Death of a B.E.M.

"Death of a B.E.M." by Berkeley Livingston is a humorous science fiction story from the late 1940s that cleverly examines the relationship between human creativity and the depiction of monsters in fiction. The story switches between the everyday lives of an artist and a writer struggling to come up with new material, and the outlandish planet XYZ268PDQ, the home of the often misrepresented bug-eyed monsters (B.E.M.s). Frustrated with their one-dimensional portrayal in human stories, the B.E.M.s, led by Hiah-Leugh, decide to kidnap human artists to finally show the world who they really are, leading to a comically absurd experience for the captured humans. This leads to a satirical and funny, questioning of the typical monster image, exposing how they are really a product of human artistic license, resulting in the writer resolving to introduce more depth and complexity into his future characters.