Good evening and welcome to the Cosmic Girl Show, broadcasting from Gascanord in the heart of Europe and distributed by video cassette around the world. I'm your host, Tiffany Brewster, Cosmic Girl.

Tonight we won't be doing our usual program. Instead, we bring you a special presentation to mark the 40th anniversary of the Ciodali arrival on Earth.

Forty years after contact, our world is shared between alien occupiers, human natives and a growing race of super-powered Offspring. It's a world you can't navigate without knowing...

Forty years ago this week, Earth was discovered. Few people living here noticed.

It was 1962 and mankind was going about its business more or less the way it had for millennia. The United States and Soviet Union were contending to be the latest big empire, other countries pursued their careful alliances, and, in an unnoticed corner of the globe, the Ciodali explorer Gaubrac appeared out of nowhere with three small starships and quietly upended the whole applecart.

Gaubrac, we're told, thought he was on Jupiter, an opulent planet that had long figured in Ciodali myths. He was actually in the forests of Western Alaska. Only a few villagers were there to see the brief, historic incursion, and no one believed their mad tales of alien raiders who made off with all their car batteries.

It's even harder to believe that back in Ciodel, those batteries convinced the Ciodali Court that the wealth of Jupiter had been found. But when Gaubrac returned to Alaska the next year, heading a fleet of 17 ships, Earth would never be the same.

Next: Confusion and Cover-up!

• Part 1 - The Arrival
• Part 2 - The Early Years: Confusion and Cover-up
• Part 3 - Who Are the Conquerors?
• Part 4 - Gridlines, Electricity and ECs
• Part 5 - Rival Nations and Jan Ohan
• Part 6 - Offspring