FROM SCIENCE TO SCIENCE FICTION
This series, see part 1, part 2, part 3, gleans from Martin Kottmeyer’s articles “Varicose Brains, Part 1: Entering a Grey Area,” “Varicose Brains, Part 2: Heading Towards the Future” and “Varicose Brains, Part 3: Headhunt,” Magonia. I will attempt to keep things chronologically. Following I will relate some of the details specifically relevant to the large headed small bodies grey alien archetype in general. These will be from early scientific speculation which lead to early and ongoing science fiction.
Of course, this is not a comprehensive list as, for example, comic books (and many others from fiction to non-fiction) have been saturated with aliens for decades. In that regard, many of the images I collected and posted as the original Fifty Shades of Grey article (see slide show of images at the end of this article).
1930s AD
Kottmeyer relates, “Frank R. Paul regularly did cover paintings of spindly, big-domed men of the future for issues of Wonder Stories in the early 1930s.”
1930 AD, Elwyn Backus “Behind the Moon” includes, “little gray humanoid creatures capture a fair maiden astronaut and plan to use her as breeding material to improve their race.”
1931 AD, a paraphrase of Olaf Stapledon’s “Last and First Men” is provided:
Ten million years in the future, the environment acted upon a few human species surviving a disaster to create Second Man. They had a roomier cranium, but this needed a more massive neck, stouter legs, and greater bones. Their eyes were large and jade green. Teeth were smaller and fewer…This is basically sounder architecture and has a good logic about it…
“…the brain of the second human species threatened to outgrow the rest of the body.”…Third Man superseded Second Man and this race embarked on a project to create the next race, envisioned as a super-brain. We would call it a genetic engineering scheme with elements of embryo growth acceleration. The brain grew to 12 feet across with “a body reduced to a mere vestige upon the under surface of the brain.”
The same year brought us Clifford Simak’s “The World of the Red Sun” which includes:
…a Big Brain named Golan-Kirt comes out of the cosmos and rules the Earth five million years hence…Then there were the bald, big-brained humanoids from Alpha Centaurus who abduct Buck Rogers and his cohorts as part of a sampling expedition designed to take specimens of life for interstellar transport.
Also that year, “The Man Who Evolved” by Edmond Hamilton was published which is related thusly:
…[a] biologist learns he can speed up evolution by means of concentrated cosmic rays and decides to submit himself to its effects…reduces the body by half. It is thin and shrivelled. “The head supported by this weak body was an immense, bulging balloon that measured fully 18 inches from brow to back! It was almost entirely hairless, its great mass balanced precariously upon his slender shoulders and neck. And his face too was changed greatly, the eyes larger and the mouth smaller, the ears seeming smaller, also…
He had become simply a great head! A huge hairless head fully a yard in diameter, supported on tiny legs, the arms having dwindled to mere hands that projected just below the head! The eyes were enormous, saucer-like, but the ears were mere pinholes at either side of the head, the nose and mouth being similar holes below the eyes…gray head-thing,” wrinkled and folded, two eyes, and only two muscular tentacles. The body is entirely atrophied.
The last one for 1931 AD is From Jack Williamson “The Moon Era”:
Their limbs atrophied, perished from lack of use. Even their brains were injured, for they lived an easy life…facing no new problems…Generation upon generation their bodies wasted away. Until they were no longer natural animals. They became mere brains, with eyes and feeble tentacles. In place of bodies, they use machines. Living brains, with bodies of metal.
As it turns out “Some saw the dangers associated with machines and split away, but those who became the Eternal Ones continued the path of degeneration:
A soft helpless gray thing, with huge black staring eyes…And their eyes roughened my skin with dread. Huge black, and cold. There was nothing warm in them, nothing human, nothing kind. They were as emotionless as polished lenses.
1932 AD, from Amelia Reynolds Long’s “Omega”:
He had shrunken several inches in stature, while his head had appeared to have grown larger, with the forehead almost bulbous in aspect. His fingers were extremely long and sensitive, but suggestive of great strength. His frame was thin to emaciation…He has become a man of the future physically as well as mentally.
1932 AD, Edmond Hamilton also wrote of “bulbous heads and stilt-like legs and arms” in “A Conquest of Two Worlds.”
This was not included by Kottmeyer but I am adding it with regards to large headed beings of whatever sort. It may not directly related to UFOs and aliens but consider the following. 1934 AD, within the Nation of Islam’s theology / cosmology a certain scientist named Yacub aka Yakub was born in Mecca over six and a half thousand years ago and was of a branch of the Tribe of Shabazz: Yacub was referred to as “big head” due to literally having a large head and also due to his arrogance. This was the claim of Nation of Islam founder Wallace D. Fard Muhammad (in “Lost Found Muslim [or, Moslem]” lesson No. 2) and was further elucidated by his successor Elijah Muhammad (see “The Making of Devil” section of his book “Blackman in America” for one such instance).
Now, while this may not directly related to UFOs and aliens the Nation of Islam does, in fact, hold to belief in a UFO, of sorts, known as the Mother Plane or Mother Wheel.
1934 AD, John W. Campbell’s “Twilight” is based on “A modern man [that] accidentally time travels seven million years forward”:
They were little men – bewildered – dwarfed, with heads disproportionately large. But not extremely large. Their eyes impressed me most. They were huge, and when they looked at me there was a power in them that seemed sleeping, but too deeply to be roused.
1937 AD, The relevant point of Nat Schachner’s “Past, Present, and Future” is described thusly, “ten thousand years in the future…encountered is a little man with a bald bulging forehead. He had a delicate body, spindly limbs, and brain case that could be easily disrupted. The nose was vestigial.”
The same year had “Fessenden’s World” including “a short description of a world ruled by an oligarchy of living brains.”
1939 AD, Kottmeyer also points out that the Wizard of Oz is a “floating disembodied, bald Big Brain.” Well, the Wizard had a face but indeed, the head was very oversized.
It is also noted that “The Scully hoax proper starts in the ‘Scully’s Scrapbook’ column for the October 12, 1949 Variety. From a crash is pulled 16 men described as the size of Singer midgets.” Singer midgets refers to the little people who acted in The Wizard of Oz movie.
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