"A PLACE TO LINGER IN STRANGENESS"

Greg Eghigian. After the Flying Saucers Came. A Global History of the UFO Phenomenon. Oxford University Press, 2023.

As I sign off from Magonia, this book seems to have arrived just in time. It is the definitive study of ufology from its exciting birth in the craziness of post WWII euphoria, the dreams of space travel, and the hope of encountering new worlds. But also there came the fears of the Cold War and possible nuclear annihilation, which might be avoided by the promise of new societies and new technologies the saucers might bring. 

🔽

DRAINING THE NAZI UFO SWAMP

Maurizio Verga. Flying Saucers from Naziland. The Real Story of the Nazi UFOs. Volume 1. Verga, 2023.

The 'Nazi UFO' stories have been haunting ufology and ufologists, even from before the official birth of the saucers in 1947. Promoted by a coalition of naïve ufologists, cynical exploiters, conspiracy theorists and actual real-life Nazis, they have created a hugely complex network of myth, rumour, fraud and political intrigue.

🔽

THE NEVER-ENDING STORY

Lochlainn Seabrook, Mysterious Invaders: Twelve Famous 20th-Century Scientists Confront the UFO Phenomenon, Sea Raven Press, 2024.

On 29 July 1968, the US House of Representatives Committee on Science and Astronautics, held a symposium on UFOs. It was instigated by Congressman and NICAP member J. Edward Roush, and he introduced the session by saying this was to be an assessment of the UFO problem by six experts, to enable better judgements about future avenues of research.

🔽

THE KEY TO KEYHOE

Linda Powell.  Against the Odds. Major Donald E. Keyhoe and his Battle to End UFO Secrecy, Anomalist Books, 2023.

To those of us who just think of Donald Keyhoe as the author of some of the earliest and most important UFO books, and as a director of NICAP, this biography gives us an excellent insight into his early career and how he came to be involved with this subject.

🔽

THE MISQUOTATION THAT CHANGED THE WORLD

Chris Aubeck. Saucers. Tracing the Origin of Disk-Shaped UFOs. Aubeck, 2023.

Flying saucers first arrived on the scene in 1947, we all know that. Well we are all wrong, they have been around since at least 1885. And as soon as they arrived on the scene people started shooting at them. Fortunately this did not start a 'war of the worlds', as being shot at was what these particular flying saucers were designed for.

🔽

SAUCER AND SWASTIKA

S. D, Tucker, The Saucer and the Swastika: The Dark Myth of Nazi UFOs. Amberley, 2023.

The year 1947 is thought of by many to be year zero for the modern age of UFOs. When Kenneth Arnold reported batwing/crescent shapes whose flight he describes as like that of a saucer skipping over water, it was mutated into the phrase that, for many, still describes the phenomenon of strange objects in the sky and sea. 

🔽

CITIZEN OF MAGONIA

Jacques Vallée, Forbidden Science 5: Pacific Heights – The Journals of Jacques Vallée 2000-2009, Anomalist Books, 2023

Jacques Vallée holds a special place for Magonians. After all, we owe the very name to his 1969 classic Passport to Magonia. But more importantly, there’s his against-the-crowd advocacy of the idea that the UFO enigma can’t be explained simply by the nut-and-bolts spaceships of the Extraterrestrial Hypothesis: it’s way weirder than that. 

🔽

WAVES OVER WASHINGTON

Kevin D. Randle, The Washington Nationals. Flying Saucers over the Capital. Flying Disk Press, 2022.

This is an update of Randle’s earlier Invasion Washington and retells the classic story of the radar/visual UFO sightings over Washington D.C. in the summer of 1952. The clusters of reports caused a sensation at the time and have since gone down in UFO history.

🔽

OF THINGS SEEN IN THE SKY

Chris Aubeck,  Alien Artifacts: The Forgotten Story of How We Came to Believe in Visitors from the Stars .Volume 1: From Antiquity to 1880. Independently published, 2022.

In Wonders of the Sky co-authored with Jacques Vallee and Return to Magonia co-authored with Martin Shough, Chris Aubeck has provided us with plenty of information and analysis of historical UFO-like events and encounters. Now we get Alien Artifacts which is the first in Aubeck’s ambitious three-volume project to chart ‘the forgotten story of how we came to believe in visitors from the stars’ right up to the dawn of the flying saucer era in 1947.

🔽

MAKE UFOLOGY PHILATELY

Luis R. González. An Alien in My Mailbox. Ediciones Coliseeo Sentosa, 2021.

Regular followers of Magonia Review will know that from time to time I draw their attention to new issues of postage stamps featuring subjects of interest to our readers. These have often been stamps depicting legends and folklore, or mythical creatures and cryptozoology. From responses I have received it is clear that there is quite a community of philatelists with Fortean interests. 

🔻

TRACKING THE FOO FIGHTERS

Graeme Rendall. UFOs Before Roswell: European Foo-Fighters 1940-1945. River Country Books, 2021. 

This is easily the most comprehensive and exhaustively researched book about foo-fighters. Randell makes the point that although ufologists were aware of such reports they did not make much effort to research them in any detail. He is particularly disappointed that prime witnesses were not tracked down and interviewed shortly after the war when their memories were still fresh, and since nearly all of them are now dead we are left to rely on old documents and reports.

🔻

SPOOKS AND SAUCERS

Jack Brewer. Wayward Sons. NICAP and the IC. Independently published. 2021.

Using information from the websites of intelligence agencies, material gained through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests and National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP) records, Brewer pieces together the formation, structure, management and eventual decline of the world’s largest UFO group. At its height under Donald Keyhoe it had 14,000 members.

🔽

BATTLE WEARY

Neil Nixon. UFOs, Aliens and the Battle for the Truth: A Short History of Ufology, Oldcastle Books, 2021.

A really short history of UFOs would be: ‘What’s that?’ ‘Dunno.’ The End. The battle for the truth about these pesky manifestations is of course a lot more complicated, and Neil Nixon provides a very useful guide to UFO history, classic cases and the multitude of theories to explain them. He begins with looking at ancient alien theories, and notes the prevalence of UFO-type events before Kenneth Arnold spotted ‘flying saucers’ in 1947. Neil acknowledges that earlier sightings of weird stuff in or from the the sky were misidentifications or outright hoaxes.

🔻🔻🔻

HISTORICAL FIELDWORK

Mike Covell, The East Yorkshire UFO Files, Independently Published, 2020.

When living in East Hull, Mike was a mere eight years old when he saw an illuminated egg-shaped object hovering the sky. From then on he became fascinated by UFOs and anything remotely Fortean. This led him to join the Hull UFO Society and to collect a large collection of books, magazines, UFO reports and news clippings.

🔻

IN THE BEGINNING

Maurizio Verga. Flying Saucers In The Sky: 1947: When UFOs Came From Mars. Self Published via Amazon. 2020.

Every now and then a UFO book arrives where you just have to go Wow! This is most assuredly one of them. Maurizio Verga is a UFO researcher of great repute from Italy, who deserves wider recognition globally than the language barrier tends to allow.

🔻🔻🔻

DIARY OF A SOMEBODY

Jacques Vallee. Forbidden Science 4, The Spring Hill Chronicles. The Journals of Jacques Vallee 1990 – 1999. Anomalist Books. 2019.

This is the fourth volume of a mammoth (2000 pages and counting) series released over the past 25 years which form chronological diary entries covering a decade in the life of one of the most important scientists in the field of anomaly research.

🔻

SHIFTING SANDS AT SOCORRO

Kevin D. Randle. Encounter in the Desert; The Case for Alien Contact at Socorro. New Page, 2017.

Let’s get one thing straight from the start. Despite the sub-title this book does not make ‘the case for alien contact at Socorro’, but I do not think that Kevin Randle really expected it to. Randle is an interesting and pleasantly undogmatic character amongst American UFO researchers. 

🔽

FROM COMICS TO THE COSMOS

Bill Schelly. Otto Binder: The Life and Work of a Comic Book and Science Fiction Visionary. North Atlantic Books, 2016.

Who would rank among the Fortean’s Forteans? What sort of person would not only write books about Ancient Astronaut Theories and articles about UFOs but also pen such tales that made a fan of HP Lovecraft, and would shape the history of such seminal comic book heroes as Superman? 

🔽

THE LIFE AND DEATH OF A UFO MAGAZINE

Steve Holland and Roger Perry. The Men Behind The Flying Saucer Review. Bear Alley Books, 2017.

For those of us who entered ufology in the mid 1960s, Flying Saucer Review, or FSR, as it was generally known, was the acme of ufology and if you got an article published in that journal you knew you had arrived. I first read FSR in the Autumn of 1967, almost exactly 50 years ago as I write.

🔻

AND THE UFOLOGISTS GO ROUND AND ROUND AND ROUND...

Robbie Graham (editor) UFOs: Reframing the Debate. White Crow Books, 2017.

I am starting this review on 24 June 2017; the 70th anniversary of Kenneth Arnold’s sighting of nine strange objects over the Cascade Mountains, which launched the social panic that began the age of the UFO. This book, a collection of fifteen essays, coincides with that anniversary and seeks to present new and differing perspectives on ufology.

🔻