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I'm not deliberately trying to sound like Prince Charles, but this really is appalling. Hilary Evans gave Jerome Clark's Encyclopedia a bit of a pasting in the last Magonia and by and large I go along with him. Jerry perhaps did allow too much of his personal opinions to intrude into what should be the neutral tone of a reference work, but at least it could actually be used as an encyclopedia, with worthwhile articles on important aspects of ufology. With all its faults, Jerry's book is a hundred times more useful than this book. Anybody reading it or dipping into it would get some impression of what ufology is about. Such coherence is totally lacking in the volume under review.
The bulk of Spencer's encyclopedia entries are the names of obscure witnesses with a few lines of the barest outline of their experience, or the vaporings of every petty government bureaucrat who ever made a mildly pro-UFO comment. Most of the names are so obscure that you are only going to be able to look them up if you already know all about them!
There is a distinct emphasis on Scandinavian and Soviet cases presumably reflecting the author's own preoccupations, with relatively little on, for instance, French cases. (an encyclopedia which makes no mention of Trans-en-Provence or Ciergy-Pontoise is just a bad joke). None of the cases listed are referenced in any way to allow the interested reader to seek more information, instead there is a pitifully inadequate book and magazine listing at the back. There is no attempt to build up any overall context, each entry is scrappy and isolated. Although there is some cross referencing, most of the entries are unrelated. Why have separate entries for 'Celtic Legends' and 'Fairies and Folklore' without even a cross-reference between them?
There are, unlike Clark's book, very few entries for broader topics, and the few included are totally inadequate: 'Extraterrestrial Hypothesis' gets a brief dictionary-type entry of six lines; 'Fairies and Folklore' half a page. Most entries seem to be included at a whim: what contribution did Hugh J. Addonizio or Nikolai Sotchevanov make to ufology? Not enough to make it worthwhile buying this book to find out. And yet there is no entry for Carl Jung. An omission of this magnitude is quite literally, unimaginable.
Some peculiar policy decision seems to have eliminated any entries for ufologists or UFO periodicals, with a few bizarre exceptions: why should Eddie Bullard be included, but not Jenny Randles; why include ASSAP's Anomaly which covers ufology only marginally, but ignore UFO Brigantia, Northern UFO News, or, no false modesty, Magonia?
The whole book is haphazardly put together. One illustration makes a good example. You would think it would be the easiest thing in the world to produce a photo to show a sample of the "hundreds of UFO magazines published each year". Just pull a few off your bookshelves and snap them. Instead a picture-library photograph is used. Of the six magazines depicted the most recent appears to be dated 1978, and four of the six have long since ceased publication. There is no excuse for this kind of sloppiness. it is just an insult to the reader. Even more insulting is the fact that such nonsense as the 'Vanishing Norfolks' (uselessly indexed under 'Hill 60') is included, with the statement “no explanation of the event has ever been given”. This is a lie. pure and simple.
This 'encyclopedia' is a cynical disgrace. both to its author and publisher, and more importantly a source of shame to BUFORA whose name is emblazoned on the cover and title page. I do not understand how such a travesty could have been published, and how BUFORA allowed itself to be associated with it. Did no one on the BUFORA Council read the manuscript before publication? Was no one able to see just how bad it was? Ufologists are owed some sort of explanation, or better still apology.
- John Rimmer, Magonia 39, 1991
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