UFO Religions

Archive for the ‘Book Reviews’ Category

The erstwhile Jack Brewer, the force behind the excellent blog, The UFO Trail, recently reviewed my novel, The Facade in a piece for the Examiner.  He also followed that review with a short interview.

My thanks to Jack for his interest!

Technorati Tags: aliens, extraterrestrials, Facade, Heiser, interview, novel, review, UFOs

A recent book about “star people” legends has been getting some play in the blogosphere recently: Encounters with Star People: Untold Stories of American Indians. I tried to order it but it was temporarily out of stock. I’ll revisit it later since I want to review it. I’m not holding my breath for reasons that will become clear below.

The author of the work is Ardy Sixkiller Clarke, professor emeritus at Montana State University. Although I have no doubts about her university affiliation and that she has a doctorate in something, her credentials are actually hard to identify.¹ Wanting to know her background is just a point of curiosity for me. I’d like to know if it’s in something other than education — some content-oriented doctoral degree like anthropology or folklore studies. Educational doctorates are more about (educational) theory, method, administration, etc. But I’ll assume she knows what she’s talking about with respect to indigenous lore. And that’s really what I expect to find in the book … lore, not facts.

Readers can find a description of Clarke’s book here. I should warn readers that the blog post at this link is misleading. It has a picture of “alien” rock art that has nothing to do with Native Americans — it’s rock art from Australia.  I suppose that’s supposed to add weight to the content of Clarke’s book, but it’s misleading. But it’s not as bad as what you’ll find on other sites that make it sound like Native Americans have stories about genetic manipulation of homo sapiens by aliens and advanced astronomical knowledge. (What’s the ancient Cherokee word for DNA? … seriously, ancient people knew nothing of DNA). I’ll go out on a limb here and suggest that this book will be interesting and useful as a reference, but ALL that it will be is legends and stories, offering no hard data for experiences with beings whose extraterrestrial (i.e., from other physical planets) reality can be proven. But I’ll wait to say more after I read it, presuming it’ll be available.

Technorati Tags: aliens, americans, anthropology, ardy, clarke, extraterrestrials, folklore, indians, indigenous, native, sixkiller, UFOs

I’d encourage all of you to pay attention to Billy Cox’s blog, De Void. Billy is arguably the only mainstream journalist in the U.S. who pays serious attention to UFOs. He’s also a likable guy (I roomed with him at the X-Conference event I spoke at several years ago).

Billy recently posted a short review of the important new academic book entitled, UFOs and Government: A Historical Inquiry. The book is a serious attempt to sort through all the credible UFO documentation and create a narrative about the U.S. government’s involvement with, and assessment of, UFOs. It is edited by emeritus professor Michael Swords, whose name will be recognized by those with sustained interest in ufology. Billy writes:

“Swords, who taught the history of science technology at Western Michigan University and is an emeritus professor of environmental studies, has drilled deep into the vein of primary sources and — along with eight co-authors and contributors — produced an authoritative look at the high-level disarray, inter-agency tensions, and the military’s improvisational attempts at information management even as honest scientists struggled to give them the truth.”

Billy laments that few people will read the work due to its length (580 pp.) and distaste for material that will read like, well, an academic textbook. I hope many UFO Religion readers will tackle it, or at least purchase it for reference.

Technorati Tags: agencies, documents, government, history, inquiries, panels, UFOs

The Magonia Review just posted a short review of After Disclosure, by Richard Dolan and Bryce Zabel (New Page Books, 2012). I haven’t read the book, and the review does little to encourage me. As readers know, I have high regard for Dolan’s historical works on UFOs, but it seems the speculative nature of this book (a “what if?” sort of approach, as opposed to chronicling the history of UFOs in the US), means this effort isn’t going to deserve such accolades.

Technorati Tags: disclosure, dolan, UFOs, zabel

For those who have not read Nick Redfern’s book, Body Snatchers in the Desert: The Horrible Truth at the Heart of the Roswell Story, shame on you … but now you can catch up a bit very quickly. Nick just posted a summary of the timeline that underlies the major points of his contention, that the event at Roswell was very human, and inhumane, hence the cover-up. (Note: I reviewed Nick’s book on this blog).

Technorati Tags: balloon, bodies, body snatchers, experimentation, Fugo, Japanese, progeria, redfern, Roswell, UFO, Unit 731