COMMENTARY

Like most Americans, I’ve been reading about UFOs since I saw my first flying saucer movie back in 1954 or so. First with the innocence and willingness to believe of a kid, but as I grew up, so did my skeptical nature, and along the way I just wanted to find a source of information which clearly had some acts and reason behind it. It’s finally available. John Alexander is a serious professional soldier with a Ph.D. behind his name, and with work behind him at a classified national laboratory. He also has an active, questing mind and is always out looking for information.

This book is, I think, maybe the first-ever look into a question that millions of people have, and more to the point, it’s a look that asks questions and looks for hard answers. John, whom I met back in the 1980s, is a guy who knows what to look for, knows whom to ask, and knows the language of the answers to his questions. What he says you can take to the bank. He also knows what he cannot say, and in some ways the book is as frustrating as many of the “I know” UFO books. The final word is not yet in, even here. You won’t find any of the “I know but I can’t say” stuff. Sources are identified, and can give the reader a place to start his own inquiry.

UFO lore is largely a place where history and science meet theology. People believe because they want to believe. But they want to believe in what? Arthur C. Clarke once said that any sufficiently advanced technology cannot be distinguished from magic. We know that’s true. I can remember what computers were back in the 1950s—big adding machines. In 1984 I saw the first Mac unveiled in D.C. and decided on the spot that I had to have one. I could not write books without them, and they’re as common as rainwater, and almost as cheap. But fifty years ago, they had not been imagined. Forty years ago, it took an IBM System 360 that filled a room. Twenty years ago, the first portable came out, and now the important part of a portable computer is the keyboard you use to dial the phone. Now, had one invented an Apple Macintosh back in 1910, the hard part would have been not to be burned as a witch.

We can assume that UFOs, if they exist, have computer power such as we have not yet dreamed about, and what else can they do? Dimensional corridors that bypass space-time? If so, then they can hop from place to place faster than the speed of light. Or even time travel? What we consider reality would be immensely limiting to the pilots of such craft.

We cannot know, and even if we did know, could we understand?

Probably, yes.

We can learn damned near anything, but learning takes time. Consider a cure for cancer. Some very smart people are working on that. Some of them are friends of mine. I cannot grasp what they are doing, but when they are successful, it will in retrospect appear simple. That is the way of progress. It is the nature of science to make the incomprehensible transparently obvious. Just that you cannot know what you have not yet discovered.

And so it is with the UFO. We do not know how they, if they are real, operate. All we can do is to gather information, draw conclusions from it, then advance a step at a time in the hope of catching up. As with the growth of a child, life is about learning and categorizing reality. It requires time and patience and thought. John’s book is a step toward the learning. It outlines what evidence we have. Perhaps in retrospect we will see how easy it ought to have been, but you need to walk forward before you turn to look back. When Magellan sailed west from Portugal, he didn’t know what he would find, but for him that was the fun part. John’s new book is part of Magellan’s log. Maybe he doesn’t answer all the questions, but he sees more than anyone else I know of has. So, he has taken a step. It’s our job to learn from him in order to take a few more.

Tom Clancy

Baltimore, 2010