a monstrous alien with bulging eyes, esp. as a stereotype
Speaking of The SPWSSTFM, the cover inspired me to organize the SFTPOBEMOTCOSFP. (Society For The Prevention Of Bug-Eyed Monsters On The Covers Of Science-Fiction Publications.) Yours for complete novels and more civilized covers.
I like bug-eyed monstrosities on my stf. mags.; the farther out their orbs bulge, the better I like it!
B-bems?… You mean you are b-bug-eyed monsters? That’s what Elmo means by Bems, but you aren’t.
First of all, there was the bug-eyed monster. The thing was green and had two snapping claws, either one of which could have broken the ship in two like a spirogyra straw.
Evidently the many stories of flying saucers had some foundation in fact after all! But I wasn’t going to believe in Bug-Eyed Monsters!
Are you trying to tell me that…some green bug-eyed monster stuck his head out and said ‘Hi fellas, hop right in, I can take you as far as the Basingstoke roundabout’?
Turns-theme-Over is no bug-eyed monster.
Lehr’s use of bright colors and conventional SF symbols such as bug-eyed monsters, cityscapes, rocket ships.
Consider the statement, ‘Every Martian is a bug-eyed monster.’ This statement can be rephrased in terms of set theory in the following way: Let M be the set of all Martians and let BEM be the set of all bug-eyed monsters. Then the assertion, ‘Every Martian is a bug-eyed monster,’ is expressed by M ⊂ BEM.
antedating 1939
Martin Alger in a letter to Thrilling Wonder Stories
According to an entry in Richard Eney's Fancyclopedia II, submitted by Leah Zeldes, this was coined in the January 1941 issue of Thrilling Wonder Stories by Martin Alger. Frank Robinson located this cite and verified it.
Jeff Prucher subsequently located a 1939 letter by Martin Alger that also uses the term.
David Tate located and Mike Christie confirmed a 1949 cite from Fredric Brown's "All Good Bems".
Ben Ostrowsky submitted a 2018 cite from a book on set theory.
(Earliest cite in the OED is 1953.)
Last modified 2021-02-01 21:46:06
In the compilation of some
entries, HDSF has drawn extensively on corresponding entries
in OED.