alien Klaatu and Jennifer Connelly as Dr. Helen Benson. David Scarpa wrote the screenplay based on Edmund H. North's 1951 screenplay. The critical and commercial success of the 1951 movie relied on the novel themes Bates introduced in his short story. Ever since H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds (1898), aliens were often described as menacing, aggressive, and murderous, with a degraded moral and ethical sense. In Bates' story, aliens are the opposite, possessing a good moral character. The alien Klaatu's face "radiated kindness, wisdom, the purest nobility. In his delicately tinted robe he looked like a benign god." The giant alien robot, Gnut in the short story, Gort in the film, is immensely powerful, but can exhibit sadness and gentleness. In the surprise ending, Gnut tells the journalist, who is relating the story, "You misunderstand, ... am the master". While The Day the Earth Stood Still is inspired by Bates' short story, the 1951 context of the Cold War resulted in some changes to the story's themes. In the movie, Klaatu seeks to promote peace and to warn mankind of the dangers of science and technology when they are exploited and corrupted. The alien explains that Gort is a member of a race of all-powerful robots who were created to eliminate any civilizations which promoted warfare in space. During 1983, The Day the Earth Stood Still was inducted into the Science Fiction Film Hall of Fame as part of the Balrog Awards, which were given from 1979 to 1985. The 2008 version of The Day the Earth Stood Still represents a major issue of its own day: the alien's concern is mankind's destruction of the environment. Earth is believed by alien civilizations to be one of a very few precious planets capable of supporting intelligent life and should therefore be protected from mankind's depredations. Hawk Carse short stories Under the pseudonym of Anthony Gilmore, Bates wrote the following stories in the Hawk Carse series with Desmond W. Hall, collected in Space Hawk: The Greatest of Interplanetary Adventurers (New York: Greenberg, 1952): "Hawk Carse", Astounding, November, 1931 "The Affair of the Brains", Astounding, March, 1932 "The Bluff of the Hawk", Astounding, May, 1932 "The Passing of Ku Sui", Astounding, November, 1932 Boucher and McComas described the 1952 collection as "strongly commended to all connoisseurs of prose so outrageously bad as to reach its own kind of greatness." P. Schuyler