A Home in the Stars

2019 is the fiftieth anniversary of the first manned Moon landing on 20 July 1969. This is the image I would have seen as a child on my parents’ TV, a TV that was very similar, but not identical to this one.

At the time everyone thought this historic event would herald a new space age and that we would all soon be visiting the moon, if not living there in geodesic domes connected by tubes containing monorails.

One of my favourite TV shows that my parents allowed me to watch at the time was inspired by this new human adventure. It was called UFO, running from 1970 to 1973, set in the far distant future of 1980. The Earth was ably defended from the threat of alien invasion by the team of SHADO (Supreme Headquarters Alien Defence Organization) with its bases on the moon, under water in a submarine and hidden deep in the earth.

I was glad that there were quite a lot of women working for SHADO and I was intrigued by the fact that the women on the moon base all had the same hairstyle. Since my parents had a black and white TV until the mid-70s, I can’t remember when I found out that these hairstyles were purple.

These are the uniforms the female employees of SHADO wore.

These outfits didn’t seem very practical to me, but since everyone wore them, I knew there had to be a logic behind them, silver and shiny for space, warmer one-pieces for Earth and quick-drying netting for water.

As was appropriate for the unfolding space age, my father collected Science Fiction Monthly, published between 1974 and 1976. My sister and I used to pore over the posters in the magazines, which depicted spacecraft and future worlds in outer space.

When this edition came out, I copied the kangaroo in a space suit.

My current copy is incorrect because I couldn’t tell what was happening with the joey’s body.

In 1975 rumours began circulating, possibly started by the hippy family living up the road, that all the children in the world would be airlifted off Earth to live on another planet.

This raised many questions in my mind. Where would the spaceship land on Earth and how would we all board it? And where exactly was the planet we would be taken to?

My father’s book, Chariots of the Gods? by Erich von Daniken, certainly confirmed that this mass Kindertransport was imminently possible.

Erich von Daniken even saw Peru’s Nazca Lines as alien runways, a possible landing place for the spacecraft to take away the world’s children.

Science Fiction Monthly featured this spaceship on its cover. It appears to be flying over the Australian desert, another good place for spacecraft to land.

The spacecraft from UFO were smaller and probably wouldn’t need as much room to land, although a whole fleet of them would be needed for bulk transportation.

Science Fiction Monthly also provided models for what the cities on the future planet could look like.

From the cover of Science Fiction Monthly, Volume 2, Number 6

I had more questions too. When would we say goodbye to our parents? Why were only children being taken? And why were we being taken in the first place? Who exactly was taking us? Alien or humans? Were we being saved from Earth? Would life on another planet really be better? Or was this some kind of Pied Piper type trick?

My questions were never answered because as 1975 ended, no spaceship came. And we’re still here.