不気味なSFとUAP――ハロウィーン特集

Sci-fi picks and UAPs. The haunts of space, the spooky season. You're listening to Are We There Yet, the radio show exploring space exploration. Hi, I'm Brendan Byrne. We're getting into the Halloween spirit with our annual spooky episode. And what better way to celebrate than with a spooky flick? We'll speak with NPR's critic-at-large Eric Deggans about his favorite space-themed sci-fi horror movies. Then, UFOs are moving from the fringes to the front page. As more organizations like NASA and the DOD take Unidentified Anomalous Phenomenon, or UAPs, more seriously, how is it shaping the conversation about these sightings? We'll speak with science journalist Sarah Scholes about the reaction from the UAP community. That's ahead on Are We There Yet? for this Halloween episode. Before we jump into the show, have you checked out our other show?

When We Find Them is a new limited podcast series from Central Florida Public Media, and it's out now. What happens to society when scientists do discover signs of life in the universe? When We Find Them takes a deep dive into that day and what might come after. New episodes are out on Wednesdays. You can get it wherever you get this podcast. It's spooky season, and one of my favorite Halloween pastimes is watching a scary movie. But I'm short on recommendations this year. So we're revisiting a conversation with Eric Deggans, NPR's critic-at-large and Knight Professor of Journalism and Media Ethics at Washington and Lee University in Virginia for his recommendations for some spooky space-themed horror flicks. We spoke with Eric last year to tell us some of his all-time favorites. Here's that conversation now. Eric, welcome to Are We There Yet?

Glad to be here. Glad to have you, Eric. As I mentioned before, I have been trying to get you on the show forever, and this is a great opportunity. We're coming up with our spooky season recommendations, and we've tasked you to come up with some space-themed scary movies, which I thought was going to be a tough assignment. It was not. You sent us a whole list of movies. What is on the top of your list for this spooky season, Eric? Well, at the top of my list is the first two Alien movies, of course. These are movies combined, a really interesting and innovative look at the future with all the tropes and all the suspense of a great horror film. The first one in particular, directed by Ridley Scott, Alien, came out in 1979, I believe. It had a really sort of British feel to it. So the pace at the beginning in particular is very slow, and it builds throughout the film. And I think the film also benefits from what we saw happen with Jaws, where the costume that they came up with for the monster wasn't that convincing when you could really fully see it.

So Ridley Scott very wisely decided to prevent that from happening until the very end of the film. So you have a lot of suspenseful shots where you see parts of it. You see the mouth. You see as it's changing, you know, it started out as a very small thing that emerges from the stomach of one of the astronauts. And that in itself, I saw it in the theater. I'm old enough to have seen it in the theater. And when that xenomorph burst out of his stomach, I had to leave the theater for about five minutes. You know, I had never seen anything like that on film before. And then the second film, Aliens, takes those horror movie tropes but weds it to a combat, army, military movie kind of vibe. So you have this team of Marines up against dozens of Xenomorphs. There's a lot of themes that you would see in military movies like Platoon, but also a lot of horror movie tropes. Because, again, they're very judicious in how they show you the Xenomorphs. And it takes a while before the movie even reveals to you that there's more than one of them.

And all these Marines have to deal with basically a planet full of killing machines. So those are my two favorite combinations of science fiction and horror by far. And they've led to so many spinoffs, right? I've played the game Alien Isolation, which is just as terrifying as that first film. That's that suspense. You don't know where the villain is. And also a television show, right, which I started watching. And you recently reviewed for NPR, didn't you? Yeah, Alien Earth on FX. I interviewed the showrunner Noah Hawley, who also masterminded FX's version of Fargo, and he's become sort of the go-to guy for translating films into compelling original TV series. And he told me before, I mean, this would have been maybe a year and a half before the show actually debuted. He told me that he was mostly going to be taking from the first two Alien movies. And I think that's obvious if you watch the TV show. The beginning of the series is very much a tip of the hat to the beginning of the first Alien movie. It starts very much the same way. And it seems to be Noah Hawley's way of sort of, you know, acknowledging the brilliance of Ridley Scott's direction and the way the slow pace that he started that movie and the way in which he introduces you to these space travelers who are working steps.

You know, space travel has become so routine in this future that these guys are like space truckers. They're like, you know, they're working stiffs who want to get paid. And they stumble on something that gets almost all of them killed. You again meet that crew again. They're very much like that working stiffs who have been tasked to caster these deadly creatures. Several of them had already been killed by then, by the time we meet them. And then, of course, they have a horrific accident that kills the rest of them as the TV show goes forward. I don't regularly watch horror movies, so there are moments when I just couldn't even look at the screen because I was so tense and it was so suspenseful. And so I think they're real success, not so much recreating the vibe of the first two movies. It was recreating that sense of suspense. Next on your list, Eric, was Star Wars. I'm a huge Star Wars fan. Why is it on the horror list? There are elements of sort of the Star Wars canon that, again, sort of harken back to what we know about horror, particularly when you think about the times when we meet Jabba the Hutt, the times when we meet some of the more exotic creatures.

There's even moments in the very first one, A New Hope, that attracted that in a garbage disposal unit, Han Solo and Luke Skywalker and Chewbacca. and there something living in there that also you know trying to eat them I going to have to rewatch it through a different lens now thinking about that From Star Wars to Star Trek you got Star Trek II The Wrath of Khan on this list here One of the things I love about Wrath of Khan is that it was such a great rebound from Star Trek, the motion picture. There are still long stretches of it that are boring and tough to stick with, and stretches of it that where the characters, you know, they hadn't quite figured out how to play these characters in a movie. Of course, the villain of Khan and that whole opposition between him and Captain Kirk, that's wonderful. But what's best to me about the movie is that we get back to the old camaraderie between Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock and Bones McCoy. We get to see those three guys as a team, as a found family who care about each other.

And in particular, of course, the bond between Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock. When Leonard Nimoy passed away some years ago, I wrote this essay for NPR where I talked about how his journey to accept playing Spock was also sort of Spock's journey to accept himself. What we see when you watch Leonard Nimoy's performance over Star Trek, the original series, and then in the movies, he also played him in some of the spinoff TV series like Next Generation. And then finally, in the J.J. Abrams movies, is a character who learned to accept the duality of his nature and to accept that being half human didn't make him less than. He was always at his fullest and his best when he accepted both sides of his nature, the Vulcan, the logical side and the human side. You know, Leonard Nimoy was always at his best when he accepted that he was great at playing this character. People loved this character, and he needed to lean into the way that it affected his career and his life, which he eventually did. So what I love about Wrath of Khan is that's the beginning of that acceptance.

Next on your list, Men in Black. Ultimately, I think that the mark of a great science fiction movie is not the authenticity of the new world that it creates, but the believability of it, the way in which a new universe is created that you want to live in. And what Men in Black does is it takes the average sort of trope of government agents tracking down a villain, even a villain who threatens the entire world, and flips it to show you that there's this entire universe that most of the world is unaware of that is populated with all these great aliens. The rules of how life works there is different. The rules of how law enforcement works there feels a little familiar if you've seen Dreadnet or if you've seen Law and Order. But it's also very different. because it's aliens. And so they have a lot of fun with taking the tropes of a typical sort of police detective drama and also an espionage drama and also an end of the world drama and using it to serve this high concept,

which is there are all these aliens on Earth that most Earthlings are not aware of, and there's a government agency that's been tasked to keep tabs on them that is always in the corner of your vision, always on the periphery of your sight. You're never quite aware of them. When you become aware of them, they arrest your memory. But they are the guardians of the world, and they're the men in black. The film itself, especially the first one, has a tone and a pacing that is comedic but also can be serious. It needs to be. It creates a universe that you want to live in and know more about, and that to me is a hallmark of a great science fiction TV show or movie. I looked at the date, and I remember being terrified because I was 10 when I saw that movie. And Vincent D'Onofrio, when he gets in that skin, like, that's a very terrifying scene for a 10-year-old to be watching, right? Hollow out people and put on their skin like he's wearing a suit. I mean, is there anything more horrifying than that? The tip of the hat at the end of the movie, which is this idea that, you know, the entire universe that we're in might just be a marvel that much larger aliens use to entertain their children with.

Yeah, there's nothing like existential horror, right? Yeah, exactly. Next on your list, Jeff Goldblum, Geena Davis, The Fly. So this is one where it's much more a direct sort of connection between science fiction and horror because this is, you know, of course, an experiment gone awry where Jeff Goldblum plays a scientist who invents a teleportation machine and inadvertently teleports himself and a fly, And the machine gets confused and melds the two of them on a genetic level, and then he begins to transform. Again, this is a platform to talk about all these questions that we have about, you know, what happens when we invent a machine that's so dangerous that we kill ourselves with it. Also, you know, what connects us to the world and what binds us to each other? And, you know, what happens when those things are kind of severed by, you know, a sort of driving ambition that can ultimately be self-destructive. But you also get this good old-fashioned horror where, you know, Jeff Goldblum's character starts to, you know, his fingernails come off, his body transforms.

Eventually, he turns into, you know, a giant fly. They figured out how to manage that transition in a way that felt very realistic and also was really horrified. If you're familiar with the early version, the first version of this movie, this was a movie that was made, I think, in the 1950s. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah, and basically what happened was when the guy teleported himself, he had a big giant fly head and a giant fly hand. And that was their version of, you know. Not nearly as terrifying. And because of the much better special effects technology, you know, they were able to make that change much more gradual where Jeff Goldblum seems human, but then his fingernails come off. His finger is split and start to fuse. His skin falls off his body. and then by the end of the movie, you know, he's completely transforming into a giant fly and gets to the point where he begs his former girlfriend to kill him.

Anyone who watches that, even now, I think, again, you know, this is a movie that holds up. You watch it now and it has the same punch that it had when it came out. And to me, that's another measure of a great sci-fi. I tried to watch all these films before interviewing you and I'm not a huge horror fan. myself, so you certainly terrified me over the weekend, so I appreciate it, Eric. No problem, man. Great. Eric Deggans, thanks for joining us. Thank you for having me. That was Eric Deggans, NPR's critic at large and Knight Professor of Journalism and Media Ethics at Washington and Lee University in Virginia. Still to come, UFOs, from the fringes to the front page. There is a group of people within the UFO community who is very happy just that you know there are official sources and official organizations really paying attention to this topic taking it seriously investigating it scientifically How we talking about UFOs and UAPs That's ahead on Are We There Yet?

I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. You're listening to Are We There Yet? From Central Florida Public Media, I'm Brendan Byrne. For years, talk of UFOs and alien visitors were on the fringe. But now, as the Department of Defense and NASA and even the presidential administration are publicly acknowledging the existence of unidentified anomalous phenomenon, or UAPs, the conversation has gone mainstream. Sarah Scholes is a science journalist who has reported on the search for alien life and the communities surrounding UFOs and UAPs. She's also the author of the book They Are Already Here, UFO Culture and Why We See Saucers. We spoke to her on a previous episode about UAPs back in 2023.

Here's that conversation now. Sarah, the last time we talked, the Department of Defense was about to release its UAP study, and NASA just announced that it was getting ready to jump into studying this phenomenon as well. But a lot has changed since then. From your reporting and the way you know this community, what's been the reaction by the UFO and UAP community to these recent events? Yeah, I think the reaction has been a little bit mixed, like any good reaction, probably. You know, there is a group of people within the UFO community who is very happy just that, you know, there are official sources and official organizations really paying attention to this topic, taking it seriously, investigating it scientifically, and, you know, being transparent about what they're finding, you know, holding public meetings, even the Department of Defense and also, of course, NASA. and so I think yeah there's a lot of people who just feel like here's a topic that I've been very interested in and now you know very legitimate people are paying attention and maybe we'll get

some answers and then I think there is also probably a smaller reaction of people who say you know both the Department of Defense and NASA have said you know what we have found so far indicates no evidence that UAP have anything to do with aliens. And, you know, there's always the reaction of, well, you know, of course they would say that. Why would they give away the greatest secret in the universe? So a little bit of conspiracy going on there. But I think by and large, people are just happy to have others paying attention. Let's take a step back. What was the reason NASA got involved in this? And what has been kind of the blueprint moving forward? And what have they learned? What have they told us that they've learned? Yeah, you know, I'm not in the rooms where they officially make the decisions about how and why to do something. But I think that NASA officials thought that the space agency would have something to contribute to this. You know, they gather tons of data from satellites and other sensors looking down through the atmosphere on Earth or just, you know, on Earth.

And, you know, they are a public agency that works largely on non-classified things. And so they thought, you know, maybe we have some data that could help this out. And so that is kind of the framework for the NASA UAP study is like, let's spend this time. Let's look at the data that we have. Let's look at the analysis methods that we have and see what we as a scientific agency, not a defense agency, might have to contribute to this project. And so that, you know, they haven't, as I understand it, done a ton of actual analysis on the data so far, but more just looked at what could we be doing if we were focused on doing some kind of UIP research. When we spoke last, we talked about these stories hitting mainstream media outlets. We talked about the New York Times piece on the Tic Tac and how it was bringing a topic that has generally been in the fringes to the mainstream. You know, in these two years, has the public perception of UFOs or UAPs or whatever term we're using, has it changed the public perspective or the stigma around talking about the topic?

I think that the stigma around the topic has changed, at least in terms of talking about unidentified things in the sky without any, you know, connotation of what they are. Like, I think if you ask most people, they would agree with both NASA and the Pentagon that there are things that people see that we have not identified, which is, you know, the straight up definition of a UFO or a UAP. And so I think that the stigma around saying like, yeah, I saw something, I didn't know what it was. I'm a military pilot or a commercial pilot or just a person in my backyard. I think that has become pretty well accepted and nobody's going to think you're, you know, off the wall for saying that. I think that there still is some stigma and, you know, probably rightly so to saying, like, I know that that means there's alien spaceships on Earth. And I think in some ways, you know, having these official organizations very officially investigate UFOs has made people less likely to associate UFOs with aliens.

and just to say, you know, there is stuff up there. We can't explain it. Let's investigate it. Rather than I saw something, the little green men are coming to get me. You know, there are robotic missions on the surface of Mars looking for ancient signs of life. We have the JWST Space Telescope that's searching for signs of life on other planets that exist outside of our own solar system. You know, that quote-unquote little green men finding, you know, could be in the realm of possibilities in both of our lifetimes. I mean, is that sentiment changing with what's happening on the scientific side of things? Yeah, I think it has been slowly evolving, actually, for a number of decades. You know, the idea of searching for life in the universe in general has really come into the mainstream, like you said, for distant exoplanets and for planets in our solar system. And that's, like, usually one of the main goals of most of NASA's really expensive, sophisticated instruments, and that's not controversial at all. everyone agrees that that's a cool and interesting thing that we should be doing.

And I think even for the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, you know, not looking for microbes on Mars or chemicals in the atmosphere of a distant planet, but actual signals from a potential civilization far away you know that used to have a large stigma attached to it which study scientists used to call a giggle factor that I think has decreased as we learned more about the universe and how big it is and how many planets there are. And, you know, the UFO, UFO alien combo side of things is kind of the last vestige maybe of that stigma that exists. And so I don't know that I know what will happen, but we have seen this kind of mainstreaming up the rest of it. And so it would make sense to me if it kind of continued in that direction. There's also, you know, and I've heard from a few people, including people in my own newsroom, about a fear of what we may find, you know, this kind of existential crisis that we may not be alone out there. I mean, do you think there's enough being done to address these genuine

concerns of fear and anxiety of unknown? Yeah. And I think, I mean, one way to address fear and anxiety of the unknown is to make it known. So in that way, things like the NASA study could potentially help your colleagues. And I think a lot of people would say it's scarier to think of a universe without any other life. Like there's this whole thing, billions of light years wide, expanding all the time, and it's just empty and we're the only ones. Like that's a lot of pressure, I think. And but I think, you know, yeah, as as we start to have more of these conversations about, you know, what what life might exist in the universe, is it out there? Is it here? Then it's important to have those, you know, maybe less hard scientific and more sociological and psychological and cultural conversations about what it what it means. and kind of an aside, if I may, is I am always amazed by the number of people who,

when a story comes out that says, like, hey, maybe we discovered something that has to do with extraterrestrial life, they're like, well, yeah, duh, no big deal, and then just can't move on because they already think that that's true, and so it's just kind of further confirmation, and I'm like, no, no, wait, let's take a step back. I do want to take a step back, and I recognize that this answer may not be able to be answered in the short time that we have here because you actually wrote an entire book on it. The book is They Are Already Here, UFO Culture and Why We See Saucers. Sarah, what is this fascination with UFO culture and interest in this group that the book takes a fascinating look at? Can you just tease our listeners with what you found? Yeah, I think it starts with the fact that, you know, in our culture at least, UFOs are associated with aliens. And one of the oldest questions that humans have had, although I haven't talked to all of the oldest humans, but, you know, are we alone?

What else is going on in the universe? And UFOs are kind of a way from Earth on Earth that we can think about that question, which we don't get a lot of opportunities to do. I think also, you know, a lot of people, probably most people have seen something in the sky and not known what it was. And like, that's a weird feeling. Like, I've seen plenty of things. I don't know what they were. I don't think that they were aliens. But, you know, it's cool and interesting to look up at the sky and see something weird. But kind of the overarching sentiment that seemed to unite all of the people who I spoke to is just like, there aren't a whole lot of huge mysteries left in the world. And, you know, what is a UFO is one and it's a fascinating problem. I think one of the NASA officials, you know, said it's one of the most fascinating questions or most important questions out there. And, you know, humans have spent decades and decades, at least trying to get some answers,

and we haven't yet. And so, you know, at least for me working on the book, when I started, I was like, oh, maybe I could be the person who figures it out. And of course I wasn't. And usually no one is. But everybody likes a mystery. Everybody likes to investigate. And when you have a mystery that relates to one of humanity's deepest and oldest questions, like that's kind of the jackpot, I think. What's ahead, Sarah? What do you think is next in kind of our understanding of this and the community's reaction to what is going on? And places like the DOD and NASA as they investigate these UAP. Yeah, I wish I had a crystal ball that I don't, so this will just be a guess. But, you know, I think as the stigma that we talked about starts to decrease and we do have more of these official investigation programs, we'll both get more reports that are verifiable, both from civilians and from military personnel, that can be investigated and that is, you know, data. And then NASA is looking at its own data to understand kind of the context around all of that.

And so I think for a while we probably won't have a ton of answers. But just as you start to have more information, you can start to kind of pin down answers about what's going on. And to me, something that's fascinating and often I think it's lost in UFO conversations is that UFOs have never been just one thing. We talk about them like, you know, they're all flying saucers or they're all military drones or something, but there are tons and tons of things, even if some of them are extraordinary. Some of them are balloons. Some of them are Venus. You know, some of them might be something we don't truly understand. And so kind of getting understanding the scope of that in a bigger and more official way. And I think I kind of think their reactions will probably be similar to what they are now. Either just, you know, gratefulness that somebody's taking it seriously or skepticism that we're getting the whole story. That's kind of been the story of UFOs since the beginning of UFOs. Sarah Scholes is a science journalist and her book is They Are Already Here, UFO Culture and Why We See Saucers.

Sarah, thanks so much for joining us. Yeah, thank you so much for having me. That's going to do it for this week's show. If you're interested in our search for life in the universe, check out our newest podcast, When We Find Them, a limited series that explores the search for life and what happens when we find it. Get on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes are out on Wednesdays. Stay connected with this show. Be sure to follow Are We There Yet? on social media. You can find us on Instagram and Facebook. We're at A-W-T-Y space. If you've got an idea for a future episode of this show or you want to join us as a guest, reach out to us. Our email is arewetheryet at cfpublic.org. Our Read There Yet is a production of Central Florida Public Media. Our producer is Marian Summerall. Editorial guidance comes from Latoya Dennis. Support for Our Read There Yet comes from our listeners. Until next time, I'm Brandon Byrne. Thanks for listening.