliens, they've continued to mutate on us, with serious implications for the future.

Back during the early days of science fiction, most impressions of contact with a civilization other than Earth's were pretty straightforward. Humanity sends emissaries to the stars, we come upon poor beknighted green men, and pass on human values, technology, and venereal diseases. Very rarely were aliens more advanced than humans, either technologically or spiritually, and that made them targets for humans who wanted to show the galaxy that we, and only we, were really in charge. If things really got bad, then at least we could always depend upon our diseases and parasites to take out the bad guys, as if the aliens hadn't discovered Lysol or Listerine.

By the Fifties, the alien had become a threat. Most pundits argue that the role of invading saucermen was intended as a metaphor for the Communist Menace: this, of course, was bullshit. Seeing as how the vast majority of films and stories on the subject were made by Americans for Americans, the alien was a metaphor for everything Americans are afraid of, which is, indeed, everything. The alien was here to kill, pillage, and fornicate, and only an unfettered military budget kept the little vermin from eating us, enslaving us, and stealing our wimminfolk. The bug-eyed critters certainly didn't want to be our friends.

This changed in the Sixties and Seventies: suddenly, we're inundated with aliens that filled the same ecological niches as social workers and high school guidance counselors. Whether they came from Vulcan or Gallifrey, they were more than willing to drop in from time to time, pass on some otherworldly wisdom about as deep as a horoscope prediction, and buzz out again to evade the responsibility of cleaning up their messes. Even the title monster in "Alien" merely taught us that nobody escapes being a part of the food chain.

The Eighties were the really bad period: that's when the perverts discovered us. The Greys had been snagging people for years for random medical experiments, like veterinary medicine students who can't afford real farm animals for lab work and settle for picking up dogs and cats from the animal shelter, but these guys were real sickos. Starting with Whitley Strieber, these new guys indulged in such vile anal rampages that nobody could mention alien contact without some poorly animated fat kid yelling "Why does everything around here involve something coming in or going out of my ass?" The visitors of the Eighties and Nineties proved two things: firstly, that extraterrestrials advanced enough to develop interstellar travel used for the ET-equivalent of cow-tipping. Secondly, we discovered that "Klaatu barada nikto" really meant "Squeal like a pig, boy! SQUEEE!": thus, the reason why Strieber's book Communion is generally known in UFO circles as "Deliverance: The Next Generation."

By the Nineties, we were back to being a standard part of the social heirarchy: humans might not be as advanced as the Vorlons or as courageous as the Klingons, but we could hold our own in a fight, and we could be trusted not to mistake the bathtub for an ostentatious urinal or the urinal for a drinking bowl. With good old fashioned Yankee know-how, and a bit of help from token French, Japanese, Australians and Canadians, Americans were able to beat on the bullies while letting everyone else know that friendship was possible if they didn't strike first. Either that, or the aliens really were us, which explains why the sight of Margaret Thatcher or Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas) hovering over a child automatically stimulates the question "Where the hell are Sigourney Weaver and a forklift when you need 'em?"

And so we get to the 2000s, where we may actually make contact with real aliens, as opposed to constructs from our own warped imaginations. It's too early to tell what may happen, but odds favor Earth being sterilized to make room for more condo developments. It could be worse: just picture the human race making contact with a Galactic Federation and asking for full privileges of membership, only to be told "Get a job, ya bum!"

Copyright © 2000 Paul T. Riddell All Rights Reserved

Paul T. Riddell is a Michigan-born, Texas-raised essayist and general menace currently residing in a fortified ranch on the slopes of Mount Briscoe overlooking downtown Dallas. For more abuse, please visit "The Healing Power of Obnoxiousness" at http://www.hpoo.com .