Roswell, 1947. Washington, DC, 1952. Quarouble, 1954. New Hampshire, 1961. Pascagoula, 1973. Petrozavodsk, 1977. Copley Woods, 1983. Explore how sightings of UFOs and aliens seized the world's attention and discover what the fascination with flying saucers and extraterrestrial visitors says about our changing views on science, technology, and the paranormal.
In the summer of 1947, a private pilot flying over the state of Washington saw what he described as several pie pan-shaped aircraft traveling in formation at remarkably high speed. Within days, journalists began referring to the objects as "flying saucers." Over the course of that summer, Americans reported seeing them in the skies overhead. News quickly spread, and within a few years, flying saucers were being spotted across the world. The question on everyone's mind was, what were they? Some new super weapon in the Cold War? Strange weather patterns? Optical illusions? Or perhaps it was all a case of mass hysteria? Some, however, concluded they could only be one thing: spacecrafts built and piloted by extraterrestrials. The age of the unidentified flying object, the UFO, had arrived.
Greg Eghigian tells the story of the world's fascination with UFOs and the prospect that they were the work of visitors from outer space. While accounts of great wonders in the sky date back to antiquity, reports of UFOs took place against the unique backdrop of the Cold War and space age, giving rise to disputed government inquiries, breathtaking news stories, and single-minded sleuths. After the Flying Saucers Came traces how a seemingly isolated incident sparked an international drama involving shady figures, questionable evidence, suspicions of conspiracy, hoaxes, new religions, scandals, unsettling alien encounters, debunkers, and celebrities. It examines how descriptions, theories, and debates about unidentified flying objects and alien abduction changed over time and how they appeared in the United States, Europe, Latin America, Asia, and Russia. And it explores the impact UFOs have had on our understanding of space, science, technology, and ourselves up through the present day.
Replete with stories of the people who have made up the ufology community, the military and defense units that investigate them, the scientists and psychologists who have researched these unexplained encounters, and the many novels, movies, TV shows, and websites that have explored these phenomena, After the Flying Saucers Came speaks to believers and skeptics alike.
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[A] fascinating history of the phenomenon shows that a weakness for UFOs has affected an extraordinary range of people and penetrated to just about every corner of society. * Edmund Gordon, London Review of Books * Fascinating [and] deeply-researched. * Phil Tinline, Engelsberg Ideas * Whether or not UFOs are celestial in nature, they are indisputably a powerful terrestrial force-and are also indisputably shaped by terrestrial forces. After the Flying Saucers Came is the most rigorous and compelling account of UFOs' hold on humans, featuring sources and voices left out of existing histories. This book is absolutely essential reading if you want to understand the most recent UFO flap in the United States: where it came from, where it's going, and why it matters. * Sarah Scoles, Author of They Are Already Here: UFO Culture and Why We See Saucers * Flying saucers first arrived in our skies more than seventy years ago but it astonishing that a mystery of this scale has received scant attention from historians-until now. Greg Eghigian is the first academic historian to write a social history of the impact of UFOs and the alien contact phenomenon that is both ambitious and worldwide in its scope. He examines the social impact the phenomenon has had not only on the people who see them but also the UFOlogists, believers, and skeptics who have shaped one of the most important and influential modern myths. * David Clarke, Author of How UFOs Conquered the World: The History of a Modern Myth * The UFO experiencers, activists, and archives deserve far more professional attention than they have received, and historical attention that does not 'pick a side.' Eye rolls and arrogant smirks will no longer do, but beliefs are not to be so quickly believed either. Greg Eghigian is just such a careful and fair historian. We have a sure and steady hand here, guiding us around a planet of secrecy, revelation, deception, and Cold War history both within and beyond the 'spacemen with superpowers' who appear (and disappear) so early and often in these pages. * Jeffrey J. Kripal, Author of How to Think Impossibly: About Souls, UFOs, Time, Belief, and Everything Else * While astronomers remain justifiably skeptical that UFOs have anything to do with life elsewhere in the universe, there is no doubt they have a great deal to do with human beings, their dreams and their anxieties. Eghigian provides a keen scholar's eye on UFOs as a cultural phenomena. Through engaging prose and fine storytelling, After the Saucers Came offers an expert historian's guide to the definitely human narratives that make up UFOs. * Adam Frank, Author of The Little Book of Aliens * Eghigian's approach is refreshingly balanced... After the Flying Saucers Came compellingly demonstrate's that the idea of UFOs goes far beyond simple curiosity-it is a reflection of our hopes, fears and the complexities of the modern world. * Chen Ly, New Scientist * Eghigian does a good job of detailing the literature of descriptions and encounters over the last few centuries ... quickly illustrat[ing] that the human narratives very quickly seem to mirror the preoccupations, concerns and fears of that particular epoch. * Simon Cocking, Irish Tech News * Readers of SFS will find a thought-provoking account of a global phenomenon that has been continually informed by a dialogue with sf and with wider speculative culture. * Gavin Miller, Science Fiction Studies * The UFO phenomenon has been a big part of popular culture around the world for almost 80 years...This book should become the new starting place for anyone who desires to study and learn about the UFO phenomenon. * Choice * Greg Eghigian's fascinating history of the phenomenon shows that a weakness for UFOs has affected an extraordinary range of people and penetrated to just about every corner of society. * Edmund Gordon, London Review of Books *
Greg Eghigian is a Professor of History and Bioethics at Pennsylvania State University. An expert on the history of the abnormal and the paranormal in the modern world, his research has been supported by NASA and the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. He is the author of The Corrigible and the Incorrigible: Science, Medicine, and the Convict in Twentieth Century Germany and the editor of The Routledge History of Madness and Mental Health, among other works.
Autor*in
Professor of History and BioethicsProfessor of History and Bioethics, Pennsylvania State University
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1: Arrival
Chapter 2: Before the Flying Saucers: Apparitions, Airships, and Aliens
Chapter 3: Spaceships, Conspiracies, and the Birth of the UFO Detective, 1948-1953
Chapter 4: From Mystery to Movement, 1947-1960
Chapter 5: Journeys
Chapter 6: Science and UFOs in the 1960s
Chapter 7: Renaissance
Chapter 8: Them
Conclusion: Where To, Where From, Wherefore?
Notes
Bibliography
Index
