ARE THE INVADERS COMING? by Steven Tyler

 

Steven Tyler (possibly a pseudonym?) delivers a canny and practical guide to UFOlogy circa 1968, with some sharp darts directed at Ancient Astronauts and the field's credulous laundering of hoaxes and shoddy sources. The following excerpt is particularly illustrative:

Budget publisher Tower Books wraps it all up in an enticing package, with cover art of two charming and chintzy plastic flying saucers, one of them blasting its death beam down below! A strong recommendation across the board.

This title is available to read and download at archive dot org.

Tower Books, 1968

MAPS OF THE UNKNOWN: Mystery Animal Haunts

From an article by Charles Bowen, "Mystery Animals." Featured in the Flying Saucer Review, Volume 10 - Number 6, November/December 1964.

COSMIC DEBRIS: The Karma Force Field Bracelet

And Karma Ring! Your keys to throbbing vitality, another pair of wearable wonders from the House of Collingwood and pyramid guru Dr. Michael Flanagan, who seemed like quite the hustler. As for Count Stefan Colona Valuski, I have my doubts he ever existed ... 

From Fate, Volume 31 - Number 9, September 1978.

LETTERS TO THE AIR FORCE ON UFOS edited by Bill Adler

Bill Adler made a career churning out these kind of compilation books and was described as "the most fevered mind" in publishing by People magazine. You can't fault his choices for inclusion in this volume, bringing a broad spectrum of schoolkids, housewives, academics, professionals, and various cranks. Most everyone seems hopeful that the flying saucer mystery can be solved, with or without the Air Force's input, and that the most likely culprits are friendly, humanoid aliens who we should meet in the spirit of galactic brotherhood. There are a couple dissenters who have alternate theories of unknown electrical/weather phenomenon. Most of the firsthand sightings reported in the letters would qualify as Close Encounters of the First Kind, not reporting any saucer occupants, and read as honest attempts by witnesses to describe something unknown.

Available to read and download at archive dot org.

Dell Publishing, 1967

MAPS OF THE UNKNOWN: Mu Revealed

Churchward's Mu, or more properly Muror, from Raymond Buckland's Mu Revealed. Buckland published this very dry pastiche as one Tony Earll (which anagrams to "Not Really") with contributions from Professor Reesdon Hurdlop (just a silly name) and Dr. Maud N. Robat - "Robat" being Buckland's "craft name" for magick purposes.

Courtesy the Paperback Library, 1970.

COSMIC DEBRIS: Shaver's Lemurian Alphabet

Richard Shaver's ur-tongue known as Mantong, reprinted in the essential Lost Continents and the Hollow Earth, which collected Shaver's I Remember Lemuria! and The Return of the Sathanas alongside supplemental material by David Hatcher Childress.

Courtesy Adventures Unlimited Press, 1999.

THEY KNEW TOO MUCH ABOUT FLYING SAUCERS by Gray Barker

Here come the Men in Black! This is the book wherein Gray Barker introduces those sinister black suited creeps that have since become a UFOlogical standby. Barker certainly knows how to turn a phrase, and he weaves a twisted web of intrigue out of the flying saucer freakshow of the mid-50s. It's a worldwide whistlestop tour which includes the Flatwoods Monster, various contactees, the paranoid sexual miasma of the Shaver Mystery, and a detour into Hugh Auchincloss Brown and his theory of Catastrophic Pole Shift. The cure for which, by the by, is a flurry of H-Bombs a la Toho Studio's super science disaster epic Gorath. Brown's theory would later be the subject of a 1970s doorstopper disaster novel, The HAB Theory.

Barker includes a useful appendix of UFO books, and a condensed summary of the Shaver Mystery in case you missed the jist. This Tower Books reprint features a lovely impressionist cover of headlights on the highway. Available to read and download at archive dot org.

Tower Books, 1967 (original pub. 1956)