- Karin Hopper Holloway (editor). Alien Abduction Anthology: In Our Own Words. Volume 1. Experiencers ebooks, 2007.
- Paula Thorneycroft. Eye to the Sky: A Paranormal Odyssey. Ecce Nova, 2006.
It is impossible to know whether the first person narratives contained in these books are based on actual experiences, and if so to what extent. Their main interest lies in providing something towards an answer as to why alien abduction narratives are so similar. These first person narratives show many distinct features from the classic Hopkins scenario, and show influences from the New Age milieu, political conspiracism and Christian Fundamentalism. What unites them is that they relay more personal themes which depart from the social constructed abduction narratives.
What then happens can take two forms: one is that, like Paula Thorneycroft, you meet Stanton Friedman who basically tells you that unless you are prepared to modify your narrative to meet the standard Hopkins/Jacobs format that they are all soulless alien rapists formulae, he is not interested. The other, if you persist with an idiosyncratic narrative, is that your story looks increasingly 'inauthentic'. The most divergent story in Holloway's book, in which a man in England recounts his teenage (?) experiences with being proposition for sex by female alien robots, invites the assumption that you are either dealing with a case of pure creative writing, or someone with some fairly serious mental health issues. Yet it is no more self-evidently absurd than the canonical tales of hybrids and invisible aliens. The difference is that the canon represents now an approved folk narrative, and one validated by 'experts'.
Tales which diverge in other directions can receive other forms of validation from other social groups, the New Age/contactee movement or charismatic Christianity. In other words to receive acceptance a narrative must gel with the prior expectations of your audience as to what such a narrative will look like. -- Reviewd by Peter Rogerson
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