As early as the seventeenth century, satirists used the travel essay as a means to examine and critique societies, including their own. If an artist’s government discouraged or banned political or social critique, he was necessarily forced to disguise his criticism as fiction—the more fanciful, the better. This practice has carried over to the genre of science fiction (SF). While authors fictionalize many of the elements in SF to make their stories more exciting and bizarre, some elements have made a transition into popular culture because they resonate with the human popular imagination. As a result, many individuals believe that such elements actually exist.
Among them are popular methods of alien transportation, such as the rocket (often pictured as the “rocket to Mars”), the flying saucer, and the alien being interested in making contact with a human, either for benign or (more often) nefarious purposes. The idea that an alien intends to visit Earth in order to destroy the planet or to cause us harm is one that begins with the H.G. Wells novel The War of the Worlds and quickly gathers popularity in novels, films, and television beginning in the mid-twentieth century, fed by actual political and cultural events.