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Most flying saucer stories, however, were treated with a little more sobriety than out and out parody and ridicule. if the public was willing to buy there were film studios ready to turn out flying saucer pictures. no matter how absurd the plot lines became, there was always a belief that just maybe it was possible. After all, if an ordinary citizen unfolded the morning newspaper and read an account of an Air Force pilot reporting a UFO and then that same citizen slipped into a seat at the neighborhood theatre that evening to view The Day the Earth Stood Still was it any wonder that serious-minded individuals were questioning where reality ended and fantasy began?

Science fiction had not attained the prominence on radio that the genre would reach in the competing realms of television and motion pictures. However, as the 1950s dawned radio began to explore science fiction as a serious genre going beyond the juvenile adventures of Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers and Superman. James Widner and Meade Frierson have suggested, in Science Fiction on Radio, that “post-1945 Fear enhanced the medium, and in turn, written sf’s growing popularity increased the genre’s attraction to radio program and motion picture producers” (9). Fear clearly had a hand in focusing attention on science fiction in a serious way. Just as a series of deep rooted fears ignited the public’s overreaction to the Orson Welles broadcast in 1938, a new set of apprehensions was preconditioning the public to pay heed to the science fictional explanations of controversial subjects such as flying saucers. The popular culture began to supply the answers that government seemed either unable or unwilling to supply. One of the principal questions on the lips of those citizens willing to entertain the notion that extraterrestrials might be paying courtesy calls on earth was “why are they here?” Such a question asked in the context of the Cold War was usually answered in the form of a warning. The media seldom provided rosy scenarios of gentle, peaceful aliens dropping in to share knowledge and provide reassurances that the galaxy was populated with living beings advocated to harmony and good intentions. Americans

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