"What Did Extraterrestrials Look Like To Victorians?" Topic

This is what extraterrestrials looked like in the 50s:

But what did UFO alien astronauts/invaders look like to people in Victorian times? Suggestions?

Thanks,

Dan
TMP link

French?
Prussians?
Americans?

Well, two out of three…

Zulus and Asians. Oh wait, Asians were on Star Trek. So just Zulus. :-)

Apart from visionaries like H.G. Wells, I think that most people in that time would have seen extraterrestrials in an exotic, but fundamentally human mold; much like the characters of planetary romances of the early 20th century.

Ron

The Wells Martian for a start. Also-

In one of the first sequels, 1898's unauthorized Edison's Conquest of Mars, a good deal of text is spent describing the Martians. In illustrations and descriptions, they are made to resemble bug-eyed, 15-foot-tall human figures, and have a vocal speech.

Okay then …

1) HG Wells' octopus-like Martians*;
2) Edison's giant humanoid Martians (?);
3) Verne's ant-like Selenites** on the Moon

Any others?

Thanks,

Dan
* TMP link
** TMP link

Neat pics !

There was a lot of different things going on. I recall a story were entities of light invaded earth

The flying figures which came hovering next to the Astronef, without evincing any sign of fear,were the strangest that human eyes had looked upon. In some respects they had a sufficient resemblance for them to be taken for winged men and women, while in another they bore a decided resemblance to birds. Their bodies and limbs were of human shape, but of slenderer and lighter build; and from the shoulder-blades and muscles of the back there sprang a second pair of arms arching up above their heads. Between these and the lower arms, and continued from them down the side to the ankles, there appeared to be a flexible membrane covered with a light feathery down, pure white on the inside, but on the back a brilliant golden yellow, deepening to bronze towards the edges, round which ran a deep feathery fringe.

The body was covered in front and down the back between the wings with a sort of divided tunic of a light, silken looking material, which must have been clothing, since there were many different colours all more or less of different hue among them. Below this and attached to the inner sides of the leg from the knee downward, was another membrane which reached down to the heels, and it was this which Redgrave somewhat flippantly alluded to as a tail. Its obvious purpose was to maintain the longitudinal balance when flying.

In stature the inhabitants of the Love-Star varied from about five feet six to five feet, but both the taller and the shorter of them were all of nearly the same size, from which it was easy to conclude that this difference in stature was on Venus as well as on the Earth, one of the broad distinctions between the sexes.

Description of Venusians, from George Griffiths' "Honeymoon in Space", published serially in Pearson's Magazine, 1900. Re-printed in Space Opera, edited by Brian Aldiss, Doubleday, 1974.

Ron

Dan
weren't the insect like Selenites also Wells and not Verne?

Tsofian,

I think both had their own version of those moon men. But you might be right about the ones actually called Selenites:

link

Those don't look as insect-like as I remember. I'll keep looking.

Dan

Tsofian,
Ok. I'm obviously confusing Verne's 1865 "From The Earth To The Moon" (and sequel "Around The Moon") with Wells' 1901 "The First Men In The Moon".

Verne's astronauts never actually land on the Moon. So it's Wells that encounters the Selenites. And they are described as being very insect-like:

link

Coelacanth,
I'm going to have to check out George Griffiths' bird-like Venusians in "Honeymoon in Space". Thanks so much for the input. He apparently had quite an imagination:

link

link

Thanks guys!

Dan

Guys,

Check out this description of inhabitants on the Moon, from a newspaper article published in 1835!

link

Dan
PS. While digging material online I found this odd video with loads and loads of airships:
YouTube link

This might be of interest. An alien airship crash in 1897 in aurora Texas. It might be a little late for what you want but it could be helpful.
link

CommanderCarnage,

I love that 1897 newspaper report! Particularly the part that mentions the pilot:

"The pilot of the ship is supposed to have been the only one aboard and, while his remains were badly disfigured, enough of the original has been picked up to show that he was not an inhabitant of this world.
Mr. T.J. Weems, the U.S. Army Signal Service officer at this place and an authority on astronomy gives it as his opinion that the pilot was a native of the planet Mars. Papers found on his person -- evidently the records of his travels -- are written in some unknown hieroglyphics and cannot be deciphered."
link

If only they had gone into more detail on why they thought the pilot was from out of this world.

Thanks so much,

Dan
PS. More about extraterrestrials in the Old West:
roswellbooks.com/?page_id=41

What about Spring-heeled Jack? He seems to be an alien-like entity:

Selenites from a 1919 film adaptation of "First Men in the Moon":

I think this is what aliens look like

Necros,

LOL. Are the two humans on the right dying of laughter?

Dan

Lovely topic. Much appreciated.

If we're talking Victorian proper, it appears there was probably no real conception in advance of what you run across in Munchausen or de Bergerac.

War of the Worlds is *really* about the first to give us proper aliens, and that's 1898.

Wells is usually touted as one of the major VSF writers… but he only scrapes into being published in the Victorian era by a few years and should probably be seen as an Edwardian writer. However, we normally count the Edwardians in with the Victorians for VSF purposes, I guess :)

Lowell didn't even publish his canal stuff until 1895. Which was influenced by Shiaparelli's 1893 book. The concept of the extraterrestrial alien is pretty much a 20th, not a 19th century concept, unless you want to quibble about less than a decade at the end of it. But, yeah, there was a bit of a "life on Mars" fad going on in the 1890's, especially after Lowell's book came out.

Martians according to the first French edition of War of the Worlds:

This model is quite faithful to the 'original' design:

Earlier extra-terrestrials were generally more humanoid:
from The Great Moon Hoax (1838):

Quite similar to some natives of the 'antipodial continent' in Restif de la Bretonne "La Découverte australe par un homme volant ou le Dédale français" (1781):

Well, the first Selenites that made it into the movies was in
the 1902 Georges Méliès' film Le Voyage dans la lune.

link

Prolly better, certainly closer in time, than the 1919, but I also favor Harryhausen's bug boys. However, don't know that I've seen any of it, but Méliès' copied parts of both Wells and Verne, from what I've seen.

Doug

Wells "The First Men in the Moon" was 1901. So, yeah… Vernean cannon and Wellsean exploration and Selenites.

And don't forget that Barsoom only pops up a decade later (1912) with the Tharks in all their green, six limbed, bug eyed glory. But that is bringing us out of VSF and into superscience and planetary romance.

I have a hunch that the association of green skin with extraterrestrials sources directly from them (happy to hear of any counter-examples). Also suspect Warhammer Orcs/Orks owe a debt to Burroughs…

Mind you, they're pretty much all Mongols anyway.

Mrinku: "Mind you, they're pretty much all Mongols anyway."

Or Attila's Huns.

As painted in c1872, by Alphonse de Neuville:

This one painted in the 1890s by V. Checa:

Dan
PS. Mrinku, check this out:
TMP link