SEEING US SEEING THEM

Avi Loeb. Interstellar, the Search for Extraterrestrial Life and Our Future Beyond Earth. John Murray Books, 2023.

This book is potentially a trailblazer and may be one of the first in a new genre. A book about aliens visiting Earth that is not written by a UFO enthusiast trying to investigate close encounters, but is very much a consideration of that subject through the actual evidence uncovered by astronomers and cosmologists.

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UFOLOGY'S GREATEST HITS -- AGAIN

Karl Svozil. UFOs: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena: Observations, Explanations and Speculations, Springer, 2023.

Part One provides a chronological summary of some of the most famous and ‘unexplainable’ UFO cases including foo fighter sightings in WWII, Roswell, 1947, Arnold’s flying saucer sighting of 1947, the Lubbock Lights, 1951, Washington, 1952, Exercise Mainbrace, 1952, Rapid City, 1963, Socorro, 1964, Valensole, France, 1965, the Tehran Incident, 1976, Frederick Valentich’s disappearance, Rendlesham Forest, 1980. Well you get the picture, basically a greatest hits of ufology.

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UFOLOGY BY NUMBERS

Daniel Coumbe. Anomaly: A Scientific Exploration of the UFO Phenomenon, Rowman & Littlefield, 2023.

A TV interview with jet fighter pilot Commander David Fravor talking about his sighting of a tic tac UFO piqued Coumbe’s interest in the subject, which he had previously dismissed as nonsense. Using his background as a former research scientist at the Niels Bohr Institute, and having a PhD in theoretical particle physics, he decided to explore the world of ufology from a much needed scientific perspective.

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STILL SEARCHING

David Whitehouse, The Alien Perspective, Icon Books, 2022.

SETI research has spent decades using radio telescopes to search for signals from intelligent extraterrestrial civilisations. A few unusual blips have been detected but they have never been repeated or have been attributed to terrestrial interference or previously unknown celestial events.

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PERSONAL FILES

Jason Gleaves. UFO Encounters: Up Close & Personal. Flying Disk Press, 2022.

A huge variety of strange UFO encounters have been reported throughout the years and even for the most well-read there are always new ones you have never heard of, and for newcomers the subject is just downright bewildering. 

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MIRROR WRITING

Barry Fitzgerald and Brian Allan, The Deception of Gods and Men: The Price of Power Has Never Been So Great, Flying Disk Press, 2022.

Ghost hunter Barry Fitzgerald and Brain Allan, editor of the online Phenomena Magazine, expertly advance the notion that our interaction with the unknown has shaped and guided the history of humanity.

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BALANCING THE UFO DEBATE

John Michael Greer. The UFO Chronicles. Aeon, 2020.

This book is an updating of an earlier title The UFO Phenomenon, Fact, Fantasy and Disinformation, but it needs very little updating, as its premise is as valid now as then. Greer has a background in esotericism, and is a member of a number of occult orders, which has perhaps allowed him to step outside the extraterrestrial skeptic/believer argument that has bedeviled ufology.

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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.

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SUMMER LIGHTNING

Irena McCammon Scott. Inside the Lightning Ball: Scientific Study of Lifelong UFO Experiencers, Flying Disk Press, 2018.

Irena has a very good background for studying UFO experiences; she worked for the Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) analysing satellite photography during the height of the Cold War; she’s researched and taught at several universities, and was a volunteer astronomer at the Ohio State University Radio Observatory. From 1993 to 2000 she was on the MUFON Board of Directors and continues as a field investigator.

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IT'S RAINING UFOS

Jason Gleaves, The Ufology Umbrella: Close Encounters Are Not Enough, Flying Disk Press, 2019.

Using Dr. J. Allen Hynek’s classification system, Jason Gleaves expands it to include four further categories. These are Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind, that feature abductions or out-of-the-body experiences; Close Encounters of the Fifth Kind, mental/telepathic communication with extra-terrestrials; 🔽

CROSSED WIRES

Jan H. Landsberg. UFOs Unmasked. CreateSpace, 2018.

I have to start by saying I am very much in two minds about this book. It is an extremely impressive work of research, the book comprising in total over 650 pages, of which over 100 are detailed sources, references and indexes. 

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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.

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LANGUAGE LESSONS

Greg Bishop.   It Defies Language: Essays on UFOs and Other Weirdness. Excluded Middle Press, 2016.

Greg Bishop was for a number of years the editor of a journal called Excluded Middle which was one of the more intelligent and literate American UFO magazines. He was also the author of the controversial book Project Beta, reviewed here:

http://mrobsr.blogspot.co.uk/2009/08/project-beta-and-paul-bennewitz.html
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PARAUFOS

Eric Ouellet. Illuminations: The UFO Experience as a Parapsychological Event. Anomalist Books, 2015.

In this interesting book, Eric Ouellet, a sociologist (professor of Military Sociology at the Royal Military College of Canada) and a parapsychologist, looks at UFO phenomenon as being generated by parapsychological events. 

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GOOD IN PARTS

Robert Davis. The UFO Phenomenon: Should I Believe? Schiffer, 2014.

Compared with the two other UFO books I have recently reviewed, this one looks like an oasis of common sense, in that the author does not try and bludgeon you into believing in the spaceships. He provides an overview of various types of UFO reports and the various theories that have been evoked to explain them.
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NEITHER SCEPTICAL NOR SCIENTIFIC

Timothy Pennington. Science, Skeptics and UFOs: A Reluctant Scientist Explores the World of UFOs. Dog Ear Publishing, 2013

Timothy Pennington portrays himself as a 'reluctant scientist', and like many such people proudly parades his PhD on the cover of his, I imagine, largely self-published book. His degree is in chemistry and his main career was of an industrial chemist, which is not perhaps the most relevant.
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EXEMPLARY MY DEAR WATSON

Nigel Watson. UFO Investigations Manual. Haynes Manuals, 2013.

Haynes usually publish motor repair manuals with exciting titles like Lexus RX300 00 to 06 5-door 3 litre, or Skoda Fabia 2000 to 2006 (W to 06 reg) Petrol & Diesel; but if you're looking for instructions on how to repair an anti-gravity drive or fit a three-sphere landing gear on an Adamski Scout Ship (Model MJ-12A-Fusion Drive), you'll be disappointed. Such a book might, of course, be useful to crashed saucer enthusiasts.
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GHOST ROCKETS AND THE GHOSTS OF UFOLOGY

Don Donderi. UFOs, ETs and Alien Abductions: A Scientist Looks at the Evidence. Hampton Roads, 2013.

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Micah Hanks. The Ghost Rockets: Mystery Missiles and Phantom Projectiles in Our Skies. Rocketeer Press, 2013.

Despite the subtitle and the blazoning of the author’s PhD across the front cover (always a bad sign), Donderi, a retired Canadian psychologist, is not writing as a scientist in this book. 
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VERY SINGULAR

Micah Hanks. The UFO Singularity. New Page Books, 2013. 

Ray Kurzweil is greatly respected as an inventor but his predictions for the development of technology in the near future are rather more controversial. His book, The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology, predicts that artificial intelligence will continue to be developed exponentially until it exceeds the capacity of the human mind, and will involve direct communication between our brains and such technology. This is called the Singularity.
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HUNTERS LOSING THE SCENT

Bret Lueder, A UFO Hunter's Guide. Weiser Books, San Francisco, 2012.

On reading Lueder's introduction to this book we learn that there is nothing new about the idea that UFOs are from other worlds, as the ancient descriptions of them have been described by popular writers such as Erich von Daniken and "heavyweights like Zecharia Sitchin". (He's not joking, apparently.)
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