![]() Most notoriously, Heaven’s Gate, a movement founded by Marshall Herff Applewhite (1931-1997) and Bonnie Lu Nettles (nee Trusdale, 1927-1985) in the mid-1970s, attracted media attention when thirty-nine members committed suicide on 26 March 1997 in Rancho Santa Fe, a wealthy neighbourhood of San Diego. UFO and alien-based religions, many of which appeared in the 1950s, developed in divergent directions, with some groups advocating an eschaton of battle and the destruction of the earth (such as the Church Universal and Triumphant), while others envisaged a harmonious Intergalactic Parliament in which humans participated in peace (such as the Aetherius Society). This potent mixture was married to popular cultural narratives of science fiction, such as the influential ‘alien messiah’ film The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), with themes of apocalypse and the conspiracy being especially congruent with the Cold War atmosphere of paranoia and scapegoating. UFO and alien-based religions emerged in the wake of World War II, drawing upon both the hardware-oriented proto-conspiracist sightings of Kenneth Arnold and the Roswell Incident (both 1947), and the Theosophical notion of Ascended Masters, which was extended to include extra-terrestrials (in addition to the dead, Tibetan lamas, and other putative sources of wisdom that transcended the knowledge base of living human beings). In doing so, this essay attempts to discern the ways in which adapted near apocalyptic scenarios shift and change to accommodate contemporary concerns within a temporal and spatial framework. ![]() As the source text and its adaptations provide possible apocalyptic visions or scenarios adjusted to their respective audiences, this essay analyses these narratives through the apocalyptic chronotope, exploring and building on Bakhtin's theory. As environmental concerns dominate our era the 2008 film reflects humanity's ever-growing consumption and destruction of its natural surroundings. While Bates' short story relates how humanity is prone to act imprudently during a relatively peaceful period, the 1951 film turns to that of the Cold War and its repercussions, and the 2008 remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still centres around the theme of nature. One such narrative is Harry Bates' short story "Farewell to the Master" (1940) which also generated two film adaptations entitled The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951, 2008). Operating within the apocalyptic chronotope, science fiction bonds present day concerns with possible catastrophes. Speculative fiction that depicts near-apocalypses do not however, prefer unconceivable futures but favour the current time of the narrative, depicting them as events happening now. Mythic and religious narratives that envision the end of the world position the apocalypse in a futuristic time where certain events would sequentially occur finally building up to the inevitable end. ![]() Second, the Theosophical idea of Ascended Masters who could transmit occult knowledge to humanity by means of clairaudient mediums or “channelling” was extended to include aliens from distant planets (in addition to Tibetan lamas, denizens of lost worlds like Atlantis and Mu, the dead, and other putative sources of wisdom). First, the hardware-oriented, proto-conspiracist sightings of “flying saucers” by Kenneth Arnold in 1947 and the Roswell Incident the same year, in which an unidentified object crashed in Roswell, New Mexico, and the United States Air Force cleared the site of debris, seemed to provide evidence that UFOs and the extra-terrestrials who travelled in them were real. The theology of such religions drew upon two principal sources, one physical and the other spiritual. ![]() UFO and alien-based religions crystallised as contemporary Western spiritual phenomena in the post-World-War-II era, and reflected both historico-political and moral anxieties about the atomic bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, and the atmosphere of paranoia and expectation of the “end of the world” that emerged as a result of the arms race between the United States of America and the Soviet Union.
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