UFO: FLYING SAUCERS OVER BRITAIN? by Robert Chapman

THANK GOD THEY'RE STILL UNIDENTIFIED!

Sunday Express science correspondent Robert Chapman delivers this very British rundown of the flying saucer phenomenon in the United Kingdom, melding the classic UFO narrative of Kenneth Arnold through Condon with some particular UK cases. The Exeter flying cross, the Moigne Downs "craft," a silly hoax by students at Allingham, all these and more are explored by Chapman. It's a glorious time capsule and Chapman is in classic newsman mode, giving up play by play of reportage on each case. Jolly good!

UFOs at Stoke-on-Trent!

That bloody Warminster Thing shows up here, last seen in The Flying Saucerers by Arthur Shuttlewood. Chapman pokes some holes in Shuttlewood's personal experiences with the Thing, but also grants that he sees Shuttlewood as a fundamentally honest person and got along quite well when they met. Our author tries to be scrupulously fair whether dealing with hoaxes, cases of mistaken identity, or the possible genuine unknown.

Originally published as "Unidentified Flying
Objects" in 1969

Chapman thanks Gordon Creighton and Charles Bowen of the infamous Flying Saucer Review for quotations and material, and praises the FSR and contributors as "serious minded people." Anyone familair with the eclectic personages behind the Review may raise an eyebrow, but them's the breaks for midcentury Ufology.

Hardcover edition

This book was owned by Sally Pierson.

Mayflower Books, 1977 (original pub. 1969)

WARREN SMITH'S AUTHENTIC DICTIONARY OF CB by Warren Smith

WE TOPPING HILLS BY POPPING PILLS!

Warren Smith jumps on the '70s CB radio fad with his AUTHENTIC DICTIONARY ... accept no substitutes on this "tour of fantastic CB land!" Smith chews the scenery with some major purple prose, reveling in cheesy trucker talk.

Award Books packages Smith's guide in the ugliest possible '70s style, with a drab brown cover that's hardly eye catching. As for "authenticity," the 10 code index printed on the back (in impossible to read brown-on-brown text) differs from the excerpt Smith quotes in text! Does 10-15 mean "message received" or is it unassigned?

According to Smith, truckers refer to Nixon's post-presidential residence of San Clemente, CA, as "Tricky Dick's" or "Elba," referencing Napoleon's exile. The cross referenced section is useful, but also allows Warren to pad his page count by almost 40 pages. Reprinting regulations for the US and Canada covers an additional 74 pages, making this an easy payday for our man Smith!

Until next time, keep your wheels on the road and don't feed the bears!

Award Books, 1976

IS SOMETHING UP THERE? by Dale White

This is a pretty good UFO primer for kids covering the usual midcentury narrative, from Kenneth Arnold and the Foo Fighters onwards to the Flatwoods Monster and the Condon report. Author Dale White references heavily from John G. Fuller's Incident at Exeter in an early chapter, but oddly enough doesn't mention Betty and Barney Hill despite covering a wide range of cases. White also goes over NICAP's involvement with the issue, Father Gill's sightings in New Guinea and other foreign reports, and explanations of strange weather phenomenon that can be mistaken as UFOs.

White's style is measured, and he does a fine job conveying the scale and layered contradictions of the subject. Good stuff! But the plot thickens: an online listing for the original hardcover edition reveals that White is a pseudonym for none other than Bigfoot authoress Marian T. Place!

Did she or original publisher Doubleday think young boys wouldn't read a UFO book by a lady? She didn't publish her Bigfoot work under a male pseudonym! Her papers are in a collection at Arizona State University, and offer some information on that front:

Place has written under her own name and under two pseudonyms. She recalls that "I began writing [about such subjects as] hunting, fishing, Forest Service and other state and federal fish & wildlife, grazing, [and] water projects, to mention only a few. I studied my markets before submitting and observed [that] the kind of ... subjects I was interested in were done by men. So, I chose to use the pen name of Dale [my uncle] and White [a portion of my middle name, Whitinger]. For about 10 years or more I was known as Mr. White. The other pseudonym, R. D. Whitinger, was used briefly only for westerns - i.e. bang-bangs, pulps. I was experimenting with several kinds of writing, and this one was not for me."

That online listing for Is Something Up There? also includes some promotional writing on Place, dating to the early '80s:

Scholastic Book Services, 1969 (original pub. 1968)

THE WEIRD, THE WILD, & THE WICKED by Brad Steiger and John Pendragon

"TAKE CARE OF THAT SISSY, J. EDGAR!"

Settlers defeating savage Indians, the "revolting" rites of said Native Americans, scary slaves and Voodoo Queens ... despite the sexy cover art, this dreary volume has more in common with C.B. Colby's Strangely Enough! from 1940 than it does with any contemporary, cutting edged works on psi or the unknown. Pendragon's influence seems nil, with nothing much in the way of ESP or astral content. Instead, we get a bunch of time wasting chapters on weird guys from olden times and the aforementioned residue of Manifest Destiny.

The first chapter sets the tone, with Thomas Day embarking on a bizarre quest to raise the perfect wife from childhood. He adopts two orphans girls to this end. Steiger's writing is cutesy and glib, and you'd be forgiven for thinking Day was some random crank and not a major man of letters of the time! Day's story could fill an entire book, but Steiger boils it down to a quick, easy filler chapter, the first of many about a guy from way-back-when who did something weird.

Ma Barker's Bloody Brood provides that pull quote up above, one of the few exciting moments in this text. Another chapter on Victorian grave robbers is pretty good, but too many others are on the level of KING'S PIGS SQUEAKED THE NATIONAL ANTHEM. Fat guys getting custom coffins makes for a good time too, but not enough to carry the filler. There should be plenty of historical heft here with characters like Day or John Nichols Thom, but Steiger's glib treatment robs each story of any weight or context. The result is a boring slog.

As a final insult, Pyramid Books suggests we check out their other titles "listed in the back of this book" ... and then don't list any! Was everyone asleep at the wheel?

Pyramid Books, 1969

HURRICANE by Gardner F. Fox

I am just a dreamer

But you are just a dream

You could have been 

Anyone to me

After the frozen flop of Steve Cohen's Avalanche, it's time to gird our loins for some sure-fire disaster madness in the hands of master genre writer Gardner F. Fox, as he takes us into the eye of the storm in HURRICANE!

If you didn't get the message from the "heedless hedonism" on the back cover, already on page 17 a youthful penis is swelling! Yowzas! It's that kind of disaster story, with loads of bed hopping and adultery and sexy mamas bedding young studs ... and God bless Gardner F. Fox for his economy of storytelling. Where it took Steve Cohen almost 400 pages to push out too many undercooked threads, Fox manages three or four nice, concise narratives in just under 200 pages, and delivers some beautiful descriptions of the pitiless storm as it arcs towards Dunes Point, playground of the horny HENRY class.

Holy canoli!

There's neglected housewife Cornelia, finding succor in her son Roger's buddy Don. Meanwhile, her husband Trevor is entranced by "gypsy soul" Brenda, who's hoping to pin her new pregnancy on the wealthy lawyer! Scummy businessman Bob whores out his wife Leona to clients, but prospect Evan wants to make a lady out of her. Fox weaves some delicious webs of sin and deceit, and then Hurricane Hedda smashes them all to pieces! Fox's description of the hurricane is quietly confident, as a scientifically acccurate storm surge threatens our characters. It's a nice balancing act between techno thriller overkill and the too-loose, glib afterthought of Cohen's avalanche.

Leisure's back pages ads include two of Fox's Kyrik sword and sorcery entries, along with plenty of options across fiction and nonfiction genres.

You are like a hurricane

There's calm in your eyes 

And I'm getting blown away 

Somewhere safer where the feeling stays 

I want to love you but I'm getting blown away

Leisure Books gifts us a few typos in this story, such as horny housewife Cornelia "buiding" young Don's penis inside of her. Stay classy, Leisure Books!

Hurricane is available as an epub at the official Gardner F. Fox library. This racy disaster drama blows down the house and rates an easy 4/4! Thank God for Gardner F. Fox!

Leisure Books, 1976