The encounters between humans and alien have been represented in many ways, within the multiple universes created under the genre of science fiction, both in movies and books. In this essay, the authors and their respective works chosen to be analyse are Bloodchild by Octavia E. Butler, Intracom by Ursula Le Guin and The Time Machine by H.G. Wells. Each one of these authors narrates the encounters with alien in their own way and, though in some cases the relationship with these beings is already established, we can appreciate through some dialogues the transition since the first contacts between the two species until the current situation.
To begin with, the first text that we are going to analyse is Bloodchild, a story that shows the type of relationship that there is between a colony of humans and a race of aliens called the Tlic that look like insects. As related by T’Gatoi, a female Tlic and one of the main characters of the story, when humans arrived to the Tlic planet many years ago after escaping from the Earth, both species established a peace agreement to survive. This treaty was created because the Tlic discovered that humans could be excellent hosts for their eggs and, on the other hand, earthlings needed a place to settle. As a result, the Preserve was established, where humans lived under the protection of the Tlic and in return, each human family had to choose a child for the implantation ceremony, after which it would become known as N’Tlic. However, this situation was not always so peaceful. With the arrival of the first human beings, the Tlic were divided into two sides. On the one hand, there were the Tlic in favour of creating the Preserve and living with humans. On the other hand, there were the Tlic who wanted to enslave them and use them as livestock for their benefit, but this side was which did not achieve its purpose.
“T’Gatoi was hounded on the outside. […]. Only she and her political faction stood between us and the hordes who did not understand why there was a Preserve […]. She parceled us out to the desperate and sold us to the rich and powerful for their political support. Thus, we were necessities, status symbols, and an independent people.”
The passage not only shows the rivalry between the two groups of Tlic mentioned previously, but the role that has been attributed to humans within that new society. As we can see, humans are treated as property that make the difference between one side and another, reflecting a reality totally contrary to what we are used to seeing. Usually, science fiction reflects universes where humans have control over the situation, but in Butler’s work, the Tlic control them after accepting them in their planet. Therefore, these circumstances lead us to pose the following question: “which of the two species should be labelled as alien?” According to the Cambridge Dictionary, the word “alien” is attributed to something strange or unfamiliar as well as to someone coming from a different race or group. Thus, if we analyse the work, the group that has more relation with the adjective is that of the human beings, since they are the foreign species that is installed in the Tlic planet.
Regarding the encounter between humans and the Tlic, we can understand through the words of T’Gatoi that the situation was not peaceful at the beginning either. In her dialogue, T’Gatoi exposes several facts where it is shown that humans, despite being aliens in a new and unknown planet for them, adopted a hostile attitude toward any life form that resided in it.
“Because your people arrived, we are relearning what it means to be a healthy, thriving people. And your ancestors, fleeing from their homeworld, from their own kind who would have killed or enslaved them—they survived because of us. We saw them as people and gave them the Preserve when they still tried to kill us as worms.”
As T'Gatoi’s says, with the arrival of humans on the Tlic planet, their species began a new learning process to reform their customs and lifestyles to facilitate the settlement of humans on their planet and, as we can see by the verb tense, the Tlic are still working on it. T’Gatoi also points out that humans escaped from their planet because they were threatened by their own race, which allows us to imagine the kind of world in which they lived, possibly plunged into chaos where animal nature would predominate. However, despite the violent circumstances they suffered at the hands of their own species, when the human colony arrived at the Tlic planet, they also adopted a hostile attitude towards everything unknown. According to T’Gatoi, the Tlic were peaceful from the beginning and helped them to survive, they did not consider them inferior than them and the Tlic provided the Preserve to them, but humans tried to kill them in spite of everything. The reason of that reaction could have been due to the fear they felt towards those unknown beings or their colonizing nature of wanting to conquer a new planet.
Nevertheless, although initially there were reprisals by humans against the Tlic, from the beginning of Bloodchild it is noted that those confrontations between species had disappeared. In the era in which the story takes place, humans live in the Preserve under the protection of the Tlic and, in return, each human family choose a child for implantation. Therefore, it has been possible to see a progressive evolution in the relationship between these two species from the first arrival on the Tlic planet to the present time. This type of barter that ensures the survival of both species is what Butler intended to create by writing her short story: in exchange for a liveable space on a world that is not their own, the human colony has to give something in return, in this case hosts human for the implantation of Tlic eggs.
The second work that we are going to analyse is Intracom, a story that tells the situation with which the crew of an intergalactic spaceship has to deal after the infiltration of an alien in the ship. The work, moreover, is not only characterised by the peculiarity of being written in the form of a script to resemble the films or series that appeared on television, but also because it is a parody of these space adventures.
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Compared to most interstellar adventures, we can also see that the crew’s gender has been reversed in the story. As they identify themselves, most of the ship’s crew members are women and mainly it can be appreciated through the conversations between the Captain and the members of the crew. The Captain also identifies herself as a woman after asking for not to be treated as “Sir”, a term that is traditionally used in this type of works. On the other hand, the only male character of the work that can be recognised by the honorific “Mr” that he uses in his name is Mr Balls, also known as First Mate. However, the human characters are not the only ones who apparently have gender within the work, but also the machines. At the beginning of the story, the Captain gives a series of data about the spaceship in which they travel: “Here we are, the personnel of the spaceship Mary Jane Hewett Class F, b-1951, Type 36-25-38, Size 13, [...].” These data could provide us the identity and gender of the ship, identifying it as female. Moreover, the letter “b” in the following section means “born”, which in relation with to the publication date shows that the spaceship is approximately twenty-two years old, the average age in which many American women married in 1970s. Finally, the type number of the spaceship also symbolises the ideal proportions of a female body (Koutná, 2014). We can also identify another male identity within the story by the description they give us about it. According to the words of the Chief Engineer: “a lovely ship, that cruiser. Sleek and slim and tapered, and power enough to rattle my pipes.” The description evokes a phallic image, so we could attribute the masculine gender to it (Koutná, 2014). In addition, as we can suppose through the words of the Insane Second Mate, the cruise could have allowed the alien to enter the spaceship and, with the idea of seeing the spaceship as a woman, we can interpret the alien’s infiltration as a pregnancy where only the women of the crew are affected by the presence of the being.
Regarding the situation with the alien inside the spaceship, we can see that from the beginning of the work, the Captain perceives the presence of an unknown member within the crew, counting six crewmembers instead of five, and the First Mate is the only one that corrects her. During the rest of the work, the Captain continues noticing that there is another presence on board the spaceship, sentiment that we could relate it to the one a woman feels when she is pregnant. Once the presence of the alien is confirmed, the women of the crew seem to take the situation as normal while Mr Balls, the only man aboard and the only member of the crew immune to the influence of the alien, wants to get rid of it because he considers it a danger for the security of all.
This situation shows us that the only character in asymmetry with the rest is Mr Balls, so he would be the stranger more than the alien itself. In fact, the Captain corroborates this argument during one of her dialogues when they are talking about the presence of the alien in the spaceship: “I wonder if Mr Balls resents the presence of the alien because he, too, has always been, in a sense, an alien presence on this ship.” According to her argument, the Captain could refer to his male gender, since he is the only man in the crew and the one who reacts in a different way unlike the others. Mr Balls, as we have said, considers the alien a threat and a burden for the crew, unlike the Captain and the rest of the members, who accept its presence and even worry about caring for it and feeding it. However, when the Insane Second Mate raises the possibility that the alien could have male gender, Mr Balls’ attitude changes and begins to treat the alien with more closeness and affection. The being, as we can see, simulates sounds and actions similar to those of a baby, and depending on the gender attributed to it, Mr Balls acts in one way or another, considering the female gender as something dangerous and useless and the male gender as something more positive and beneficial.
Therefore, we can see how the intergalactic parody can turn into a story about pregnancy where the baby is an alien that controls the female individuals. The masculine one, on the other hand, maintains his sense but he is considered the true alien of the story due to be different from the rest of the crew. Le Guin’s work, in addition, is influenced by feminism and the character of Mr Balls could mean a representation of the legislators of the time who were opposed to the women’s right to control their own bodies. Mr Balls calls women crazy for wanting to keep the alien with them and not taking his opinion of getting rid of it into account. Moreover, the character who most oppose herself against him is the Insane Second Mate, which act of rebellion was to allow the alien to access the spaceship and she hided it until the beginning of the story, going against the rules of Mr Balls (Koutná, 2014).
Finally, the third and last text that we are going to analyse is The Time Machine, a story that tells the adventures of a Time Traveller. The story begins with a 19th century scientist who manages to discover the keys of the so-called “fourth dimension”, also known as Time, and builds a vehicle that allows him to travel physically through it. After his exploit, the Time Traveller arranges a meeting between his acquaintances to show them his discovery, but he does not appear at the agreed time. When the guests see him enter with a disastrous aspect, the Time Traveller decides to tell them about his journey in time. His intention was to know the future of humanity, so he travels until the year 802.701 A.D., but far from finding a society in its maximum development, he sees a world in decay inhabited on the surface by beings known as Eloi, who lack writing, intelligence, strength and, for some reason, live with an immense fear of the subsoil. Later, the Time Traveller finally discovers that the subsoil is dominated by sinister creatures known as Morlocks, another branch of the human species that got used to living in the shadows and normally they only go outside at night to eat the Eloi they capture. These creatures are also responsible for the disappearance of the Time Machine, which will be a problem for the Time Traveller. However, when he manages to recover the machine, he returns to his period after seeing another future even darker and more terrifying than the previous one.
As we have already analysed in the previous works, the term “alien” can be attributed to one or another character depending on the perspective. In the case of The Time Machine, although the Time Traveller has not visited other planets in space, the situation is the same because when he travels to the future he finds himself in a world completely different from his own and, of course, the Eloi and Morlocks become the strange beings or alien for him. However, if we look at the situation from an external perspective, we can see that the real alien in that decadent world is the Time Traveller himself, who is lost, disoriented and stands out in a world that is not his. This fact can be supported by the impression the Eloi has when they met the Time Traveller for the first time: “They wanted to make sure I was real.” The Time Traveller’s appearance along with his fleeting and unexpected arrival in the new world caught the Eloi’s attention, who needed to examine him to be sure that he was real.
In the work, we can also appreciate a division of classes within that futuristic society: the Eloi and the Morlocks. The Time Traveller, from his first meeting and his relationship with both species, “attempts to rationalize this split, eventually theorizing that the upper class, through advances in medicine and science, became the torpid, frail, and beautiful Eloi, while the labourers, after years spent underground fulfilling the needs of the privileged, devolved into the blind, savage, nocturnal Morlocks” (Vinson, 2011). Regarding the Eloi, the Time Traveller considers them as primitive and naive from their first encounter due to the communication problems that they had, but he also feels compassion for them because of their human appearance. The Time Traveller’s opinion about these two species is guided especially by the physical appearance. As he says, although the Eloi had suffered an intellectual degradation, they “[...] had kept too much of the human form not to claim my sympathy” , while he hates the Morlocks because he considers them as savages and immoral. As he assures, “[...] it was impossible, somehow, to feel any humanity in the things.”
However, progressively we can see how the Traveller’s opinion changes regarding the Morlocks since their dangerous encounter in the forest. After finding the exit of the Palace of Green, Weena and the Time Traveller enter the forest and find a group of Morlocks. In a desperate attempt to defend Weena and himself, the protagonist uses a torch, whose light confuses the Morlocks and provides an opportunity that the Time Traveller uses to attack them. Nevertheless, the cruel image of pain and disorientation suffered by these beings due to the sudden attack makes the protagonist finally understand the nature of these creatures: “At first I did not realise their blindness [...]. But when I had watched the gestures of one of them groping under the hawthorn against the red sky, and heard their moans, I was assured of their absolute helplessness and misery in the glare, and I struck no more of them.” The Time Traveller understands that the Morlocks, like animals, are amoral creatures that fight to satisfy life’s basic needs without taking into account the consequences that their actions can trigger (Vinson, 2011). Therefore, although at the beginning of the novel he only feels sympathy for the Eloi, he progressively develop the same feeling for the Morlocks as well, because in spite of their carnivorous appetites and savages instinct, they are victims of nature.
To conclude, we can see how the question of identifying the true alien in each work depends on the perspective. It is usually attributed to characters who are in asymmetry with the story in some way. For example, in Bloodchild the aliens are the colony of humans that inhabit the planet Tlic, in Intracom we have a similar situation, where the male crew member, Mr Balls, is the alien of the work because of its gender peculiarity as well as its immunity to the influence of the alien. Finally, in The Time Machine, the Time Traveller is the stranger in the story because, as in Bloodchild, he is who lands in a totally new and unknown world that is not his. On the other hand, the encounters between the characters evolve progressively within the works. For example, what they all have in common is that these encounters start being violent, but eventually we can see how the characters sympathize with each other and, although their nature cannot always be changed, as is the case of the Morlocks, the images and knowledge that are initially created at the beginning of the work, change and evolve.
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