Aldebaranian adj.

He had chased a couple of dope runners to Aldebaran II, and there he had encountered the most vividly, the most flawlessly, the most remarkably and intriguingly beautiful girl he had ever seen. [...] He got away from her, with only a couple of scratches, just in time to capture her confederates as they were making their escape. He had been afraid of beautiful women ever since. He’d like to see that Aldebaranian hell-cat again—just once. He’d been just a kid then, but now—

[A review of Arthur Koestler’s play Twilight Bar] His play is a satirical farce, genuinely humorous. Its action turns on the arival [sic] by space ship of two inhabitants of the Aldebaranian planet, bent on discovering whether there is enough happiness in our species to justify our existence. The immediate answer is no, but the emissaries allow two days for the earth-dwellers to step the quotient up after which, in the event of failure, humanity is to be destroyed.

Great exploding novas! What do you blastheads think this is—a meeting of the Aldebaranian Benevolent Association?

Hitherto we had held aloof from contact with inferior species. But just at that time you see, we happened to be swarming; once in every thousand of your years a new Aldebaranian queen is born, and, of course, a new hive would be necessary. Naturally we would not seek to take over a planet that had an adequate government of its own. But Terra stands sadly in need of a good, coordinated regime. We shall give it to her.

I believe they’re treating Vernon very well. Zlat adopted him into his own household where he’s preparing a monogram called ‘Self-Fertilising can be Fun.’ Of course, it can’t be published until after the Aldebaranian occupation of Earth. Bet it’ll be a best-seller.

As long as I get shut of the bastard he can consort with Aldebaranian necrophiles for all I care!

His needs were financed out of the returns from his books. Julian had studied them all assiduously, especially the lengthy Aldebaranian Social Organisation, but had learned nothing useful. He was not interested in how an extinct species formed ‘hedonistic rank-order’, as was apparently the case.

The language problem had also been worked out many years ago. There had been a century of time and a series of gradually more sophisticated dialectical convertors with which to teach the aliens basic English. The patterns of Aldebaranian communication were difficult to learn, and there had been many other priorities at the beginning of the millennium.

Vossoff simply ignored it and watched a spellbindingly bad in-flight movie made by some misguided alien producers who had thought they could duplicate an old-fashioned terran Western using an all extraterrestrial cast. He thought the Aldebaranian squid-thing cast as Wyatt Earp (and wearing a standard-issue tin star and white hat) was worth the price of admission all by itself.

‘MS. Found in a Nth-Space Fortune Cookie’ by E. E. Kornbluth, Ph.D. (1957) They say I am mad, but I am not mad—angry, sure, but not mad! Damn it, I’ve written and sold two million words of fiction, and not a single one has placed at this big-headed, fancy-pants, not-even-a-real-pulp, New-York-literary-type digest! And it’s dollars to doughnuts (and I know my doughnuts!) that they won’t take this one either, even though I’ve tarted it up like an Aldebaranian hell-cat!

‘Can he break out of that?’ Diesel asked. ‘No way!’ said Peri. ‘It’s made of super-toughened Venusian silicate—it would hold a wild Aldebaranian Horned Fizzwoggler, or...’ he glanced at Otto’s crimson face and pulsing fists, ‘...or a hysterically angry bounty hunter.’