UFO Con­tacts and Cults

by Jacques Val­lée
1979, And/Or Press
ISBN 0–915904-38–1
243 pages

1980, Revised Ban­tam Edi­tion
ISBN-10: 055313906
ISBN-13: 978–0553139068
272 pages

Excerpt:

In some respects I think UFOs are sim­i­lar to tele­vi­sion sets. They are phys­i­cal objects, the prod­ucts of a tech­nol­ogy, but they are also some­thing else: the tools of a major cul­tural change. I think UFOs are per­pe­trat­ing a decep­tion by pre­sent­ing their so-called “occu­pants” as being mes­sen­gers from outer space, and I sus­pect there are groups of peo­ple on Earth exploit­ing this deception.

I have writ­ten this book because I am con­cerned with the changes which would be trig­gered by the belief in an outer-spece inva­sion, real or sim­u­lated. In the words of a Brook­ings Insti­tute report on the cul­tural impact of extrater­res­trial life:

The con­se­quences of such a dis­cov­ery are presently unpre­dictable because of our lim­ited knowl­edge of behav­ior under even an approx­i­ma­tion of such dra­matic cir­cum­stances. The fun­da­men­tal­ist (and anti-science) sects are grow­ing apace . . . . For them, the dis­cov­ery of other life would be electrifying.

Val­lée (1979: 63–64)

Jacques F. Val­lée, Ph. D., is a French-born com­puter sci­en­tist, ufol­o­gist, and for­mer astronomer, cur­rently resid­ing in San Fran­cisco, CA.

THIS BOOK IS OUT OF PRINT. Learn more about Jacques Val­lée.