Extraterrestrials in fiction
In popular cultures, "extraterrestrials" are life forms — especially intelligent life forms— that are of extraterrestrial origin (often also called "aliens").
Historical ideas
Pre-modern
Cosmic pluralism, the assumption that there are many inhabited worlds beyond the human sphere predates modernity and the development of the heliocentric model and is common in mythologies worldwide. The 1st century writer of satires Lucian in his True History claims to have visited the moon when his ship was sent up by a fountain, which was peopled and at war with the people of the Sun over colonisation of the Morning Star. Other worlds are depicted in such early works as the 10th-century Japanese narrative, The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter, and the medieval Arabic The Adventures of Bulukiya (from the One Thousand and One Nights).[1]
Early modern
The assumption of extraterrestrial life in the narrow sense (as opposed to generic cosmic pluralism) becomes possible with the development of the heliocentric understanding of the solar system, and later the understanding of interstellar space, during the Early Modern period, and the topic was popular in the literature of the 17th and 18th century.
The didactic poet Henry More took up the classical theme of Cosmic pluralism of the Greek Democritus in "Democritus Platonissans, or an Essay Upon the Infinity of Worlds" (1647).[2] With the new relative viewpoint that understood "our world's sunne / Becomes a starre elsewhere", More made the speculative leap to extrasolar planets,
- the frigid spheres that 'bout them fare;
- Which of themselves quite dead and barren are,
- But by the wakening warmth of kindly dayes,
- And the sweet dewie nights, in due course raise
- Long hidden shapes and life, to their great Maker's praise.
The possibility of extraterrestrial life was a commonplace of educated discourse in the 17th century, though in Paradise Lost (1667)[3] John Milton cautiously employed the conditional when the angel suggests to Adam the possibility of life on the Moon:
- Her spots thou seest
- As clouds, and clouds may rain, and rain produce
- Fruits in her softened soil, for some to eat
- Allotted there; and other Suns, perhaps,
- With their attendant Moons, thou wilt descry,
- Communicating male and female light,
- Which two great sexes animate the World,
- Stored in each Orb perhaps with some that live
Fontanelle's "Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds" with its similar excursions on the possibility of extraterrestrial life, expanding rather than denying the creative sphere of a Maker, was translated into English in 1686.[4] In "The Excursion" (1728) David Mallet exclaimed, "Ten thousand worlds blaze forth; each with his train/Of peopled worlds."[5]
See also
References
- ^ Irwin, Robert (2003). The Arabian Nights: A Companion. Tauris Parke Paperbacks. p. 204 & 209. ISBN 1860649831.
- ^ Democritus (1647). Democritus Platonissans, or an Essay Upon the Infinity of Worlds.
- ^ Milton, John (1667). Paradise Lost. ISBN 0841422222.
- ^ Fontenelle, Bernard le Bovier de (1686). Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds. ISBN 0520071719.
- ^ Mallet, David (1728). The Excursion.
Further reading
- Roth, Christopher F., "Ufology as Anthropology: Race, Extraterrestrials, and the Occult." In E.T. Culture: Anthropology in Outerspaces, ed. by Debbora Battaglia. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2005.
- Sagan, Carl. 1996. The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark: chapter 4: "Aliens"
External links
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