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It was October 30th, 1938, just past 8 o'clock at night.

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CBS Radio interrupted its regular programming to announce that a strange flying machine had crashed at Grover's Mill, New Jersey.

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Ladies and gentlemen, we interrupt our program of dance music to bring you a special bulletin from the Intercontinental Radio News.

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It is reported that at 8.50 p.m. a huge flaming object believed to be a meteorite fell on a farm in the neighborhood of Grover's Mill, New Jersey, 22 miles from France.

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We now return you to the music of Ramon Roquello playing for you in the meridian room of the Park Slazer Hotel situated in downtown New York.

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Moments later came the announcement that people approaching the object had been struck down by a mysterious death ray.

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The invasion had begun.

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Armed with their incredible war machines, these Martian invaders were destroying everything in their path. There would be no stopping this army.

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It would take the Martian invaders no longer than an hour to conquer the entire world.

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And the mastermind behind this devastating attack was the theatrical genius, Orson Welles.

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Ladies and gentlemen, due to circumstances beyond our control, we are unable to continue the broadcast from Grover's Mill.

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Since the early days of unidentified flying objects or UFOs, many people have wondered about the true origin of these sightings.

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Could UFOs be a sign of external forces? Or does their mystique have a more sociological origin?

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geological origin. How is it that UFOs have changed over the past 50 years from classic

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flying saucers to ominous black triangles? The changes in stories of alien encounters

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are even stronger proof of this evolution. Just a half century ago, aliens looked more

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like goblins in spacesuits than small people with big bug eyes. How can we explain this

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change in the way they look? In the last 50 years, there has been a noticeable evolution

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in UFO phenomena. In the early 1950s, you had your basic flying saucer that had a tendency

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to break down from time to time, like your trusty old Ford. Braver aliens would stop

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and ask to borrow a screwdriver to repair their ship. The next big trends were alien

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abductions and encounters with humanoids. Then in the early 1990s, there were waves

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of triangle sightings. It seems that there has been an evolution in UFOs and aliens.

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In actual fact, this evolution has a familiar ring to it, since aliens have evolved in science

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fiction as well. In 1978, Bertrand Meilleuse, a philosopher

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by trade, published a book that essentially revolutionized the way we think about UFOs

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called Science Fiction et ce coup volant, literally science fiction and flying saucers.

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In it, he made a connection between UFOs and science fiction that apparently no one else

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had thought of. He compared flying saucer stories from after 1947 with popular science

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fiction stories prior to 1947. He found many interesting similarities, such as saucer-shaped

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objects, beams of light, small aliens with big heads, and abductions. It was all there

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in science fiction. How do we explain such a coincidence? The most obvious answer is

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that people who report UFO sightings must be avid readers of science fiction case closed.

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But Meilleuse contended from the start that the answer is not as simple as that. He presented

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a number of different hypotheses to explain the phenomenon, but the similarities between

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the two just kept on growing over time. More recently, Michel Merge and authority on

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the history of science fiction suggested that people who see UFOs are a bit like science

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fiction writers. Their stories, which are at least partly fictional, are based on ideas

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that they have already been exposed to. They are a product of their culture.

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Proponents of this psychological theory were quick to adopt Michel Merge's book Alien Abduction,

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published in 1995 over Bertrand Meilleuse's earlier works.

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What I was trying to accomplish with that book was to put my observations down on paper.

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The history of UFOs began in 1947. Books on UFOs had existed for twenty years before

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that, which meant that American readers were already familiar with the concepts of discs-shaped

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crafts flying saucers and small pilots with big heads, small pilots who abduct people.

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It was all there in American science fiction magazines, so it could be said that these

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alien stories were all simply based on these fictional models. For example, science fiction

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introduced the idea of men in black, who are now a well-known phenomenon in UFO circles.

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They are often suspected of being aliens in disguise who visit and harass UFO witnesses.

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As early as 1930, a document by Fortean Edmund Hamilton described one of these beings disguised

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as a human going around abducting or killing people because they knew too much. You get

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the general idea. So you see there are distinct correlations between American fiction of the

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1920s and 30s and UFO stories reported later on. That being said, there is no way of knowing

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precisely how the transference occurred. It would take a highly specialized sociological

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study that for all intents and purposes would be next to impossible to conduct today.

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So to what extent could aliens in science fiction have actually influenced the accounts

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of UFO sightings? Do people subconsciously draw on science fiction folklore to embellish

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their stories? Or do they really experience what they claim? Some extraordinary technological

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advances were made at the end of the 19th century, including the telephone, gramophone,

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diesel engine, x-rays, and the radio. In 1886, Jules Verne wrote Robert the Conqueror,

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a novel in which the hero travels the world in an amazing flying machine, a cross between

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a boat and a blimp. At about the same time, strange objects began to appear in the sky

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over the United States. It was the dawn of airships, flying machines that looked more

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like dirigibles than spaceships. While some people saw this coincidence as an uncanny

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parallel to science fiction, others saw it differently. When discussing the influence

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of science fiction on UFO sightings, people will often bring up the wave of airships over

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the United States in 1897. During the Great Airship, as it was known, one or more objects

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were seen flying over the country. Some people even claimed to have met the occupants. Rationalists

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pointed to Robert the Conqueror and other futuristic novels as sci-fi novels were known

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back then, saying that they had influenced journalists to create these tall tales, which

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was probably true in some cases. But literature wasn't the main cause of the wave. There

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was just something in the air at the time. Patents were being issued for inventions that

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bore a striking resemblance to the strange flying machines of the day. Machines made

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with Victorian technology, not just nuts and bolts, but heavy-duty hardware. These were

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machines that should not have been able to fly at all. Still, people claimed to have

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seen giant steel cylinders with paddle wheels flying in the skies. Very strange indeed.

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We need to consider the possibility that people really did see these older UFOs. This is a

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subject that has always been of great interest to me, because these sightings occurred before

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1947. Before man had begun to fly, before the invention of any aviation technology.

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And I guess it's entirely possible that people found old pictures from that era and touched

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them up, claiming that they showed what was seen in the sky at the time. Maybe that's

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how we ended up with those pictures of flying cigars or hovering discs taken from unusual

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angles. So were these stories made up or just a sign of the times? The debate continues.

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There are countless examples, starting with the so-called abduction of Betty and Barney

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Hill in 1961. In her account given mostly under hypnosis, Betty Hill reported that she

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had undergone a pregnancy test that involved inserting a long needle into her navel. There

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is a scene that is practically identical in Invaders for Mars, a science fiction movie

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that came out in 1953, eight years before the Hill ordeal. In addition to the pregnancy

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test, Invaders for Mars also depicted extraterrestrials using radio transmitter implants to control

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the minds of their victims. There was no mention of implants in UFO stories from the 1940s

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and 50s, but they became incredibly popular during the 1980s. Can we just chalk up these

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abduction stories to the influence of science fiction in the media? Could it be that some

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abductions are genuine, while others are imaginary? I guess you could say that the issue here

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is whether some abductions are authentic and some are just hoaxes and delusions. We live

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in a world of mass culture. If we're a European or Canadian, we are very influenced by American

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mass culture. Let's not forget that thousands of stories have been influencing people since

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the 1920s and 30s. Plus, there were all those sci-fi movies from the 1950s depicting alien

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Asians. Even American cartoons featured aliens. That's a lot of exposure to the idea of aliens.

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And I think that people's minds just got saturated. To put it in visual terms, it's like we're

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living in a big fish tank, so it seems to me that it must be difficult to distinguish between

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a fake abduction and a genuine one. I think that as soon as potential scenarios are presented,

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it's good enough for me personally. It may not be as simple as that. While some people

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attach a deep significance to these connections, others see them as mere coincidences. There

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is no doubt in my mind that the witnesses experienced the events as real. You see, for the most

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part, they're just honest people. Giving their version of something, they really think happened

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to them. They believe that their interpretation is the honest to God truth. Their stories

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are not pure fiction, although there are definite similarities between the accounts they give

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and some elements of science fiction. But then again, you can find pretty much everything

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in science fiction. What I find interesting and what, in my opinion, theorists like Michel

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Murgé have not been able to fully explain is why science fiction only influences certain

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aspects of witness accounts. Why are descriptions of aliens always the same in every story?

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Why is it that the bug-eyed monsters of 1930s science fiction have caught on, but not any

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other space monsters? Why doesn't anyone ever see little green men? Why do aliens perform

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the exact same tests every time? These types of questions are fundamental, but neither

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school of thought has been able to answer them yet.

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Curiously enough, the theory that UFOs originated in science fiction was most popular in Europe

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and particularly in France. The science fiction community is a lot like the ufology community.

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Science fiction isn't considered total trash, but then again, it certainly isn't considered

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in the same league as classic literature or film. The science fiction community has the

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same problem gaining recognition as the ufology community. Somewhere along the way, science

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fiction writers came to be known as myth makers, a role they were all too pleased to assume.

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But this seemed to occur only in Europe. For some reason, it never made its way across

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the ocean to the United States, where sci-fi writers never talk about that theory.

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As a matter of fact, even though the United States is quite large, science fiction magazines

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were not really as popular as Michel Murgers would lead us to believe. In order for us to

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believe that they were the original source of myths, they would have had to have been

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extremely popular, which has not been proven.

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You have to consider that in the 1920s and 30s, especially in the U.S., there were entire

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commissions in charge of protecting the youth from violence, or aliens, or anything else

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that might give them nightmares. In all likelihood, it was just another form of censorship. In

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other words, it was thought to be in their youth's best interest to keep them from being

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exposed to those magazines. I suppose that this may partly explain their lack of popularity

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during that period. And it's also important to remember that there were major differences

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between the literature aimed at youth and the literature aimed at adults back then.

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Long before there were reports of UFO landings, aliens had infiltrated society through science

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fiction. Today, some people credit science fiction with having created part of our UFO

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knowledge base, specifically with regards to alien abductions. But still, the sci-fi

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culture remains on the fringes of society. Is it possible that this culture could have

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been responsible for one of the most surprising phenomena of the 20th century? Just as UFO

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literature took ideas from science fiction, likewise science fiction took ideas from UFO

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literature. Series like the X-Files and movies like Close Encounters of the Third Kind borrowed

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extensively from UFO literature. It boils down to the age-old debate of the chicken and the egg.

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If we look back at when aliens first began to appear in science fiction, one of the first

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things that comes to mind is H. G. Wells' novel The War of the Worlds, written in 1898.

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In that book, aliens invaded London, England. But there was no widespread alien invasion

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in literature at the time. It would still be a few more years before they would really

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become popular. It wasn't until around the mid-1920s or perhaps early 1930s that pop

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magazines began to appear on magazine stands throughout America. That's when people's

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imaginations really started to take off. It was relatively easy to get stories published

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in those magazines. Aliens at that time were invaders or big, ugly creatures out to harm

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humans. In futuristic novels, on the other hand, they were portrayed as travelers and

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explorers. That's when the whole phenomenon really began to develop. There were the inventions

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at the turn of the century, plus the industrial and technological revolutions. Authors back

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then had far-fetched ideas, although reality seeped in now and then. Seeds were being planted

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for the television, the laser, and the whole telecommunications industry. In the beginning,

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aliens didn't have much in the way of a personality. They were just big, ugly monsters. Then eventually,

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in the 1940s and 50s, they began to evolve with writer Philippe Josée Farmère, who tried

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to portray them as having a personality. He also tried to portray intergalactic relations

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between earthlings and extraterrestrials. So basically, that was how aliens and UFOs

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evolved early in the 20th century. Then along came the comic book, which introduced us to

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the most famous extraterrestrial evolved Superman, protector of the human race. Superheroes

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are a whole other aspect of aliens that we mustn't forget. In the United States, science

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fiction appeared primarily in cheap magazines, known as pulp magazines, or pups for short.

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The first one to become popular was Argusy, which came out in 1896. But the real wave

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of pop popularity was between 1923 and 1926. They were around for about half of the 1920s.

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The first one that was really of the science fiction genre was written by Hugo Gensbach,

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a Luxembourg immigrant living in the United States. He was a big fan of technology, which

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he used as material for his first sci-fi pop magazine called Amazing Stories. He also

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created a fantasy series called Weird Tales. What followed was that most, if not all well

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known American science fiction writers, ended up contributing stories to pulp magazines,

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which earned their name from the poor quality of the paper that they were printed on. You

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could still see bits of pulp in the paper itself. This is where the space operas originated.

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There were grandiose stories about invasions and the valiant heroes who stopped them, heroes

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like Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers and Doc Savage. Not only did they have their own pulp magazines,

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but they also appeared in other series as well. They fended off evil invaders who were

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threatening to oppress smaller territories and planets. There were simple adventure stories,

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nothing more. The most exotic thing about them was probably the costumes and the appearance

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of the characters. The pulp's heyday was really in the 1930s, but it all came to an end in

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the early 1950s, with the advent of television and driving movie theaters along with new

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technology and media. At that point, science fiction moved more into paperback novels,

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and pop magazines virtually disappeared. Still, they are an important part of the legacy of

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science fiction literature, because they were more or less where it all began, and everyone

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was involved in them. Later on, sci-fi buffs got together and founded fan clubs all over

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the world, which in some ways paralleled the pulp magazines. They carried on the tradition

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of science fiction and kept the big name authors on a cultural radar. In the wake of World War

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II, science fiction gained a new audience through movies and television. Flying saucers

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could be seen in theaters throughout America, just when it was too worried about a Soviet

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invasion to be concerned about a Martian one. All that really mattered was that these visitors

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from outer space were a moneymaker. Pulps basically fell off the face of the earth in the 1950s,

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when they were replaced with television and movies. There were a few juvenile TV shows

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like Space Rangers, but basically movies played a bigger role in teaching the public about aliens.

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In previous decades, things had been more subtle. There had been more mad scientists and

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vampires. Then in the 1950s, we had these big Hollywood productions like Forbidden Planet

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and The Thing that really tried to depict first contact between humans and aliens. These movies

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were a disaster. Aliens were either totally misunderstood or they were portrayed as some

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kind of a threat. Directors came up with all kinds of characters, scenarios and planets.

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Television also picked up on the trend. Countless series came out, especially Saturday morning

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cartoons like Space Ghost. The movie industry found that it could make a profit from movies

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about aliens. So directors began cranking out a whole series of low-budget films. A lot of

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studios figured that they could make a quick buck out of the alien fad. So they started working

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with plastic models of aliens. It soon became a global trend, popping up in Italy, Japan,

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everywhere. There weren't too many movies trying to make a statement, with the possible exception

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of a few American films in the early 1950s. The influence of science fiction can also be seen

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in the messages received by contactees in the 1950s. In The Day the Earth Stood Still,

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Klaatu, an alien played by Michael Rennie, claimed that he had come to warn man against his

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aggressive ways. Less than a year later, a man named George Adamski revealed that an alien from

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the planet Venus had come to him to warn him about humanity's hostile tendencies. Just like

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Adamski's claims, science fiction movies began to reflect the concerns of society at the time.

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There is a kind of symbolism in science fiction if you look at the way films have evolved over the

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years. For instance, in the 1950s there were a lot of movies about invasions that paralleled the

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social climate of that decade. Think back to the McCarthy era and all the witch hunts. Communism

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was rampant. It was all about rooting out the Reds. That's why the planet Mars, the Red Planet,

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was often used to represent the enemy. Red Planet, Red Army, they were all the same during the

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Cold War. Political tensions were starting to subside by the time Star Trek came on the scene.

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And Star Trek's mission and message were much more peaceful. The show reflected the political

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climate. People were watching what was happening in Vietnam and what was going on in Iran with

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Ayatollahomeini. So there have always been trends that follow the world political situation.

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Then along came ET in 1982 and all of a sudden aliens could be funny.

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There were TV shows with aliens on them, like that furry little guy, Alf, who was taken in by an

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Earth family. There were other shows like it as well. Media have always shifted in cycles. Today

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we have both good aliens and bad aliens. The same thing goes for vampires. It's just a big cycle,

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and it all depends on the social conditions of the time.

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In hindsight, it's much easier to spot the connections, like in the case of Adamsky's visitor

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from Venus and the alien in the day the Earth stood still, or the implants that so-called abductees

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talk about. And the device is used in invaders from Mars. But is this enough to claim that a

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phenomenon as complicated as UFOs is the direct result of aliens appearing in the media?

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It seems a little far-fetched to me because, unfortunately, and I say unfortunately because

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I'm a big fan of science fiction literature myself, it simply isn't all that important

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in the great scheme of things. In 1947, there was only American sci-fi that was known worldwide,

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and it wasn't that popular even in the United States. Science fiction magazine sales were 10

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to 20 times lower than adventure and western magazines. Movies weren't around yet. Sci-fi

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literature was generally geared towards juvenile adolescents and comic book readers. It never

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reached the same mythical proportions as the western did in America. It's just not logical

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that it would have created a myth that suddenly swept through the country. If it had been something

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out of a western, that might have made a little more sense. Science fiction crept gradually into

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society. You could see it in the movies of the 1950s and 60s, where there were a lot of flying

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saucers. Industry was just following popular trends. If UFOs hadn't been so popular, they wouldn't

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have appeared on the silver screen. There were few, if any, screenplays that depicted UFO sightings

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as they were reported. The basic plot line stayed the same, but flying saucers were added for

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theatrics. Earth versus the Flying Saucers is a classic example of Hollywood theatrics

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loosely reflecting reality. Filmed in 1956, this movie depicted aliens attacking Washington,

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D.C., and destroying the Washington Monument and the dome of the Capitol Building. The film came

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out four years after the famous Washington Carousel incident. In July 1952, UFOs were seen flying

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over the nation's Capitol. This event received more media coverage than any other in UFO history.

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The closing scene of the movie was obviously inspired by the events of 1952, yet another

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example of art imitating life. The truth is that the psychological theory is nothing more than a

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caricature of real UFO incidents. Some say that Betty Hill was merely influenced by the movie

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Invaders from Mars. If that's so, then what about the radar echoes? On the night the couple claims

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to have been abducted, two unidentified radar echoes were reported for the same time in sector

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as those described by the Hills. It's plausible that the Hills were influenced by science fiction,

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but it's a lot harder to believe that military radar could have been. Proponents of the psychosocial

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theory ignore any physical evidence, choosing to speak of UFOs only in terms of apparitions.

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They also believe that witnesses are so impressionable that it's next to impossible to find any

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objective evidence in their stories. In their minds, simply showing a science fiction movie

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might be enough to set off a rash of UFO sightings. For investigators in the field, however, this is

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just not true. It seems that there were a lot more UFO sightings reported in the past than there

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are these days. The 1970s are a perfect example, because there were a great deal more sightings

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per year throughout that decade. To give you a better idea of what that means, today we get

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about 50 sightings reported every year. Back in the 70s, we were getting well over 100 sightings

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every year. Specifically, there were a lot of reports classified under Category D, events that

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remained unexplained given the data provided in the account. Basically, there are no conclusive

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findings in all of this. Some people have tried to claim that when movies appear like

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E.T., close encounters of the third kind or more recently Independence Day and Mars attack,

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the number of UFO sightings increases. That's just not true. Statistics show that there is no

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correlation whatsoever between movies or television shows about aliens and the number of UFO sightings

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reported. In actual fact, what happens most of the time is that a person comes face to face

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with something that they do not understand and they contact the police in the hopes of getting

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an answer to the mystery. Of all the sightings that are reported, practically none of them turn

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out to be hoax. I would say maybe one hoax per thousand cases reported.

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And the influence of sci-fi on witness accounts appears to be much less significant than supporters

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of the psychosocial theory would have us believe. When you thoroughly examine UFO accounts,

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you can see that science fiction literature has no direct influence on them. You can tell that

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these people truly want to know more about something that they experienced or saw, but which somehow

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eludes them. It's pretty easy to notice when a person is intentionally trying to inject their own

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beliefs into their account. In my opinion, these accounts are something spontaneous that results

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from self-questioning. Of course, there's always the possibility that the media is promoting a

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much less noble cause. While some people see the media as creators of myths, others think the

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opposite. In their view, which borders on paranoia, the film industry is controlled by authorities

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who want to use science fiction movies to prepare the population for the terrifying reality of alien

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contact. At least that's what a lot of conspiracy theorists tend to believe. According to them,

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this is what the powers that be need to do in order to prevent a war of the worlds.

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On October 30th, 1938, the Mercury Theatre Company gathered in the studios of the Columbia Broadcasting

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System, or CBS as it's known in New York, to broadcast an adaptation of H. G. Wells' novel

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The War of the Worlds. Published in 1898, the novel described Mars' invasion of Earth.

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Overseeing, the production was 23-year-old Orson Wells. In his adaptation, Wells changed the story

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into a series of news flashes, inspired in part by Herb Morrison, a journalist who had reported

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live on the Hindenburg disaster one year earlier. I can't talk to people who spend their time there.

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Let's go back to 1938. We need to remember the climate of the time. For starters, there had been

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the stock market crash in 1929, World War I had ended fairly recently, and there were rumors of

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another war brewing in Europe. Amidst all this, Wells decided to stage a Martian landing on Earth.

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The story developed gradually over the course of the broadcast. So, it was Halloween night in

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the fall of 1938, and Orson Wells was presenting this play. It had been advertised in the newspapers

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a few times, and during the broadcast itself there were three or four announcements indicating

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that it was only a play.

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It was set up as a sort of show within a show, appearing to be a big band music program.

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The music program was interrupted, saying that activity had been noticed on the planet Mars,

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but they weren't too sure what was happening, and listeners should stay tuned.

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Ladies and gentlemen, we interrupt our program of dance music to bring you a special bulletin from the

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Intercontinental Radio News. At 20 minutes before 8 central time, Professor Farrell of the Mount

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Gennings Observatory, Chicago, Illinois reports observing several explosions of incandescent gas

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on the planet Mars. They continued to interrupt the music program with news flashes whenever

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important information came in, just like the media do now. There were around six million listeners,

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and they say that about one-sixth or a million of those people were genuinely frightened or

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panicked by the show.

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The metal casing is definitely extra-terrestrial. Not far from the friction with the earth's

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atmosphere usually tears holes in the meteorite, just being a fool.

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Mars, the Martian.

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He's back! He's back! He's back! He's back!

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He's not back! Oh my god.

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What's the problem? Martians.

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I'm gonna go home.

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There's no line.

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Try it again.

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There's no line. I mean, it's real.

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I think it's too...

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Oh my gosh.

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What's important about this broadcast is that it received huge media coverage afterwards,

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and there were reports that people had actually gone to New Jersey to see if Martians had indeed

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landed in that farmer's field. So many people reacted to the show that a study was published

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a year or two later, referred to as the Cantrell study. In the week following the broadcast,

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Hadley Cantrell interviewed four different categories of people, those who had listened

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to the show, and figured out that it was just a fictional story, those who had listened

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to the show, and had to check if it was real or not, had aliens really landed on earth.

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And then there were the two other categories, people who tried to find out if it was real,

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but who continued to listen as if it was, and people who blindly assumed that it was

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real and made no attempts to find out for sure.

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Cantrell's study, entitled The Invasion from Mars, was one of the first of its kind to

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focus on the influence of media on popular beliefs.

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You have to understand that what Cantrell's study shows is that there were a variety of

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contributing factors. And there were the social and political climates that I already mentioned.

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Plus, there were personal factors, such as a lack of critical thinking, which led to some

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people's prejudices or instincts being influenced by this group of actors.

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Also, depending on their level of education, some people could have been more gullible than

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others, or at least more personally insecure. All of these personal factors still exist in

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today's society. There are still people who are less secure, less informed, who listen to gossip,

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etc. So are we really very different today than people were back then? There are probably

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differences in the social and political climates now, although there are still a lot of similarities

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between the two periods. We still hear talk of war, and we still see economic problems.

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What has changed is the number of readily available information sources. What set this

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study apart was that it did not focus on the power of the media, per se. Rather, it looked at

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the psychological, sociological, and interpersonal aspects of people's reactions. It revealed that

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our level of critical thinking can make a difference in whether or not we panic,

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and to what degree we might be influenced by the media. In other words, whether the media has

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enough power to make us think or do almost anything. What Cantrell concluded in his study

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was proven repeatedly afterwards. An adaptation of Orson Welles' play aired twice in South America,

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in Santiago, Chile in 1944, and in Quito, Ecuador in 1949. In both cases, the programming cited mass

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hysteria. In Quito, when it was learned that the show was fictional, hundreds of angry listeners

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set the radio station on fire. These violent reactions bolstered the argument of those who

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believe that the use of aliens in mass media serves an educational purpose. Those people feel

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that the panic experienced by radio listeners is a classic example of what would happen if the

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government announced tomorrow that aliens had landed on earth. Something that always comes

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up in discussions about UFOs and the media, something that dates back before UFOs were popular,

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is the Orson Welles' production of the War of the Worlds in 1938.

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It set off mass hysteria. The question is, what would happen if the government said,

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it's true, they're here? Some say that people would react the same way today as they did back in 1938.

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I think that in 1938, the effects of the Welles broadcast spiraled out of control.

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It produced this heightened sense of panic, and there were people who honestly thought it was

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real because they hadn't heard the announcement that it was just a play. The fact that there were

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traffic jams and a mass hysteria throughout the entire state of New York, well, it's as if the

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newspapers were in on it with CBS, the network that aired the program. Okay, so people fell for

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this prank in 1938, although perhaps less than we may think. It happened again in France in 1946,

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with Jean Nocher's Platforms-60, except in that case, the crisis was a nuclear war instead of an

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alien invasion. In 1949, War of the Worlds was presented in Ecuador. When people there found

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out that it wasn't real, they burned down the radio station. But nowadays, with the Internet,

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it just wouldn't be the same. Soon, we'll all be at the point where we'll be getting news before

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it even happens. The play worked back in Welles' day, because people couldn't just pick up a phone

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and call Grover's Mill to find out if a Martian spaceship had really landed. These days, you

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just have to click on the Internet and you instantly know what's real and what isn't.

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Not to mention the number of television channels there are now. It would be pretty impossible to

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pull off something like the War of the Worlds today. Then again, if the president were to appear on

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television today and announce that aliens had landed, obviously it would be somewhat of a shock.

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But it wouldn't cause mass hysteria like Orson Welles' play did. I don't see how that could

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happen. There's just no argument for that theory. From the science fiction magazines of the 30s to

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present-day movies like Signs, it's clear that a number of ideas have impacted on the collective

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consciousness. But the media is only one part of the equation. Science fiction literature definitely

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played a role in the 20s and 30s, and science fiction is still playing a role today. Just look

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at the movie Signs from 2002. There's a definite interest in things that are strange out of the

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ordinary. I'm not talking about everyone, but there are a lot of people that this applies to,

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and I don't think that will ever change. I think to some degree, there's a demand for this kind

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of thing. How well that demand is met is a different issue, but there's a definite fascination with

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it. Earlier, we spoke of the impact of Orson Welles' play on South America when it aired down

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there three years later. But we don't have to go as far as Chile or Ecuador to see how

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fascinated people are by aliens. In 1980, a small community station outside of Montreal

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announced that aliens had landed near Mont Saint-Hilaire, and some 800 people went to check it out.

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That was in 1980, which is not that long ago. Science fiction may not fill a vital need,

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but I think it fills a need that people have to fantasize. Some things that were mere fantasy

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back in the 1930s and 40s have become reality in the new millennium, especially in the areas of

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technology and transportation. There's a fine line between fact and fiction, and sometimes it's hard

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to tell where the line begins and where it ends. The Cantrell studies show that the influence of

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the media on our beliefs is a personal matter. Even if you support the theory that authorities

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were trying to manipulate the population, it's a bit of a stretch to say that that alone could be

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enough to convince the entire population that aliens exist. There are a lot of different

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influences, and for people who allow it, the mass media can become a source of influence.

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So, when they're in line at the grocery store and they read a headline about some Hollywood

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celebrity being abducted by Martians, if they're already inclined to believe what's in the tabloids,

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and if they read a lot about aliens and so on, seeing that headline might just be proof enough for them.

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The media's job is to present the different issues of the day. It's up to us to figure out what's

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true and what isn't. Hopefully, the majority of people still have some analytical abilities

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and are capable of critical thinking. But given a situation where both the external and internal

400
00:43:53,880 --> 00:44:01,000
factors come into play, a person might experience confirmation bias and see what they want to believe.

401
00:44:04,440 --> 00:44:09,400
If UFOs are nothing but a myth born out of pop culture, then whatever happened to the monsters

402
00:44:09,480 --> 00:44:14,600
and robots of early sci-fi novels? And if the media was just a puppet used by the government to

403
00:44:14,600 --> 00:44:19,800
prepare the world for the big revelation that aliens are real, then its efforts were clearly

404
00:44:19,800 --> 00:44:26,040
in vain. The number of people who believe in aliens is about the same today as in 1950.

405
00:44:26,040 --> 00:44:31,800
Studying UFOs without taking pop culture into account would be an exercise in futility.

406
00:44:31,800 --> 00:44:36,440
You'd have to be blind to miss the remarkable coincidences between science fiction and the

407
00:44:36,440 --> 00:44:41,960
field of ufology. But you'd have to be just as blind to chalk up the whole UFO phenomenon

408
00:44:41,960 --> 00:44:47,080
to the single explanation that it comes from pop culture. The appearance of science fiction

409
00:44:47,080 --> 00:44:53,640
concepts in UFO stories doesn't teach us much about the UFO phenomenon itself, but it does tell us

410
00:44:53,640 --> 00:45:00,120
about the witnesses and how the media influences them. The trees shouldn't stop us from seeing the forest.

411
00:46:36,440 --> 00:46:37,180
you