If you ever stood outside at night,

glanced up at the stars and considered just how tiny we are in the vastness of the cosmos.

We're one of eight planets in a solar system revolving around a sun that's 100 million miles away.

Our sun and solar system is one of a thousand million stars and solar systems that make up our

galaxy the Milky Way. And our galaxy is simply one of two trillion galaxies that we know of that

make up our universe and who knows what lies beyond our universe. So it stands to reason that

somewhere out there in the vastness of space there's other intelligent life.

Ever since H.G. Wells wrote about Martians invading our world in 1898, writers and artists have been

fascinated with stories of beings from other worlds. And these days it's one of the most popular

sub-jummers of horror. Perhaps this is because unlike other monsters like zombies or vampires or

werewolves which have very specific rules, aliens can be literally anything.

After all the word alien simply means a foreign being from another place.

They come from another world, spawned in the light years of space,

unleashed to take over the bodies and souls of the people of our planet.

By definition aliens are the ultimate others completely different to us and our way of life.

He's lucky, I'm lucky, we're all lucky.

So naturally the horror genre has thrived on telling stories of outsiders and otherness using

aliens for the best part of a century. The most horrifying monster men has ever conceived

will be oozing into this theory. This series we're going to be taking a look at the history and

evolution of alien and cosmic horror from the boom of 50s alien invasion movies in America.

The flaming vanguard of the invasion from life. To the wave of 60s sci-fi horror in Britain.

It was what I was afraid of. The thing got a huge intake of energy. The very substance I've

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