FROM SCIENCE TO SCIENCE FICTION
This series, see part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4 and concluding with this segment, 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).
1940s AD
1940 AD, Henry Kuttner “No Man’s World” includes the following description, “bulbous-headed and spindly-limbed.”
1941 AD, In the future within Robert Arthur’s “Evolution’s End” humans are enslaved by The Masters. The story states, “Their great, thin-skulled heads and mighty brains…nothing but brain.” Kottmeyer adds “the head is set upon a small neckless body, the neck being lost so the weight could be handled by shoulder and back muscles.”
A 1945 AD Readers Digest article by Roy Chapman Andrews was titled “How We Are Going to Look” and noted:
Human beings, half a million years from now would be caricatures in our eyes – something out of a bad dream. Big round heads, almost globular, hairless as a billiard ball…Their faces will be smaller. But they will be taller, probably several inches, with longer and only four toes.
1946 AD, In Neil Bell’s “Life Comes to Seathorpe” the description is “The head is large and magnificent. The brain is more complex.”
A 1947 AD issue of Science Digest was titled “The Shape of Men to Come” and included an article titled “Mankind So Far” by William Howell which claimed:
…the beast in us will continue to recede and the brain to advance, until we have huge bald heads together with spindly legs and wormy little bodies…and live on food pills.
Kottmeyer ads, “He accepts some of Henry Shapiro’s ideas and feels the heads will be rounder to economize bone with the face smaller and chin more pointed. He notes baldness is hereditary and common in Whites, but rare in other races. Whether it will become universal is anybody’s guess.”
1950s AD
I cannot seem to find it but it is related that the illustration by Frank Paul for Stanton Coblentz “Into Plutonian Depths” (1950 AD) “nicely prefigures the Gray form in having a bulbous head, large eyes, no evident nose or ears, a scrawny frame and bony limbs.”
1980s AD
1987 AD, “Journey to the Year 3000” Edward Packard depicts people with “bigger heads and slighter bodies.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A plea: I have to pay for server usage and have made all content on this website free and always will. I support my family on one income and do research, writing, videos, etc. as a hobby. If you can even spare $1.00 as a donation, please do so: it may not seem like much but if each person reading this would do so, even every now and then, it would add up and really, really help out. Here is my donate/paypal page.
Due to robo-spaming, I had to close the comment sections. However, you can comment on my Facebook page.
Twitter: #FiftyShadesofGrey, #Aliens, #UFO
Facebook: #FiftyShadesofGrey, #Aliens, #UFO