Skip to content | Change text size

"Joseph Stalin", cover illustration for Fantastic adventures, vol. 14, no. 3, March 1952.

Photograph

Here we see Stalin alongside a space-suited alien. The issue of the magazine has the headline, "Flying saucers: Russia's secret weapon?" The story is "He fell among thieves" by Milton Lesser. This has the promotional line, "When this Martian crashed the Iron Curtain … He fell among thieves."

The incidence of UFO sightings in the US in the 1950s was unbelievably high and this story puts forward a reason: Russia had captured a Martian who had helped them build flying saucers, and these were now being used to spy on the US.