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.