The Edge of Reality · A Progress Report on Unidentified Flying Objects

J. Allen Hynek (1910-86; cf. The UFO Experience: A Scientific Inquiry) Jacques F. Vallée (b. 1939; cf. Confrontations: A Scientist's Search for Alien Contact, Revelations: Alien Contact Human Deception Dimensions: A Casebook of Alien Contact) were two of the most prominent UFO researchers in the 1970s later. This jointly-written '75 book (mostly interviews with the two, separately or jointly) is a fascinating summary at that point in time by two sober researchers.

They begin by stating, "The UFO represents an unknown but real phenomenon. It implications are far-reaching take us to the very edge of what we consider the known real physical environment." However, they also caution that "what is unidentified to one person or persons may certainly be identifiable by persons of greater technical training experience. It has been demonstrated clearly that the great majority of what at 1st are reported to be UFOs are, after study by competent personnel, determined to be really IFOs, or Identifiable Flying Objects."

Hynek was scientific consultant to the Air Force's Project Blue Book. About the period, he notes, "We had so much crud in the Blue Book! It wasn't until '66 that I decided I had to revise my views take a new look, literally a new look at the whole thing from a different vantage point. Then, suddenly, things began to make sense to me."

Hynek's position is given in an interview: "One could spend all his energy confronting skeptics. That same energy is much better spent investigating the subject. Why waste time on people who have never bothered to learn the basic facts? It's their problem!" But he's skeptical of many famous reports: "It seems that these creatures, like the Pascagoula ones, certainly don't resemble the products of higher evolution as we conceive it. Who would think of a clawed creature coming down being a representative of a very advanced technology? It just doesn't fit!" An expert on hypnosis interviewed admits about regressive hypnosis: "A lot of times people use their imagination. A lot of times people fabricate things, from either wishful thinking, fantasies, dreams, things such as this."

Vallée (cf. his Passport to Magonia, The Invisible College Messengers of Deception) asks, "Could it be a human phenomenon? In other words, do we really need aliens fo explain UFOs if they are real? Or could the human race have been developed in a very remote past out of a contact between an advanced race or primates extraterrestrial visitors?" (Hynek notes, however, that Erich Von Daniken's books such as Chariots of the Gods are "illogical unscholarly.")

Tho decades old, this book remains of great interest to all interested in the serious study of UFOs.--Steven H. Propp (edited)