The bug-eyed monster (BEM) is an early convention of the science fiction genre.^[1] Extraterrestrials in science fiction of the 1930s were often described (or pictured on covers of pulp magazines) as grotesque creatures with huge, oversized or compound eyes and a lust for women, blood or general destruction.

In the contactee/abductee mythology, which grew up quickly beginning in 1952, the blond, blue-eyed, and friendly Nordic aliens of the 1950s were quickly replaced by small, unfriendly bug-eyed creatures, closely matching in many respects the pulp cover clichés of the 1930s which have remained the abductor norm since the 1960s.

Popular culture

• The Daleks from Doctor Who. When the show was created, the BBC producers stated that Doctor Who would be a "hard" science fiction show, and there would be no bug-eyed monsters – explicitly stated by show creator Sydney Newman. Writer Terry Nation created the Daleks in the show's second serial, much to Newman's disapproval.^[2]
• The main character in the animated children's television series Invader Zim is a bug-eyed monster.^{[citation needed]}
• The Pokémon species Beheeyem is based on the concept of bug-eyed monsters in its design, characteristics, and name.^{[citation needed]}
• Arthur Dent in The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy sarcastically asks if he and Ford Prefect were picked up by a green bug-eyed monster, which Ford confirms the Vogons to be.
• In "What Is This Thing Called Love?", Isaac Asimov's parody of both pulp fiction and the bug-eyed monster idea, a woman captured by aliens for the purposes of study keeps using the term when referring to her captor.
• In "The Gap Cycle" of books by Stephen R. Donaldson, the alien creatures are referred to by the main characters as BEMs.