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How does stuff like this get published? This book which purports to be a history of UFOs , and in particular of government reactions to them is in fact almost completely undocumented, and seems to consist largely of rehashes from other UFO books. A section on pre-1947 UFOs is largely an unacknowledged crib of John Keel 's 'Mystery Airships' articles in Flying Saucer Review. Even the writer 's acquaintance with other UFO literature seems somewhat lacking, since he seems totally unaware of the French wave of 1957 or that the Pascagoula case of 1973 was part of a wave. Great prominence is given to M K Jessup, (and his suicide is used to bolster up vague, dark hints of government interference) while ufologists of the stature of Charles Bowen, Aime Michel, Berthold Schwarz, and the Lorenzens are totally ignored. The attempts of people like Keel and Vallee to provide alternatives to the extraterrestrial hypothesis are dismissed in a couple of uncomprehending paragraphs.
How does stuff like this get published? This book which purports to be a history of UFOs , and in particular of government reactions to them is in fact almost completely undocumented, and seems to consist largely of rehashes from other UFO books. A section on pre-1947 UFOs is largely an unacknowledged crib of John Keel 's 'Mystery Airships' articles in Flying Saucer Review. Even the writer 's acquaintance with other UFO literature seems somewhat lacking, since he seems totally unaware of the French wave of 1957 or that the Pascagoula case of 1973 was part of a wave. Great prominence is given to M K Jessup, (and his suicide is used to bolster up vague, dark hints of government interference) while ufologists of the stature of Charles Bowen, Aime Michel, Berthold Schwarz, and the Lorenzens are totally ignored. The attempts of people like Keel and Vallee to provide alternatives to the extraterrestrial hypothesis are dismissed in a couple of uncomprehending paragraphs.
There are of course the usual factual errors -- Wilbert Smith was not a Canadian Government scientist, the Jimmy Carter UFO has been explained -- without which no book of this type is complete. Sounds familiar? Too right is does . What is disturbing is that an extract from this book (reprinted in that highly erudite journal The Sun) was prominently displayed in the foyer exhibition at last year's BUFORA Congress. If ufologists have any hope of being taken seriously by the scientific community (and this was ostensibly the purpose of that Congress) they must totally disassociate themselves from trash like this. -- Roger Sandell, from Magonia 2, winter 1979/80
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