FLYING SAUCERS ARE WATCHING US by Otto O. Binder

Pulp writer and "renowned UFO and space expert" Otto Binder returns to us with a blockbusting nonfiction treatise, fully documented of course by "widely respected scientists" and proof positive that FLYING SAUCERS ARE WATCHING US! This is ancient astronaut pulp fiction all the way, with Binder spinning off from every conceivable angle of UFOlogy to cobble together his epic tale of ancient space brothers and their grand plan for humanity. He warns that scientists will undoubtedly scoff at this bold proposition, but Binder appeals to Galileo and the power of honest inquiry against dogma. This is straight out of von Daniken's playbook, and Binder even brings in another Ancient Astronaut writer, one Max H. Flindt, to shore up his side. It's some slick showmanship from the canny writer. As for the hard evidence ...

Would you believe, contactees George Adamski and Howard Menger? How about the Mothman and the Men in Black? Yes it's that same old midcentury saucer stew, reheated for the umpteenth time by a writer who needed the money. We have to wade through some pretty dense verbiage before we realize we've been had, again! We've seen this all before and only Binder's skill as a writer keeps it hanging together, barely.

Otto Binder (1911-1974)

Those fabulous (and fake) Dropa Stones make an appearance, as does Ezekiel's wheel and a gaggle of OOP Artifacts, plus the specter of alien pyramids across the world. In fact, pretty much every ancient megalithic site is named by Binder as having been constructed by ancient aliens, including Stonehenge, Great Zimbabwe, and the Great Cahokia Mound. Binder even slips in the Coral Castle of unincorporated Miami-Dade County, FL as an obvious example of extraterrestrial engineering! Biblical giants are connected to Bigfoot, who's connected to UFOs via strange sightings from around the world. Hairy dwarfs get in on the action too, including those vicious buggers from Venezuela (will we never be rid of them?) and wouldn't you know it, Antonio Villas-Boas and his afternoon delight is proof of the aliens' breeding program of which perhaps Bigfoot and the dwarfs are alternate products. You can't call Binder lazy, as he pulls any thread he can including Carl Sagan's openminded musings on ancient ET contact, and various science texts about outer space which are used as launch pads for the goofy stuff. Atlantis was an ancient star base, the Bimini Road a runway, and Charles Fort's weird skyfalls were alien scientists taking out the trash! Don't forget Betty and Barney Hill, Edgar Cayce, and Snippy the Horse! The case of Australian abductee Marlene Travers would ultimately fizzle out, but no matter for Binder, she's in here too, as is the mysterious planet Vulcan.

The endgame for these alien architects? Binder is fair enough to include some Christian perspectives that see the saucers as demon chariots, but he himself is firmly convinced that our space brothers come in peace, to uplift us into the galactic federation. Soon, Earthmen (what about the women, Otto?) will be able to "hop into flying saucers and take vacations on Mars, Jupiter, or Tau Ceti and Beta Sirius!" We'll become "galactipolitan" citizens of the universe, and a new Golden Age will dawn. Binder's not naive, and knows "perfection is indubitably unknown anywhere in this universe" and that "there'll be thorns in this bed of cosmic roses" but, ultimately, the coming of the saucers is cause for rejoicing. Binder had lost his daughter in 1967 and faced the bankruptcy of his magazine Space World, so perhaps the space brothers were a balm for him in dark times. Sadly, Binder passed away in 1974, long before any of his galactic dreams could come true. Que sera, sera.

Flying Saucers Are Watching Us is available to read and download at archive dot org.

Belmont Tower Books, 1970 (original pub. 1968)

THE U.F.O. REPORT by Irving A. Greenfield

The meat of Greenfield's book is his investigation of a series of UFO sightings in Sag Harbor, Long Island in 1966, not to be confused with the much more famous Shag Harbour, Nova Scotia UFO incident the same year of publication of 1967. Greenfield beats feet around town, interviewing locals and dropping in at the famous (and now long shuttered) Black Buoy Bar. Among the witnesses is 11 year old Susan, who describes a craft similar to the Socorro, New Mexico sighting of Lonnie Zamora. Greenfield places a lot of weight on her sighting syncing up with Zamora's, as they occurred thousands of miles apart and almost contemporaneously.

The gumshoe routine is some good stuff, but we also have to slog through the standard UFO history lesson with Kenneth Arnold, the Air Force, Contactees, etc. We've read all that before! And Maury Island too! Poor Captain Thomas F. Mantell's crash is gone over again, with Greenfield convinced that the Air Force is withholding evidence of otherworldly destruction. The evolution of phantom airships to "modern" flying saucers is explained by Greenfield as the aliens keeping pace with our own technological progress. The year 1967 sure was a busy one for UFOs. Between the writing and publication of Greenfield's book, the University of Colorado was revealed to be behind the Air Force's new study on UFOs. The Northeast blackout of 1965 is pondered as possibly UFO related, thoughts shared by Allen Louis Erskine in Why Are They Watching Us? also published in 1967. (Update Sept 3 2023: according to Hilary Evans in his catalogue of his personal UFO library, Erskine was a pseudonym used by Greenfield!)

Typos and misprints abound. Socorro is misspelled as "Sorcorro" and poor J. Allen Hynek has his name misspelled as "Hynke" throughout the first half of the book before the editor notices and corrects it in the second half. This is before Hynek's change of heart on UFOs, and Greenfield excoriates him for the infamous "swamp gas" explanation Hynek gave for a series of sightings over southern Michigan in 1966.

Want the straight scoop? The U.F.O. Report is available to read and download at archive dot org.

Lancer Books, 1967

LET'S FACE THE FACTS ABOUT FLYING SAUCERS by Gabriel Green with Warren Smith

Author Gabriel Green is on the scene, and it's time we faced the facts! 

FACT: this is UFO contactee Green's only published UFO book!

FACT: the whole thing was actually ghostwritten by our old friend Warren Smith!

FACT: Green's barely in his own book, as Smith mostly recycles those same old saucer tales!

For shame, Warren Smith, for shame! Green was an interesting guy, most famous for his presidential run in 1960 on "the Flying Saucer Ticket" promising "A World of Tomorrow Today and Utopia Now" via plans shared with him by the Space Brothers:

A book about Green's contactee experience shepherded by the able writer Smith could have been a good read; too bad that's not this book. Smith does feature Green's group the Amalgamated Flying Saucer Clubs of America and offers readers some general conclusions about UFOs in line with Green's contactee perspective. Otherwise, for the main body of the book we'll have to be satisfied with Smith dipping into his library of Flying Saucer Forteana and such well worn tales as Antonio Villas-Boas, Reverend Gill's sightings in New Guinea, and those phantom Dropa Stones. Smith would later recycle his chapter on the Dropa Stones in his Gods Demons and UFO's with some minor word changes and rearranging. Sighting reports from Australia and Russia, some classic medieval UFO phenomena, and the Condon Committee round things out. Did you know "bludza" is Russian for UFO?

Green may be lacking in his own book, but Smith does give us other contactees and witnesses including George Adamski, dairy farmer Gary Wilcox, the improbably named Mary Zolar, and one Sid Patrick, who was taken on a saucer ride up and down California one morning by a space pilot named Xeno. Smith also relates some more sinister UFO encounters in Brazil from 1962. Some later visitations in 1977 would take an even more frightening turn with purported deaths from UFO rays! Jacques Vallee relates his investigation of this later flap in his book Confrontations: A Scientist's Search For Alien Contact ... but that's not for years to come. Smith keeps up the sinister aura, at strange odds with Green and AFSCA's positive messaging, by bringing in Indrid Cold and the Mothman. He also surprises us with a different Venezuelan vicious hairy dwarf attack from his usual, this one with an attendant craft! 

As a flying saucer sampler this is Smith in top form, it's just a shame about the bait and switch with Green. This title is available to read and download at archive dot org.

Table of Contents:

1.  The Truth About Flying Saucers (5)

2.  The Saucer That Came to a Picnic (8)

3.  The Frightening Florida Alien (11)

4.  The Fathers of Flying Saucers (14)

5.  Scientists Who Changed Their Minds (17)

6.  The Friendly Little Men (20)

7.  On the Trail of Ancient Space Visitors (23)

8.  UFO's That Chase Cars (27)

9.  Flying Saucers Over Russia (31)

10. The Farmer Who Talked with Saucer Pilots (38)

11. Australia's Amazing Saucer Sightings (41)

12. Weird Ride in a Flying Saucer (44)

13. West Virginia's Mothman Monster (47)

14. Things That Go Boom in the Night (49)

15. Brother John's Medieval Saucer (52)

16. Saucers That Spy on Our Space Program (55)

17. The Saucer That Chased a Truck (60)

18. The Flying Saucer Seduction (62)

19. Great Flying Ford Galaxies! (70)

20. Things That Fall from the Sky (72)

21. ... Or Are They Flying Ants? (77)

22. The 5:02 to Mars (78)

23. Ohio's Strange UFO Chase (82)

24. Healing Lights, Heat Waves, and Paralyzing Beams (85)

25. Raiders from the Skies (92)

26. The New Air Force Investigation (98)

27. "UFO's Are Our Biggest Problem" (101)

28. Why the Big Saucer Cover-Up? (103)

29. ... Or Was It a Pseudosaucer? (106)

30. Are You a Believer? (107)

31. Crowds Who See Saucers (110)

32. Battle with a Bristly-Haired Dwarf (115)

33. The 1967 Iowa-Illinois UFO Circus (117)

34. What Happened at Erie? (119)

35. The True Facts About Flying Saucers (122)

Popular Library, 1967

COSMIC DEBRIS: All the Saucers Fit to Print

A goldmine of flying saucer titles are listed in this ad from the December 1958 issue of Flying Saucers: The Magazine of Space Conquest.

COSMIC DEBRIS: The Book of Adamski

That's Adamski's pal Orthon of Venus striking a pose, though perhaps author Gray Barker was hoping some less attentive readers might mistake him for a lady alien like the lovely Aura Rhanes of Clarion. Barker wasn't above a little misdirection, as this anecdote reveals:

Barker occasionally engaged in deliberate hoaxes to deceive UFO enthusiasts. In 1957, for example, Barker and [James W.] Moseley wrote a fake letter (signed "R.E. Straith") to self-claimed "contactee" George Adamski, telling Adamski that the United States Department of State was pleased with Adamski's research into UFOs. The letter was written on State Department stationery, and Barker himself described it as "one of the great unsolved mysteries of the UFO field" in his 1967 Book of Adamski.

Furthermore, the "giant 8.5 x 11 format" advertised was due to the book being self published and assembled from loose leaf papers rather than professionally bound.

From Fate, Volume 22 - Number 7, July 1969.

FLYING SAUCERS: HOAX OR REALITY? by L. Jerome Stanton

 

 

 Belmont Books, 1966