Harry Truman vs the Aliens by Emerson LaSalle

Emerson LaSalle,
th e Atom Bomb and the Red Menace:
An Introduction by Adam Openheimer.

    The sad fact of Emerson
LaSalle’s dubious legacy is that he is mentioned almost exclusively
in passing when discussing more successful or critically acclaimed
works. Film historians occasionally cite “Harry Truman vs. The
Aliens” as the inspiration for the scene in Independence Day when the President
of the United States visits Area 51. Few scholars ever stop to
ponder the merits of the short story itself.
    Likely, this situation exists for the
simple reason that the story would not appear, at first blush, to
have any particular merits. Such a hasty appraisal would be a
mistake, but not the sort of mistake anyone really takes notice of.
Indeed, LaSalle’s entire career has been subject to this sort of
half-assed scrutiny for decades, and few seem eager to correct the
wide-held assumption that LaSalle was simply a colorful
hack.
    LaSalle himself was often
his own worst enemy in this respect, often coating serious themes
with a thick layer of the lurid until said themes were all but
unrecognizable. For example, early drafts of “Harry Truman vs. The
Aliens” featured a character called Nurse Vulvana who asks the
president to “make her feel like a woman one last time” before the
aliens come to exterminate them all. In a titanic and
uncharacteristic act of self-restraint, this character was edited
from the final version which appeared in Zoom Magazine in 1955, but for most
of his career, LaSalle let his juvenile side run roughshod over his
better sense.
    So readers might not necessarily on
first reading catch the deft commentary on cold war politics and
the rise of the Soviet Union. One might also not know that LaSalle
was one of the first science fiction writers to use the Project
Orion propulsion system in fiction, a fact which fed LaSalle’s
penchant for generally eschewing legitimate science in his science
fiction. “If nobody cares anyway, I might as well make it up,” he
was often heard to say.
    So here, in its original
form, we present to you “Harry Truman vs. The Aliens” the story
LaSalle would later expand into the novel There are Aliens behind Uranus, Mr.
President . Enjoy.
    -- Adam Openheimer, Professor
Emeritus, Gothic State University

HARRY TRUMAN vs. THE
ALIENS

    February,
1950
    “Mr. President, we have a
problem.”
    Harry Truman looked up from
his copy of the Washington
Post , a half-empty plate of scrambled eggs
and toast at his elbow. The President had taken to eating breakfast
at his desk in the Oval Office so he could get to work sooner. So
much to do. Korea was giving him an ulcer, and fucking MacArthur
was giving him hemorrhoids.
    And now here was his pencil neck, pain
in the ass deputy chief of staff Pete Musgrave to drop another
problem like a steaming turd right onto his breakfast plate. Ten
nice quiet minutes in a row to read the paper and eat breakfast,
that’s all he asked. Being President was for the birds.
    “What it, Musgrave?”
    “It’s that Roswell business again,
sir.”
    Truman bit off a corner of toast,
chewed thoughtfully. Roswell. That rang a bell. That was some
incident a few years ago out west, wasn’t it? Arizona? No, New
Mexico. Yes, it was coming back to him now, something about
…
    The President’s eyes grew
wide.
    “I’ve already selected your secret
service escort, sir,” Musgrave said. “I’m prepared to brief you en
route. It’s your decision, of course, sir, but the scientists think
it’s important for you to see all this in person.”
    “To New Mexico?”
    “Nevada,” Musgrave said. “Area
51.”
    * * *
    There were twenty armed men
in black suits in the Secret Service escort. These highly trained
and competent men were always wound a little tighter than most, but
there was something in the air, a peculiar tension. These men were
afraid, and they were never afraid.
    Rocky Hardmann, Truman’s personal
Secret Service agent, hadn’t been more than five