SiFi Friday: X Minus One - A Saucer of Loneliness (January 9, 1957)

<p>"A Saucer of Loneliness" is a short story by American writer Theodore Sturgeon that first appeared in Galaxy Science Fiction n. 27 (February 1953). It was later adapted as a radio play for X Minus One in 1957, and as the second segment of the twenty-fifth episode (the first episode of the second season, 1986–87) of the television series The Twilight Zone, starring actress Shelley Duvall.</p> <p>Summary.</p> <p>A man sees a woman on the beach one night—he suspects she will attempt suicide. He spots her in the ocean and plunges in to save her. She struggles but he manages to get her ashore. Subsequently, she tells him her story: Years earlier in Central Park she saw a very small flying saucer hovering about her, small enough to put her arms around it. It floated down next to her and touched itself against her forehead for a second and they then both fell to the ground.</p> <p>While recovering, a small crowd gathers around her. A policeman shows up, the crowd increases in size, and an FBI agent arrives. The girl sits up and says that the saucer spoke to her. The FBI man orders her to shut up and takes both the girl and the now-inanimate saucer into custody. The authorities obtain no information from the saucer or from the girl. They interrogate her about everything but especially about what the saucer had said to her. She refuses to answer, as the saucer was talking only to her, and thinks that it's nobody else's business. Finally, after many months in custody, including jail, she is released.</p> <p>Even though she is plain and awkward, men ask her out in dates, but only in order to find out what the saucer said to her. Every now and then reporters track her down to ask about the saucer. Finally, she resorted to taking a job as a night cleaner so that no one else will see her. In her loneliness and isolation, she takes to throwing messages in bottles into the ocean. The authorities try to collect all the bottles but eventually give up when they find the same message in each bottle. The message in the bottles is