ARCHIVAL UPDATES: ARE THE INVADERS COMING?

Steven Tyler's hopeful-but-skeptical UFO text Are the Invaders Coming? is now available to read and download at archive dot org! Whither our man of mystery? He wrote one more book on the paranormal and then disappeared into the unknown ...

Courtesy Tower Books, 1968.

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 TERROR by Michael D. Albers

Author Michael Albers goes into the nitty gritty of the late '70s cattle mutilation waves in this very rare title gifted with a beautiful cover from cheapie publisher Manor Books. Many of the names that would later turn up in 1984's doorstopper Mute Evidence are here, from the Stigmata newsletter to Officer Keith Wolverton to Dr. Leo Sprinkle. Gabe Valdez and the strange happenings around Dulce are also covered, as is the fraudulent testimony of convict A. Kenneth Bankston as to a secret blood cult killing cattle.

Unfortunately, after a good amount of granular setup, Albers stumbles later on, finishing with a generic summary of the '70s UFO scene and pretty much dropping any idea of interpreting the mutilation mystery. Too bad! The Terror is still worth reading as a time capsule and early, earnest attempt at wrangling a subject that's become a cornerstone of modern UFOlogy.

This was Albers' only book. The Terror is available to read and download at archive dot org.

Manor Books, 1979

ULTIMATE ENCOUNTER by Bill Barry

The true story of a UFO kidnapping ... the ULTIMATE ENCOUNTER! Author Bill Barry delivers a credulous account of Travis Walton's 1975 UFO abduction, released the same year as Walton's own The Walton Experience. Barry primes his book with heady quotes from giants like Twain and Shakespeare, Francis Bacon and John Milton, and brackets Walton's supposed saucer snatching with the groundbreaking Voyager probes launched in 1977, cutting edge developments pushing the boundaries of the unknown.

The man himself, Travis Walton

Unfortunately, the saga itself is looking thin as tissue paper 40+ years on, and Barry's attempts at downplaying any critical appraisal read as very clumsy. Say what you will about arch-skeptic Philip J. Klass, for example, but Barry's retort that Klass is the "real UFO buff" because he has the temerity to write skeptically on Walton's story instead of just accepting the tale comes across as weak, as does sniping about Klass's financial motivations for writing on UFOs in some feeble tit-for-tat against accusations of Walton and crew boss Mike Rogers' possible hoaxing for National Enquirer prize money. 

The Walton story has come back into the limelight recently due to a startling admission of hoaxing by Mike Rogers, which Rogers has since retracted! The critically minded UFO website Three-Dollar Kit features an in-depth reexamination of the Walton case which lays out some very convincing motivations for an abduction hoax committed by Walton and Rogers, with the other crew members as unwitting accomplices. It's worth noting that several "pro-UFO" researchers such as Karl Pflock, Raymond Fowler, and the group NICAP were doubtful of the case from the start and this isn't a simplistic split between so-called skeptics and believers. But as Barry presents things anyone doubting the ultimate encounter is either blinkered, mendacious, or just small minded - after all, isn't the universe enormous and unknowable? This is a time capsule presentation of the UFO mystery akin to In Search Of ... where answers are just around the corner and doubters need to get out of the way! Barry brings in cattle mutilations and fellow abductee Charles Moody for some more period flavor. It's an impressive edifice of mystery, provided you don't look too close ...

This book was owned by Marv or Mary Taylor.

Pocket Books, 1978

WHAT WE REALLY KNOW ABOUT FLYING SAUCERS by Otto Binder

What a difference a year makes! Binder put out this fantastic flying saucer guide just one year before his awful piece of Ancient Astronaut hackwork, Flying Saucers Are Watching Us. I guess a man's gotta eat. This time around Binder quotes extensively from NICAP's "UFO Evidence" report, compiled by Richard Hall, which results in reams of data not normally found in cheapie UFO paperbacks such as Binder's very next book! Some charts and diagrams are also reproduced (see two images below). The full report is available for download on NICAP's website, along with some other classic UFO titles. 

Binder excludes contactees entirely from this volume, and only just touches on the Ancient Astronaut "theory" as one of several UFO ideas floating around. Next year von Daniken's bestseller Chariots of the Gods? would blow the field wide open for copycat cash-ins but for now, in the calm before the storm, sober scientific appraisal appeared to be winning out over the "UFOnuts." That's John Keel's own term for the lunatic fringe, from his introduction. Of course Keel himself was no stranger to the wilder side of the weird, so perhaps this slip-sliding tension was inevitable in the field. For what it's worth here Binder does a capable job sticking to just the facts, ma'am.

The photos included are of mostly indeterminate pedigree, excepting the Trinidade Island sequence recorded by the Brazilian Navy. A few confirmed hoaxes do sneak through, like one of Paul Villa Jr.'s spiffy saucer models and the very respectable McMinnville UFO photographs.

Paul Villa Jr. - too good to be true!

The McMinnville photos - ditto!

Some fringe ideas filter in as well, represented here by our pal Brad Steiger's large format special from Award Books, The Flying Saucer Menace. Binder mentions this text in his chapter on health effects from UFO sightings. Ray Palmer, Maury Island, and the Shaver Mystery are also mentioned for their fringe qualities. Brinsley Le Poer Trench is quoted on prehistoric UFOs, as are Carl Sagan and Fred Hoyle. The 1917 Fatima visions in Portugal come up as possible pre-Arnold UFOs. For the most part though, Binder avoids the wild speculation that was Steiger and Co.'s bread and butter. 

Flying saucer occupants are recorded as reported, including that other pair of Venezuelan dwarfs, merely one of a host of little men popping up in the '50s. Binder notes that reputable sighting reports of saucer occupants are frequently "frustrated" in one way or another, as if the UFOnauts are perpetually just out of reach, and connects this with Vallee's theorizing on the continuity between flying saucers and fairy folk. He does point to Betty and Barney Hill as the single credible UFO contact experience amid a field of contactees. The word "abduction" was not yet in currency, by the way, showing how different the UFO field really was in 1967 from our modern construct. And while the Aztec, New Mexico UFO hoax gets a mention, with Binder rejecting crashed saucers as hoaxes and wild rumors, there's not a word on Roswell. That only makes sense, as that now-iconic lore wouldn't be popularized until the '80s.

The most noticeable difference between this text and Binder's sloppy work from next year is his attitude toward the US Air Force. Next year Binder would present the standard conspiratorial picture of a omnipotent government coverup. Here now Binder is quite perceptive, pointing out the USAF's "vacillation" on the flying saucer question and its almost schizophrenic attitude, sometimes debunking and sometimes encouraging sighting reports. It's a smart appraisal of a gigantic government bureaucracy being pushed and pulled by multiple agendas and occurrences, and a necessary level of analysis if one wants to make any progress at all on UFOs.

Binder's so serious about wrangling his saucer facts that he gives us a helpful summary towards the end of the book, allowing us to take an overview of the ideas presented thus far:

As you can see above he also reprints the USAF's form for reporting UFO sightings, another useful thing to have on hand. A rundown of UFO types by Jacques Vallee follows, and Binder finishes the appendix section by summarizing John Keel's "Project B" appraisal of UFO data for 1966. And so we end on an uneasy note, surrounded by scientific data but dogged by the Men in Black - or at least, the man who most popularized them.

Thankfully, this is the book Binder chose to dedicate to his deceased daughter Mary Lorine Binder. It's a suitable honor, because as a UFO reader, as a time capsule, as a fascinating journey, this title is recommended.

What We Really Know About Flying Saucers is available to read and download at archive dot org.

Fawcett Publications, Inc., 1967