(With apologies to Robert Bloch)
How fair is the label of the BEM (or bug-eyed monster) in 1930s science fiction? If you believe the detractors, every cover had such a beast slavering out its lust for some buxom, space-faring woman. And just what does “bug-eyed” mean anyway? Wikipedia defines it as “huge, oversized or compound eyes.” Let’s put this to the test.
The first BEMs of the early pulps began with Edgar Rice Burroughs and his Barsoom series. The Tharks, or Green Men of Mars, have large eyes. Their pets, the dog-like calots, do also. But the Martian prize goes to the Apt, a weird cross between polar bear and insect, with its fly-like eyes that see everything. Burroughs wanted to suggest the alien and unusual so he often combined parts of different earthly creatures to achieve this effect. Burroughs was the single most influential sf writer after H.G. Wells.
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