All Together Now!

Robert Trundle. UFOs: Politics, God and Science. European Press Academic Publishing, 2000.

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When someone who lays claim to being an academic philosopher writes a book on any topic, however controversial, the reader might expect to see logically presented, cogently argued points, and a superior ability to critically evaluate evidence and sources. Surely even a UFO book by such a writer should be one that forces to take notice of its arguments.

But of course not; what we get is boundless credulity, with at least partial endorsement of every fraud and liar in the subject from George Adamski and Dan Fry down to Bob Lazar and Philip Corso. Eventually Trundle does have a limit - militia terrorist William Cooper. There is also of course endorsement of all the nonsense on the fringes of the subject from MJ12 to cattle mutilations.

Worse still, this stuff is not presented in any sort of logically ordered fashion, instead the whole book seems to proceed by chaotic grasshopper thinking, with leaps from topic to topic and endless irrelevant comments on the author's bêtes noire - the academic establishment, liberals and feminists.

I suspect that part of Trundle's credulity comes from a lack of background knowledge in the subject, which he has taken up as handy club with which to beat his secularist opponents. This is perhaps another step along on the anti-modernists search for unity. Once upon a time ultra montane Catholics like Trundle would have regarded the Southern Baptisms and the like as heretics to be burned at the stake, while the Prods would have denounced Trundle as Papist agent of the Babylonian Beast of Rome. Now they are becoming buddies, and bringing on board fundamentalist Jews. They tried to buddy up to radical Islam arming bin Laden and the like as fellow Warriors of God against the infidel Marxists. Do books like this hint that there is a reach-out to the dreaded Pagans and New Agers as well?

• Peter Rogerson