• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

'Good' UFO Books

S

Shoegazer

Devoted Cultist
Joined
Oct 18, 2003
Messages
180
I got Jim Marrs' "Alien Agenda" for Christmas (had asked for it - damn those Amazon reviews) and although it seems to be a complete crock and not very well argued I have got over my initial disappointment and am enjoying it as entertainment.

This got me thinking, can anyone recommend a really good UFO book? What I want is good writing and strong arguments. A typically Fortean perspective - open minded but sceptical.

A dash of government conspiracy theory if done well would be nice too.

Also if there are any books that don't fit that criteria but are worth reading (I don't know maybe they are so "way out" they are worth it for the fun) then I'd like to hear about them too.

A UK perspective would be nice also (I was considering Nick Pope for this reason).

I have read some of Tim Good's books and quite enjoyed them, Alien Liaison being my favourite as I recall.

So what can people recommend and why?

Thanks
 
Hmm, tricky.

I'd recommend 'Shockingly Close To The Truth - Confessions of a Grave-Robbing Ufologist' by James W. Moseley and Karl T. Pflock. Both run the Saucer Smear website. This takes a lok at all of the stuff surrounding the supposed UFO crash at Roswell. This is a good starter. Aside from that, 'good' books on UFOs are hard to find - it depends on what you want. Few contain raw data or just the details - apart from Jerome Clarks' 'UFO Encyclopedia' - as an overview. Most books, however reside in a certain camp - nuts and bolts, abduction, etc.. One 'way out' book is perhaps 'Man-made UFOs 1954-1994 - 50 Years of Supression' by Renato Vesco & David Hatcher Childress - this takes the approach that all UFOs are man-made secret military vehicles derived from Nazi and other technology. It's quite a weighty tome.

And as for Nick Pope - he pretty much rehashes what others have covered before he stopped pushing paperclips around at the MoD and realised he could make more money writing books ;)

Basically, there are so many widely differing views about UFOs that you may just as well trawl through the internet to get an overview of who thinks what. There is no single unifying theory - nor AFAIK any one book which tries to pin every theory down on it's own merits and faults.
 
Not strictly UFOs but Jenny Randles' "Men In Black" is great :D
 
Okay I'll try to sum up what I'm after a bit more clearly.

I'm not after contactee stuff unless it is just a chapter or two. I regard all the contactee stiff with much suspicion.

I also favour the nuts and bolts extra terrestrial hypothesis. (although I will probably check out that Nazi nuts and bolts book).

I bit of government cover-up/conspiracy would be nice (I will check out Randles' Men In Black for this reason).

Thanks both to the responses so far!
 
Well, the nuts&bolts side of UFO things tends not to rest on any one theory, but does tend to resort to drooling over stealth and super-duper-probably-never-been-made military technology, or Nazi silliness. I can't think of any one book that really takes a wide view of the whole n&b side of things - this is probably because it's probably even less tangible than contactee stuff - that is, will still have to take someone's word for it.

But you may want to check out anything featuring Bob Lazar - there's plenty on the net about what he has claimed to have seen. I remember reading similar stories about other 'eyewitness' stuff, but couldn't name a particular book. This mentioned various odd things related to captured or retrieved UFOs, but I only recall a few details of such stuff.
 
JerryB said:
I'd recommend 'Shockingly Close To The Truth - Confessions of a Grave-Robbing Ufologist' by James W. Moseley and Karl T. Pflock.
Click to expand...
Great book. A very personal perspective on the history of UFOlogy, by someone on the inside.


And as for Nick Pope - he pretty much rehashes what others have covered before he stopped pushing paperclips around at the MoD and realised he could make more money writing books ;)
Click to expand...

He gets a tremendous amount of mileage out of the post that he held a few years ago. Milks it something rotten. I can still remember when he showed up at the FT UnCon a few years back. He proudly announced that he was equivalent in rank to a major in the british army. So, he was an HEO in the civil service. Nothing wrong with that, but hardly that impressive or worth mentioning. I find something distinctly sad about Nick.

By the way, AFIK he still works at MoD.
 
Beyond Top Secret is a good (no pun intended) book I thought. Very nuts 'n' bolts and Government cover-up. Some of it is complete tosh of course but when I first read its first incarnation (Above Top Secret) it certainly made my hair stand on end.

Apart from that, Jenny Randles' books are easy to read and maintain a healthy air of scepticism about them.
Aliens: The Real Story was enjoyable as was UFO Retrievals and of course the MIB book.

John Spencer's UFO Encyclopedia is full of interesting stuff as well - lots of cases, although they're only given a quick overview.

It's hard to find any nuts 'n' bolts stuff nowadays - most books on the subject veer toward the spiritual/paranormal aspect of the phenomenon. All the books I've bought recently have been centred around crashes, abductions, conspiracies and spiritualistic theories.
 
Good UFO books

Hi i can recommend the following UFO books:

Hilary Evans and Dennis Stacy (eds) "The UFO Mystery", John Brown Publishing 1998
Hilary Evans and John Spencer (eds) "UFOs 1947-1987" Fortean Tomes 1987

both FT books but full of good material

try finding some of Jacques Vallee's books too. I've read Forbidden Science and Revelations and they're very interesting.

far too many UFO books are rubbish. either compilations of all the old stories; contactee nonsense; UFO enthusiasts pushing their own angle; sceptics avoiding the "evidence" etc etc.

richard @
 
Yep, I'd agree with that selection, Mal.

Sometimes I think the web is somewhat better than books for info on UFOs, because you can get more of an overview of the whole subject if you spend enough time browsing around.

One good website is Magonia. For the flipside of such a site, try Rense.
 
My all time favorite must be J Keels Operation Trojan Horse

(All his books are good, lots of wierd stuff but insightful)

Allen Hyneks books are good

Paul Deverouxs `Earthlights` and `Earthlights Relevation`

(He did a very good collabouration with someone I cant recall, got it off the Fortean Reviews.)

J Vallee...

But your right, there is a load of repetitive crap around. You might not take these books too seriously but they are interesting and fun...
 
At first, when I saw you were only interested in nuts-n-bolts, I was going to skip replying, and then I thought: Hey, evangelism opportunity! So here goes.

If you are interested in something, it's a mistake to read too discriminately. I'm not saying you shouldn't look primarily for the books on the aspects that primarily attract you, but you will find that you understand those books much better if you also imbibe a leavening of things off your beaten track. Why?

Because the nuts-n-bolts people will be arguing with the other factions in their books; if you only hear one side of an argument, you can't possibly understand the issue.

Because there will be crossover, with authors who convert from one view to another and cases that when looked at from one angle look ETH and looked at from another angle look psychic and from another angle look conspiracy driven and so on.

Because nothing assists in helping you clarify your ideas like listening to some nitwit blather on about something that just doesn't make sense and you can tell him why.

Because some cases really will be subjective, misidentifications, paranormal, and just plain weird; and the better grasp you have of the possibilities, the easier it will be to filter out the cases that are, for your purposes, junk.

You don't have to read mountains of crap for this to work (though if you're getting into UFOology, mountains of crap are indeed in your future). Just find out what the most important names are and read one or two key works. I would recommend *Passport to Magonia* by Jacques Vallee, which first laid out the striking resemblance between the UFO phenomenon and the Fairy phenomenon; *The Interrupted Journey,* by John G. Fuller, which is the pristine abduction case before the media feeding frenzy started; *The Mothman Prophecies* by John Keel because it so clearly demonstrates how impossible it is to keep anything straight in Fortean investigation; J. Allen Hynek in toto, because he's pretty much the primiere nut with a bolt; and after that, just keep going back to the appropriate sections of the library and your favorite bookstores. If a book falls on your head, read it. The Library Fairy is seldom wrong in these matters.
 
Passport To Magonia by Jaques Vallee is a good book, but long out of print and hard to find. So if you see a copy buy it especially if its in hardback.
 
I'm looking for UFO books that are a good read - and such a good read that they're worth reading several times. I'll give you my list - and I hope that you can add to it:

John Keel - Mothman prophecies
John Keel - Operation Trojan Horse
Jenny Randles - The UFOs That Never Were
Phil Patton - Dreamland
Douglas Curran - In advance of the landing: Folk Concepts of Outer Space
Nick Cook - The Hunt for Zero Point
 
I you can find it:
John Michell The Flying Saucer Vision (1967), explores the links between UFOs and the folklore of fairies and dragons and with what we now refer to as Earth Mysteries
 
I've always been most intrigued with books that are on the research side and that have some degree of scientific or historical research credibility about them. My list of best books would be (sorry, mostly USA-oriented):


Jacque Vallée Confrontations: A Scientist's Search for Alien Contact

Jacque Vallée Passport to Magonia

Harley Rutledge Project Identification: The first Scientific Study of UFO Phenomena - - I never see references to this book anywhere, and it blows my mind. Rutledge was a university physics professor in the 70s who successfully gathered concrete measurements and observations out in the field of anomalous flying lights - triangulations of height and distance, speed measurements, luminosity measurements, photos, spectrographs - and presented data at scientific conferences. It blows the lid off the assertion that UFOs have never been and/or cannot be studied scientifically.

David Jacobs The UFO Controversy in America

Richard Dolan UFOs and the National Security State - from a thorough researching of the US governments own documents, completely and effectively proves that US military and intelligence have studied UFOS very seriously and in extreme secrecy, while pretending not to.

Philip J. Imbrogno, Bob Pratt, and J. Allen Hynek Night Siege: The Hudson Valley UFO Sightings
 
I would also reccomend any of the Vallee books. Personally, I think he is closer to the "truth" (if there even is one) ;) . "Angels and Aliens" by Keith Thompson is also good and along the same lines.
 
One I picked up in a charity shop recently which is well worth having: the Mammoth Encyclopedia of Extraterrestrial Encounters. Looks a bit like another "World's Greatest UFO Stories" type from the cover, but it's really a very comprehensive guide to most important cases and concepts (and quite a few I had never heard of!).

Contributors include Isaac Asimov, Jerome Clark, Erich von Daniken, Peter Davenport, Hilary Evans, Timothy Good, Marvin Kottmeyer, Jenny Randles, Carl Sagan, Whitley Streiber, Nick Pope, Ronald Story and Jacques Vallee, so it's certainly interesting and authoritative reading - one excellent aspect is that important topics are covered by several authors, who sometimes disagree with and respond to each other within the article itself.
 
One of my personal favourites is 'Life Beyond Planet Earth?' by Janet & Colin Bord. It's a good primer on various areas.
 
These recommendations are on the basis that they make strong, well researched, fair minded critiques of the idea of UFO's being extra-terrestrial spaceships.

Like others here I would strongly recommend Passport To Magonia - even if you don't agree with his conclusions, its still, after all these years, one of the most interesting attempts to try and make sense of the phemenomenon.

Also agree that almost anything by Keel is worth reading.

Anything but 'nuts'n'bolts' but Clarke & Roberts 'Phantoms of the Sky' is well researched and written.

Jim Schnabel - 'Dark White' bit dated (1994) but well written overview from a fairly skeptical point of view.

And the grandaddy of them all, everyone's favourite wacky psychologist, C. G Jung was on the case way back in 1958, with "Flying Saucers - A Modern Myth Of Things Seen In The Sky' If you can cope with Herr Doktor's less than transparent prose style its an interesting curiousity.
 
The Missing Times by Terry Hansen. A very well researched book on the how the media is bullied by the military NOT to report on UFO's with any consistency.
 
Flying Saucers Have Landed, by George Admaski and Desmond Leslie. Not because of it's authenticity (Mr Adamski was probably as mad as a balloon, "Yamski" or not), but as one of the earliest books on the subject, written right back at the beginning of the modern phase, you can see from where some of the later mythologies sprang, and indeed some of the schisms. It also has a catalogue of very early sightings.
 
Though not exclusively or strictly about UFOs, Patrick Harpur's Daimonic Reality is a hoot and a half (and I mean that very much as a compliment). In an area dominated by bargain-basement crap (designed to make a buck) and overly earnest (and tedious) pseudo-scientific investigations, Harpur's approach is bracing and refreshing. It's a great volume to dip in and out of when the quotidian grind is gettin' you down. You'll always find something that'll blow the top of your head off and make you laugh.

Aside from that...well Vallée, obviously, has much to recommend him, and I've a soft spot for Gordon Creighton’s (out of print) compilation The Humanoids. Evans and Spencer's collection UFOs 1947-1987 is useful too - though (unsurprisingly) a mixed bag.

I recently bought Conspiracy of Silence: UFOs in Ireland and, I'm afraid to say, it's a classic example of earnest, well-meaning authors sucking the life out of a subject that should set the grey matter fizzing. Lots of it about alas...
 
Alien Base is probably Tim Good's best book to date. It contains quite a few cases that you won't find elsewhere - although you might think Good wastes rather too much space on the contactees.

Passport to Magonia seems impossible to find these days, but Vallee's more recent Dimensions pretty much covers the same ground. I think it's still in print - my local Borders is still selling paperback copies of it at any rate.

Nick Pope is best avoided - or at least borrowed rather than bought. If you're interested in the early ETH, then you can download a free PDF of Donald Keyhoe's influential Flying Saucers Are Real from the bottom of this page (The Sub Rosa magazine itself is well worth a read BTW, aside from the incoherent ramblings of Blair Mackenzie Blake)

I'd recommend trawling through your local charity shops - you can usually find quite a few UFO titles by the likes of Randles and Spencer going for a song. Books like Peter Brookesmith's UFO: The complete sightings catalogue or Alan Baker's Encyclopedia of Alien Encounters are well worth buying if you're happy to read compact case summaries without all the usual theorising.

Lastly, Douglas Curran's In Advance of the Landing is a highly entertaining look at the cultural impact of UFO belief systems. (It's probably the only UFO book I'd recommend to someone who was totally uninterested in UFOs)
 
graylien said:
Lastly, Douglas Curran's In Advance of the Landing is a highly entertaining look at the cultural impact of UFO belief systems. (It's probably the only UFO book I'd recommend to someone who was totally uninterested in UFOs)
Click to expand...

I got a case of (what I like to call) "book horn" when I clicked on the link provided. This couldn’t be more my cup of tea if it tried.

Infuriatingly, it appears to be out of print (on this side of the Atlantic at least). Gah!
 
graylien said:
Alien Base is probably Tim Good's best book to date. It contains quite a few cases that you won't find elsewhere - although you might think Good wastes rather too much space on the contactees.
Click to expand...
That's one of the things I like about it.

I also second 'The UFO Mystery' (the FT compilation) and The Mothman Prophecies (I found Operation Trojan Horse a bit pseudo-scientific).

At the moment I'm reading Alien Dawn by Colin Wilson, and I can honestly say it's probably the least boring book on the subject I've ever read, taking all sorts of things into account, with lots of fresh anecdotes and insights and not going so much into the 'canon' cases that it's dull. Very open minded (although one often feels that Wilson can be a bit too open minded, he thinks up some very odd stuff) and nicely written.
 
Operation Trojan Horse and Mothman Prophecies by John Keel, and Body Snatchers in the Desert by Nick Redfern are my favourites, though none of them will please people who believe in little green men.
 
I am not particularly interested in the UFO side of Fortean phenomena and have a pretty sceptical viewpoint about the whole matter. However, while browsing my local library's shelves I came upon Something in the Air by Jenny Randles. I expected it to be a credulous "expose" of alien abductions, crash retrievals and government conspiracy hi-jinks. Instead, Randles postulates that the phenomenon is of natural origin, and presents many examples of UFOs observed by aircraft crew and passengers. Highly recommended as a counterbalance to all the wacky alien abduction stuff out there.
 
You'd probably enjoy The UFOs That Never Were by Randles & Andy Roberts. And possibly her more recent Time Storms, where she suggests that some UFO experiences may be caused by anomalies in the local time field, or something along those lines.

You can find a brief overview of it here: Time Storms in the Matrix (along with some banal nonsense about quantum physics).

Then there's always Earthlights by Paul Devereux, which I believe was the first UFO book based around a 'natural' explanation of UFOs. It's a rather dull read, though. His later books are much better paced.
 
graylien said:
Then there's always Earthlights by Paul Devereux, which I believe was the first UFO book based around a 'natural' explanation of UFOs. It's a rather dull read, though. His later books are much better paced.
Click to expand...

Paul Devereux and Peter Brookesmith's "UFOs and Ufology" from a few years back was a neat overview, with a predictable chapter on earthlights.
 
I have read Randles' Timestorms and there are some similarities to the phenomena described in Something in the Air. As for Paul Devereux, I have only read the occasional article by him in FT.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top