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The UFO Chronicles

A long time ago, on a planet that feels very far away just now, I wrote a book on the UFO phenomenon, which was somewhat unoriginally titled The UFO Phenomenon. Unlike nearly everything in print on the subject, it didn't fall into the trap of assuming that any unknown object in the air has to be an alien spaceship or it never existed in the first place; what's more, it asked a lot of hard questions about the entire UFO phenomenon, and offered some answers that a great many people on both of the officially acceptable sides of the quarrel found very upsetting.

That was a long time ago. Since then, I've done further research, and also paid attention as various scraps of information got declassified. I haven't seen anything that casts doubt on the core conclusions of the original book, but it was time for an update, and when the original publisher up and decided on no notice to let The UFO Phenomenon go out of print, I was able to arrange for a new edition with Aeon Books -- and it's now available for preorder.

The UFO Chronicles: How Science Fiction, Shamanic Experiences, and Secret Air Force Projects Created the UFO Myth is a thoroughly expanded, updated, and revised edition of the original book with a great deal of new information. The new material I've added includes, among other things, crop circles, previously classified material on the most secret (and terrifying) of the US military balloon programs of the 1950s, and the central role of two groups of American occultists in creating and shaping the UFO mythology -- with results that continue to shape our culture today.

Meanwhile, as you're waiting for your copy to arrive, have a listen to this classic UFO-rock anthem, as a glimpse back into those giddy days when flying saucers had become a major cultural presence -- and when unknown things that didn't happen to come from outer space were being seen quite frequently in American skies...

Current Mood: pleased

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From: (Anonymous)

This time, the cover is actually great.

From:

That's one of the reasons I'm glad to be publishing with Aeon. The original publisher has a well-earned reputation for bad covers; I'm just glad I never got stuck with some ghastly Hermetic equivalent of Barbie on a broomstick.

From:

Very interesting. I'll have to buy a copy, and consider donating it to the local library, which needs an infusion of quality reading materials. Over the years I've spotted a couple of UFOs myself, but nothing like "Close Encounters". Just distance lights that readily did not seem to be planes or balloons.

Great tune by Klaatu, which was later covered by the Carpenters. Their hit off that album, their first, was "Sub Rosa Subway", which had a Morse code message beeping in the track near the end of the song. Rumor had it they were the Beatles, secretly reunited, based on the supposed decoding of the message. I still have the newspaper article I cut out from the Sunday paper about it, as it was about the 4th or 5th album I bought in my life up to that point. Turns out the band was a trio of Canadian studio musicians. They followed up with four other studio albums, a couple of which are really good. The name of the band of course refers to the character from "The Day the Earth Stood Still", a classic movie from 1951.

Congrats on getting the updated book published!

From:

There have been a lot of odd things in the sky over the years, no question; the narrative that insists that they must be from other planets is the primary thing that's kept them from being recognized and discussed -- and of course that was the entire point of the exercise. As for Klaatu, yeah, I remember the claims that they were the Beatles. Their sound was certainly strongly influenced by JPG&R...

From: (Anonymous)

So I have another book to add on my shopping list!

I read the first edition. Interesting and convincing. However I felt a certain let down insofar that the occult and / or paranormal aspects of the UFO phenomenon discussed in the book did not satisfy my hunger completely! Sorry! May be I was too greedy! Nevertheless I'll certainly buy it very soon!

Happy sales anyway!

From:

Thank you. I've expanded somewhat on the magical dimensions of the UFO phenomenon, though really it would take an entire book to do that justice -- and that book isn't something most people could understand until we get past the manufactured dichotomy that insists that anything strange seen in the sky was either an alien spacecraft or it was never there at all.

From:

jpc_w

Congratulations on finding a new publisher on relatively short notice.

Did the topic of Oumuamua and it’s possible artificial nature make it into this edition?

From:

No, though I considered it. I think the most likely explanation for 'Oumuamua is that it's a long-dead space probe, equivalent to one of our Voyager probes, sent out from some other solar system millions of years ago, which drifted by accident through our solar system. Since nobody sent a space probe to look and it's now zooming out toward deep space again, we'll never know.

From:

booklover1973

The strange properties of 'Oumuamua would make this possible, but the problem is, that industrial civilizations are so short-lived and habitable planets are so far spread apart that we would need to be very lucky to catch such an alien probe at this time, when we ourselves are in the short timespan of an industrial civilization where sophisticated telescopes are an option. In contrast, the interstellar comet Borisov is quite ordinary.

From:

Oh, granted -- if it did happen, it was blind luck, and the chances of another such probe coming past in the lifetime of our species is not high.

From: (Anonymous)

If it's artificial, I don't think it would be a coincidence: the odds seem to unlikely.

From:

The odds against your existence, or mine, are just as long. Given that there are millions of other improbable events that haven't happened, the fact that one did doesn't tell us anything.

From: (Anonymous)

I just find it doubtful that the one space probe our species will ever see would come through while we were at the phase of being obsessed with space travel. maybe they're far more common than I'm thinking though.

From: (Anonymous)

What makes you think that it is a space probe and not just a rock?

J.L.Mc12

From:

A number of its features (shape, surface albedo, quirky acceleration) might make more sense if it was artificial.

From: (Anonymous)

Fascinating, but oh man say it ain't so! I know this is all conjecture, but the idea that was possibly the only chance of encountering a genuine alien artefact and we let it slip past...That's pretty hard to swallow.

Morfran

From:

I wasn't pleased when it happened.

From: (Anonymous)

I wonder if the flurry of articles shrieking it's a natural phenomena are manifestations of that sentiment: people are trying to justify why no probes were sent after it....

From:

Quite possibly.

From: (Anonymous)

Based on it's appearance and odd trajectory, the first thought that came to my mind was the alien spacecraft in Arthur C Clarke's novel Rendezvous with Rama. Its really too bad NASA or someone else didn't send out a space probe to take a close look at 'Oumuamua.

From: (Anonymous)

Doesn’t it take many many years to get a space probe ready? We probably just did not have the time to get something up and running? What do people think?

From:

sothismedias

I'm rather partial to the Buchanan Brothers:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TxzAtyoK_0

From:

Funny. Thank you.

From: (Anonymous)

Blue Oyster Cult had a number of UFO and space alien themed songs, like this classic.

https://youtu.be/l55NbooeUVY

From:

It would be fun to put together an entire UFO-themed album.

From: (Anonymous)

Now that would be seriously cool!

From: (Anonymous)

"and the central role of two groups of American occultists in creating and shaping the UFO mythology"

Hmmm... Are those groups the ones that channeled messages from an entity called "The Nine"?

From:

No, although Puharich and his various groups are mentioned. The ones I have in mind were before his time: a group centered in Chicago around the legendary science fiction and alternative-realities editor Raymond Palmer, in the late 1940s, and a group in the Los Angeles area in the early 1950s that included George Van Tassel, George Adamski, and George Hunt Williamson.

From: (Anonymous)

Are your findings on UFO phenomena also related to the "Stargate Conspiracy"?

From:

Nope. I trust you noticed that the events predicted in the book of that title never happened.

From: (Anonymous)

Dear jmg

Awhile ago when I contemplated the difficulties of space travel I realised that though earth is completely unsuitable for the development of long term space travel for reasons you’ve already explained, there are planetary arrangements that could make the development of long term space travel easier.

Imagine a planet or moon close to a gas giant full of hydrogen, let’s say the distance that earth is to Venus or mars.
It would be possible for an alien species to use its fossil fuel supplies to develop spacecraft to go to the gas giant and collect the hydrogen as fuel for interplanetary or even interstellar travel.

J.L.Mc12

From:

Interplanetary, maybe. Interstellar? The Fermi "paradox" argues against it. To put things in logical terms:

Major premise: if interstellar travel were possible, given the age of the galaxy and the number of inhabitable planets likely to exist in it, we would see signs of starfaring civilizations.

Minor premise: we see no signs of starfaring civilizations.

Conclusion: interstellar travel isn't possible.

From: (Anonymous)

I guess so, but it is likely that one or two species blessed with both the right planetary conditions and the will and discipline to try space travel must have some kind of interplanetary civilisation limited to their solar system.

J.L.Mc12

From:

Interplanetary travel within a solar system is quite possible, and in a solar system where more than one planet had a strong magnetic field to ward off harmful solar radiation, it could indeed result in an interplanetary civilization. It's when you try to get from one solar system to another that Fermi's paradox cuts in.

From:

I suggest a slightly different resolution to the Fermi Paradox. In a nutshell, the degree of adaptability necessary to successfully colonize a new star system (however that adaptation is carried out -- technology, evolution, genetic self-modification, etc.) is incompatible with the kind of fixed single-minded purpose needed for the new colonies to choose to expend the enormous effort and resources needed to strive for colonies of their own. Hence the R0 is less than 1.

From:

To make that work, you'd have to show that this was the case with every conceivable intelligent species, and also explain away the fact that adaptability and purposiveness among humans are cultural rather than biological and thus subject to change over time. It's far more parsimonious to propose that interstellar travel is not actually possible -- and limits on energy resources offer one very plausible reason why that may be the case.

From: (Anonymous)

That, or radiation, or the difficulty in making things work long term (cultural or machinery)... I suspect that the reason interstellar travel is impossible is over determined!

From:

Of course, all the details of the argument don't fit in the aforementioned nutshell. That purposiveness among humans is cultural is central to my argument. That cultures and therefore purposes (you used preparation for mummification as an example) change and go extinct is most of my point.

The "Fermi scenario" requires that colones spawn colonies of their own with some degree of reliability (to get R0>1). That requires that the colonists adapt to extensively exploit whatever resources the new system might offer (without which they'd be unable to send any new colonies), while retaining the "we should continue to colonize space!" cultural impetus (without which they'd be unlikely to decide to). This sounds almost reasonable, especially if the colonizers are imagined as Von Neumann robots designed for that purpose (perhaps to research the cosmos for some very patient alien scientists).

My thesis is it's actually not so reasonable. In the case of robots, it's a question of whether their programming could possibly be sufficient to accomplish the task. (Note that we don't even have to consider whether or not the robots could be conscious or "intelligent".) If the parameters of that task could be known beforehand, then maybe a rule-based algorithm could be possible (akin to the astonishingly simple "algorithms" by which termites collectively build a mound, scaled way up). But they can't be. You can't drop that species of termite into the ocean or onto a high Himalayan rock slope and expect it to survive, let alone succeed in building a mound. The only way the robot colony could succeed is by some form of replication with variation (whether of physical units only, or also of multiple candidate programs within a digital cloud that compete for access to the physical interface—the latter being the way decision-making programs are now developed on planet Earth) to allow the necessary vast adaptive search for the best methods. But once they have that going on, there can be no guarantee they'll retain any aspect of their original programming (or hardware) driving them to launch colonies. Being useless for the more imminent tasks of surviving, reproducing, and building systems to exploit the material and energy resources of a new star system, those will wither away.

That's not some inherent problem with robots alone, though. Humans or humanlike aliens would face the same situation. In the millennia it would take to go from some tiny environmental shelter clinging to some asteroid or planet surface, to a large enough civilization to realistically contemplate building the next round of colonies, under extreme adaptive stress, history must happen. As you say, purposiveness is cultural. No broad tradition, enclaved priesthood, or scripture could retain its authority or even its meaning long enough to force the issue, for the same reasons giant stone pyramid building isn't even a fringe faction's issue in present-day politics, let alone an overriding innate human drive.

Why don't I prefer the more parsimonious answer of energy resource limits? The same kinds of calculations that tell me it would take a thousand years' worth of the entire amount of energy used by humans at present-day rates just to pull the Enterprise out of the space garage at 1/10th of light speed, also tell me that a ship 1/100th that mass (10,000 tons) going 1/10th that fast (making the trip between stars in millennia instead of centuries) would take five weeks' worth of that energy instead. A sufficiently motivated species living sustainably at 1/10th the population and 1/10th the per capita energy expenditure of present-day humans could still collect that amount of fuel in 100 years if they added ten percent to their energy capacity.

For a ship that small and that slow to make a colony possible, the colonizing species would have to possess some fortunate characteristics, such as being able to revive from a completely inert deep-frozen (4°K) state. It would also help if they could feed directly on electromagnetic energy. But I can't make a very good argument within the known natural sciences that those are impossibilities for any conceivable alien species.

Edited Date: 2020-03-27 11:43 pm (UTC)

From: (Anonymous)

Have you seen anything weird in the sky yourself?

I've seen two types:

An amorphous black shape that I've seen twice. I explained it as a big bin liner that the wind had caught and taken up high.

Something that could be described as a flying sock or a flying letter J. The two parts moved independently, so sometimes the J had a crossbar and sometimes it didn't. If that was a drone it was a very strange one.

I've never really looked into it - are sightings like that common?

From:

Fascinating. I've seen anomalous lights a few times, but that's about it. The two you've described don't ring any bells, but the range of odd things seen in the sky is so dizzyingly wide that neither seems out of place.

From:

Hi JMG,

It's great to see this back in print so I'll finally get around to grabbing a copy. In your research, did you happen to see the Australian documentary "Westall '66", about the mass sighting in Westall VIC ? The witnesses, students (now adults) and teachers still stand by what they saw and are nothing less than authentic. Given the amount of military involvement, it suggests experimental craft, but I'd love to get your take on it. The documentary can be found on YouTube if interested.

Also, do you look at specific cases such as Rendlesham Forest and the Phoenix Lights ?

Crop Circles ..... well, the documentary "Crop Circles-Quest For Truth" is interesting (what's with the balls of light ?), but the only circle that has me scratching my head is the giant Milk Hill formation from 2001. Now, I'll accept a team of circlemakers with flashlights which is not a bad effort in itself, but from all reports and I presume weather records could prove it, it bucketed rain all night and the formation was there the next morning. So given the size and accuracy of the formation, I'd love an explanation as to how that extra degree of difficulty was overcome.

Anyway, thanks for reading and doing your best to encourage a sense of wonder about life.

Steve

From:

I didn't happen to see the Westall documentary -- materials on Australian UFOlogy aren't very common on this side of the planet! It does indeed sound like a military experimental vehicle, though -- especially with the small aircraft the witnesses saw buzzing around it, which somehow the local air traffic control insisted couldn't have been there...

Rendlesham Forest was in fact an important clue. Let's see -- late December 1980, a black triangular aircraft of unknown type arriving suddely at a British airbase then used by the US air force, right about the time that black triangular aircraft were being sighted in various other places, and three years after the first top-secret stealth plane, code named HAVE BLUE, was tested at Area 51...whatever could it have been?

The Phoenix Lights etc. are something else again -- all the evidence suggests that there's an as-yet-undiscovered natural phenomena, probably associated with geotectonic stress, that produces glowing lights in the air above certain locations. A thorough scientific study would doubtless nail it down, but in the current climate of opinion I doubt the funds will be forthcoming.

As for Milk Hill, that was at the peak of the crop circle hullaballoo, when the various teams of circle-makers were vying with each other to produce the most gorgeous circles and get their products labeled as genuinely mysterious. I recommend reading Jim Schnabel's lively book Round in Circles and Rob Irving and John Lundford's how-to manual The Field Guide for context.

From: (Anonymous)

I will have to consider picking up this book... I did my own investigative work the other day on the Peruvian Navy’s 2014 sighting of an object “venting” hot gasses. It was probably the upper stages of a Chinese military satellite launch that same day. All easily accessible online public data. The Peruvian Navy’s PR machine must have needed some social media action to meet “like & share” quotas when they released the video in 2016.

My boss believes in UFOs, I believe if interstellar travel is possible we’re quite prudently quarantined by the Galactic Health Organization. How things change in two generations.

When you said “rock anthem” I was expecting an ELO sound, but this is even bigger! Thanks for the share, I will need to listen to more of Klaatu.

On the topic of an album of UFO songs, don’t forget Jefferson Starship’s “Light the Sky on Fire” as featured in 1978’s “Star Wars Holiday Special!”

https://youtu.be/cKL-6rBkQN0

-Architrains

From:

The Peruvian Navy might well have spotted a Chinese satellite launch, but keep in mind that "Look over there! a UFO!" is a great way to distract attention from anything you don't want to admit is in the air, and militaries around the world have been using it relentlessly since, oh, 1947. It's quite possible that the Peruvian Navy was doing something it didn't want to admit to -- say, flying into someone else's airspace -- and made a fuss about the sighting so that people would say, "Oh, I guess that was the UFO" -- and so that skeptical types would refuse to admit that anyone had seen anything, thus confusing the issue nicely.

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