A Genealogy of the Extraterrestrial in American Culture

after all of space ships—open the door to a renewed effort to establish scientific credibility for
the phenomena of extraterrestrial contact.
CONCLUSION
In the current context, the period following World War II is most notable for the arrival of the
flying saucer. The appearance of these unidentified flying objects marked a bifurcation in our
tale. In the continuing saga of the space brothers, the saucer made its appearance only
sometimes. In the case of Dorothy Martin—a case that bore all the earmarks of the space brother
ethos—the saucer played no discernible role. Martin’s contacts were from other planets, a fact
that lent an increased solidity to their profile, but they had no evident need for material transport.
In that they communicated to Martin via traditional occult means—automatic writing in this
particular case—they had no need to travel physically in order to convey their wisdom.
In the case of Adamski, the space brothers appeared in embodied form and thus, in a
rationalist framework, would require physical transport. The insertion of a physical craft into the
alien-human communication nexus is an ironic turn given the general movement away from
embodied communication foreshadowed by the rise of electronic media. The advent of
telegraphy was perhaps most notable for its divorce of the message from an embodied
messenger. Before telegraphy, communication between two parties at a distance required the
physical (versus electrical) transportation of the message across space. This newly disembodied
mode of communication was reflected in the modes via which the Others in the contexts of
Spiritualism and Theosophy (most often) communicated with humans. With the introduction of
embodied encounters with masters and sundry Others from distant planets, the physical
component of communication was re-introduced. The increasing presence of the flying saucer in
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