Today, aliens are one of the most familiar ideas in popular culture.
They appear in everything from Star Trek and Star Wars to The X-Files, Alien, E.T., and countless novels, comic books, television programs, and films. We are accustomed to stories about beings arriving from Mars, distant star systems, or galaxies far beyond our own.
But when did people first imagine life beyond Earth?
The answer is surprisingly old.
Human beings have wondered about other worlds for thousands of years. But there is an important distinction between ancient gods, spirits, and mythological beings associated with the heavens and what we would recognize as an extraterrestrial alien—a living being originating somewhere other than Earth.
The history of that idea begins long before the invention of science fiction.
Ancient Imaginations of Other Worlds
Ancient cultures commonly imagined the heavens as populated by supernatural beings.
Greek and Roman mythology was filled with gods associated with the sky, planets, stars, and celestial phenomena. But these beings were generally understood as divine or supernatural. They were not "aliens" in the modern sense.
The idea of extraterrestrial life requires something different: the possibility that other physical worlds might have their own inhabitants.
One of the earliest surviving examples appears in the work of the second-century Greek-speaking writer Lucian of Samosata.
Lucian's A True Story
Around the second century AD, Lucian wrote a satirical work known in English as A True Story or True History.
The title is deliberately ironic.
Lucian announces that he intends to tell stories that are completely untrue. He then describes an extraordinary voyage in which his protagonists are carried through space and eventually reach the Moon.
There they encounter an entirely different form of life.
Lucian describes strange creatures, unusual societies, and a civilization involved in warfare with inhabitants of the Sun.
The work therefore contains several elements that would become central to science fiction:
- Travel beyond Earth
- Life on another celestial body
- Alien societies
- Interplanetary warfare
- Encounters between humans and extraterrestrial beings
It has consequently been described as the earliest known work of fiction containing space travel, alien life, and interplanetary warfare.
There is an important qualification, however.
Lucian's extraterrestrials do not live on another planet as we would understand the term today. His major extraterrestrial settings are the Moon and the Sun.
Nevertheless, the conceptual breakthrough is remarkable.
Lucian was imagining that Earth was not necessarily the only place in the cosmos where life existed.
And he was doing so almost 2,000 years before humanity sent its first spacecraft into space.
Lucian's Aliens Were Not Really "Little Green Men"
Lucian's extraterrestrials also remind us that the modern image of the alien is relatively recent.
His creatures are bizarre combinations of familiar animals and humans. Some have multiple heads, unusual physical characteristics, or other fantastic features.
This makes sense.
An author imagining extraterrestrial life has no actual examples to work from. The alien therefore becomes a projection of the strange and unfamiliar using things that humans already know.
This pattern would continue for centuries.
Aliens would be depicted as:
- Human beings with different appearances
- Animals with unusual characteristics
- Giants or dwarfs
- Insects
- Monsters
- Mechanical-looking creatures
- Advanced versions of humanity
The modern concept of an alien evolved gradually.
Johannes Kepler and the Moon
Another important step came during the Scientific Revolution.
The astronomer Johannes Kepler wrote Somnium ("The Dream") around 1608, although the work was substantially revised and published posthumously in 1634.
Kepler's story describes a journey to the Moon and imagines the lunar environment and its inhabitants.
The Moon is called Levania, and Kepler speculates about its climate, geography, atmosphere, and inhabitants. The story combines fantasy with contemporary astronomy.
This makes Somnium particularly significant.
Lucian had used space travel primarily for satire and fantasy.
Kepler was trying to think about what another world might actually be like.
He asked questions that sound remarkably modern:
What would the environment be like on another world?
How would living creatures adapt to it?
How would the heavens appear to someone standing on another celestial body?
What would Earth look like from the Moon?
Kepler was therefore an important bridge between ancient fantastic voyages and modern science fiction.
The Possibility of Life on Other Planets
The Scientific Revolution also changed the intellectual environment in which extraterrestrial life could be discussed.
The Copernican revolution had displaced Earth from the physical center of the universe.
If Earth was one planet orbiting the Sun rather than the center of creation, it became reasonable to ask whether other planets might also have inhabitants.
The question became increasingly serious during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Writers began imagining voyages to the Moon, Mars, Venus, and other worlds.
These stories were not necessarily "science fiction" in the modern sense, but they were laying the foundations for it.
The First Aliens from Another Planet
If we define the question very narrowly—What is the first known fictional story to depict intelligent beings actually originating on another planet rather than the Moon or another celestial body?—the answer becomes considerably less certain.
This is because early writers often treated the Moon as a world in its own right, while the modern astronomical distinction between planets, moons, and other celestial bodies developed gradually.
By the nineteenth century, however, writers were explicitly imagining civilizations on other planets.
Mars became the most important candidate.
Why Mars?
Mars was close enough to be scientifically interesting but distant enough to encourage speculation.
Astronomers observed markings on its surface, and the famous—but ultimately mistaken—idea of Martian "canals" helped inspire speculation that an advanced civilization might live there.
Mars consequently became the home of some of the earliest recognizable extraterrestrial civilizations in modern science fiction.
A Journey in Other Worlds
By the nineteenth century, writers were increasingly imagining fully developed extraterrestrial civilizations.
One example was Gustavus W. Pope's Journey to Mars, published in 1894.
The story describes a journey to Mars and encounters with Martian peoples and societies.
Pope imagined Mars as a world with multiple races and civilizations, demonstrating how far the idea of the extraterrestrial had developed by the end of the nineteenth century.
Mars was no longer simply a distant point of light.
It was becoming a place where another civilization might exist.
H. G. Wells and the Modern Alien
The most important nineteenth-century development came with H. G. Wells.
His The War of the Worlds, published in 1898, transformed the alien from a curiosity into one of the central figures of modern science fiction.
The Martians are not simply humans living on another world.
They are genuinely alien.
They possess a radically different physical form, technology far beyond that of humanity, and an entirely different biological history.
Wells's Martians are enormous, tentacled creatures with large brains and comparatively weak bodies. They operate sophisticated machines and use devastating weapons such as the heat-ray.
More importantly, Wells reversed the traditional direction of the story.
Humans do not travel to Mars.
The Martians come to Earth.
That became one of the defining ideas of modern alien fiction.
The alien is no longer simply someone we discover.
The alien can discover us.
The First Alien Invasion
The War of the Worlds also established another important science-fiction tradition: the alien invasion.
Wells was writing during the height of European imperialism.
Britain possessed a massive empire, and European powers were conquering and dominating territories around the world.
Wells turned the imperial experience upside down.
Instead of technologically superior Europeans invading a less powerful civilization, technologically superior Martians invade Britain.
The story therefore asks readers to imagine what it would feel like to be on the receiving end of an invasion.
The alien was becoming more than a curiosity.
It could be a metaphor for humanity itself.
The First Aliens on Film
Cinema introduced another major stage in the history of extraterrestrial life.
The first important science-fiction film was Georges Méliès's French production Le Voyage dans la Lune (A Trip to the Moon), released in 1902.
Méliès drew inspiration from works including Jules Verne's From the Earth to the Moon and H. G. Wells's The First Men in the Moon. The result was an extraordinary fourteen-minute spectacle featuring a spacecraft, a lunar expedition, elaborate sets, special effects, and strange inhabitants of the Moon.
The film famously depicts the spacecraft crashing into the Moon's face.
The explorers then encounter the Selenites, strange lunar inhabitants who look more like fantastic humanoid creatures than the technologically sophisticated extraterrestrials of later science fiction.
The Selenites attack the explorers, who eventually escape back to Earth.
This is an important distinction:
The first famous cinematic aliens were not Martians. They were Moon inhabitants.
Nevertheless, A Trip to the Moon established the visual language of cinematic extraterrestrials.
The alien had become something audiences could actually see.
A Message from Mars — 1903
Only a year later came an even more significant development.
A Message from Mars, a 1903 film made in New Zealand by Franklyn Barrett, featured a Martian.
The film was based on a popular stage play by Richard Ganthony, which had itself been influenced by Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol.
The story concerns a selfish man who receives a moral lesson from a visitor from Mars.
The film is particularly interesting because the Martian is not simply a monster.
The extraterrestrial is a messenger.
The alien comes from another planet and possesses knowledge and moral insight that the human protagonist lacks.
This is an important early development in the portrayal of extraterrestrials: the alien can be morally superior to humanity.
Modern science fiction would repeatedly return to this idea.
The extraterrestrial could be:
- A threat
- A teacher
- A savior
- A superior intelligence
- A mirror of humanity
A Message from Mars is especially significant because it appears to be the earliest surviving film involving a Martian and an alien visitation to Earth, although the film itself is now considered lost.
A Trip to Mars — 1918
The next major milestone came from Denmark.
Holger-Madsen's Himmelskibet, usually known in English as A Trip to Mars, was released in 1918.
This film takes the concept much further.
Earth explorers build a spacecraft called the Excelsior and travel to Mars.
When they arrive, they discover that Mars is inhabited by an advanced civilization.
The Martians are peaceful, vegetarian, and free from many of the problems that plague humanity. They have overcome war, violence, disease, and other forms of suffering.
This was particularly striking given when the movie was produced.
Europe was still engulfed in the First World War.
Millions of people had been killed in industrialized warfare.
Against that background, the peaceful Martians functioned as a criticism of human civilization.
The film effectively asks:
What if another planet had succeeded where humanity had failed?
The alien was therefore becoming a means of examining human society.
From Monsters to Mirrors
This is one of the most important developments in the history of the alien.
Early extraterrestrials were usually simply strange.
But as science fiction developed, aliens increasingly became mirrors of humanity.
The alien could represent whatever humans feared or hoped for.
The Martians of H. G. Wells
They represented technologically superior imperialism.
The Martians of A Message from Mars
They represented moral enlightenment.
The Martians of A Trip to Mars
They represented an alternative, peaceful civilization.
Later aliens would represent communism, fascism, racial difference, technological anxiety, environmental destruction, colonialism, or simply humanity's fear of the unknown.
The alien became a remarkably flexible literary device.
Television and the Alien
Television brought extraterrestrials into people's homes.
One of the most important early television developments was the anthology science-fiction series.
Programs such as The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits used extraterrestrial encounters to explore philosophical and social questions.
Later series such as Star Trek transformed the alien from a monster into a recurring character.
Instead of having one alien species, Star Trek created an entire galaxy of extraterrestrial civilizations.
The Klingons, Vulcans, Romulans, Andorians, Tellarites, Gorn, and countless other species demonstrated how far the concept had evolved.
The alien was no longer simply something that appeared in one story.
It could become a civilization with its own:
- History
- Language
- Religion
- Politics
- Philosophy
- Technology
- Morality
- Internal conflicts
In other words, television helped turn the alien into a fully developed character.
From the Selenites to the Xenomorph
The evolution is remarkable.
Méliès's Selenites were essentially theatrical fantasy creatures.
Wells's Martians were biological and technological nightmares.
The Martians of A Trip to Mars were morally superior humans in alien surroundings.
By the twentieth century, filmmakers were creating increasingly sophisticated extraterrestrials.
The Creature from the Black Lagoon, Klaatu, the alien in The Thing, the Xenomorph in Alien, E.T., the Predators, and the creatures of Star Trek all represent radically different approaches to extraterrestrial life.
Some want to destroy humanity.
Some want to understand humanity.
Some want to exploit humanity.
Some simply want to go home.
And some want to become our friends.
So What Was the First Alien Story?
There is no single answer unless we define exactly what we mean by "alien."
A useful timeline looks like this:
| Date | Work | Significance |
|---|---|---|
| c. AD 160 | Lucian, A True Story | Earliest surviving fiction featuring space travel, extraterrestrial life and interplanetary warfare |
| c. 1608 | Kepler, Somnium | Early scientific treatment of an inhabited extraterrestrial world |
| 1634 | Somnium published | One of the foundations of modern science fiction |
| 1894 | Gustavus Pope, Journey to Mars | Early full-length depiction of civilization on Mars |
| 1898 | H. G. Wells, The War of the Worlds | Definitive early depiction of technologically advanced alien invaders from Mars |
| 1902 | Méliès, A Trip to the Moon | First major science-fiction film; famous early depiction of extraterrestrials |
| 1903 | A Message from Mars | Very early cinematic depiction of a Martian visiting Earth |
| 1918 | A Trip to Mars | Early feature-length film depicting a civilization on another planet |
The Real Beginning of the Alien
If we want to identify the first surviving fictional depiction of extraterrestrial life, Lucian of Samosata is the best starting point.
His A True Story predates modern science fiction by nearly two millennia.
If we require beings specifically from another planet, the answer is less definitive, because the distinction between planets, moons, and other worlds was not always used as it is today. Nineteenth-century Mars fiction provides the clearest beginning of the modern planetary alien.
And if we are talking about film, the answer depends upon the definition.
1902's A Trip to the Moon is the landmark first science-fiction film and one of the earliest cinematic depictions of extraterrestrial beings.
1903's A Message from Mars is an exceptionally early depiction of a Martian visiting Earth.
1918's A Trip to Mars provides one of the earliest sustained cinematic depictions of an actual civilization on another planet.
The important point is that the alien did not suddenly appear in twentieth-century science fiction.
The idea has a very long history.
Ancient writers imagined strange beings on the Moon. Early modern astronomers wondered what life on other worlds might look like. Nineteenth-century authors populated Mars with civilizations. H. G. Wells transformed the extraterrestrial into an existential threat. Early filmmakers then gave these beings physical form.
From Lucian's strange lunar creatures to the Martians of Wells and Méliès's Selenites, humanity has repeatedly used extraterrestrials to ask the same fundamental question:
Are we alone?
And perhaps the more interesting question is the one that has accompanied the idea of aliens from the beginning:
If we are not alone, what would another intelligent civilization tell us about ourselves?
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