© 2000 Patricia Waller
from: Needleworks II, Katalog Patricia Waller, Osnabrück 2000
The creatures in the myths and fairy tales of our childhood were Chimera or an-thropomorphic figures. They moved through the air with wings, broomsticks or flying carpets. These days we find in children's rooms figures with space suits, dark visored helmets and Laser swords. Their vehicles are - in keeping with our technical progress - glistening space ships. They do not come from en-chanted, magical forests but from somewhere in Andromeda or another more distant galaxy.
Whether or not intelligent life forms actually exist somewhere in the universe is without a doubt a difficult question. One thing is certain, however: we have de-veloped a very concrete idea about more or less intelligent extraterrestrials and their means of transportation. Each and every one of us is quite capable of drawing an UFO as if we have all experienced a close encounter at one time. The fantastic designs from science fiction, in the meantime considered a classi-cal genre of literature, have long since been brought to the silver screen and broken box office records.
"We're not alone..." a true statement given the presence of extraterrestrials on our home screens! Every evening our screens flicker with endless series in which aliens play the starring roles. They range from cute, cuddly, hairy beings to terrifying, scaled, silicon monsters whose aim is the destruction of our world. One of the main activities of these aliens appears to be kidnapping harmless earthlings in order to carry out dubious medical experiments, extracting their unborn or even impregnating them. The idea that an earth woman might con-ceive through a heavenly power is not exactly new - we all know the legend of a certain Jesus of Nazareth.