UFO Mag On-Line
Nancy Birnes of UFO Magazine has generously placed the whole of the new issue online as a PDF and which can be downloaded here:
http://www.ufomag.com/sample/UFO22.12.pdf
As some of you know, I write a regular column for the mag titled “View from a Brit.”
My new “Brit” article for this month is on the subject of what might hypothetically happen to us - the UFO research community - if ET one day lands en masse.
The article has already led a couple of people to complain to me in boo-hoo fashion that I am being unduly harsh and critical in my observations and conclusions.
I don’t believe I am. All I can do is tell it as I see it. If people don’t like it, that’s how it goes. I won’t lose sleep.
All comments are welcome.
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Dec 20 2007 
December 20th, 2007 at 10:14 am
You still have a few Cryptids to hunt down, mate. No rest for the wicked!
December 20th, 2007 at 12:05 pm
Nick — grab onto a power-line and morph into some mimicry appropriate to save us (well maybe not the “trash” cited below):
Spy planes to recharge by clinging to power lines NewScientist news service Dec. 18, 2007*************************The US Air Force Research Lab is developing an electric motor-powered micro air vehicle that can “harvest” energy when needed by attaching itself to a power line, even temporarily changing its shape to look more like innocuous piece of trash hanging from the cable. Much of the “morphing” technology to perform this has already been developed….
December 20th, 2007 at 12:07 pm
“People are less
and less inclined to use their legs for an activity
that was once quite popular in days of
yore: It was known as walking. Some of you
may even remember it.”
Walking?
… Er… must be an english thing, like cricket
December 20th, 2007 at 12:23 pm
RPJ:
LOLOL, I rest my case!
December 20th, 2007 at 1:40 pm
I think you’re article is right on. It makes me want to ask you some questions about how large the UFO market is? So I got some questions for you about stuff I wondered about:
How big is the UFO consumer market?
On UFO books, how many books can a new release expect to sell?
How many people actively seek UFO information on the internet?
How many people do you think exist out there have serious UFO belief systems?
How many people visit UFO Mystic?
Just thought I’d ask.
December 20th, 2007 at 2:02 pm
Mister Anderson:
Good questions.
It’s difficult to judge the size of the market and how many copies books sell, etc. I think it’s largely dependent on the subject matter, and how popular a book might be on this particular topic or that topic.
For example, a pro-UFO book on Roswell is likely to sell far more copies than a debunking book on the Socorro case.
I can tell you that my books generally sell between 1,000 and 4,000 or 5,000 copies per title over the course of their in-print “lifetime”. I think my first book made it to just above 10,000 copies, but that was 10 years ago when X-Files mania was at its height. But today, I’d say I average a few thousand per book.
But of course, you can never predict sales: Philip Corso’s book on Roswell, for example, rocketed into 6-figure sales.
Some people might be surprised that they don’t some UFO books don’t sell more; but as I have often told people: we are a small group.
Now, as far as the Net is concerned, certainly a HUGE number of people follow the UFO subject, but that doesn’t always translate to book and magazine sales, and particularly when Net info is largely free, and mags and books aren’t.
I think most people in the UFO subject have some sort of belief system, whether they would admit it or not. I think we all should strive to be impartial; but there’s always a tendency - with human nature - to have some sort of belief system in place.
December 20th, 2007 at 7:01 pm
I can only speculate that the hardcore niche of the para-faction genre is the “bored housewives” market that was officially launched with Flaubert’s Madame Bovary novel. If only such stylistic flair could be recreated as of the original; yet we can’t all be French, dunk fancy cookies in tea to induce “Numen Est Omen”-based epics (Proust) nor drink 40 cups a coffee a day, like Balzac. haha.
For example, being of German descent, I was rejected by Galde Press and Inner Traditions (both steadfast para-faction publishers) as too academic. Llewyllen came to the same conclusion — that’s not quite how to spell their name but then they’re an extreme example of the bored-housewive market, producing what I call ANTI-BOOKS: pure vapid, half cookbook, half menagarie-type para-faction texts. It’s impressive actually how sometimes if no one is in the forest the tree CAN be heard to be made into a para-faction novel.
December 21st, 2007 at 12:46 am
That’s astonishing about Philip Corso. He was a complete faker, & he sold so many books. What a harsh world we live in. One reason I was interested was Jacques Vallee in the 70’s & 80’s wrote about what he thought would be a new belief system surrounding UFO’s. Now, I don’t think that ever panned out. But, it made me wonder how many people out there had active UFO belief systems.
January 10th, 2008 at 9:48 pm
As an abductee/contactee/vistitee what have you, I used to have this fantasy that a craft would land, actually physically land, near me somewhere in full public view, and that the aliens, who I’d love to kick ass for having tormented me, stepped up to me and shook my hand and apologized. If they did, of course, I would hope that the media, UFO and other mainstream scientific researchers, and a huge portion of the public where there to witness this event, so that I, and others like me, would once and for all be fully vindicated. Oh, and of course this fantasy includes a scene where the aliens are willing to give blood and tissue samples.
Now, in looking into the question, “If they land, what happens to us [UFO researchers, UFO community]?”, I’d have to say that I believe both would be alive and kicking.
I mean…is it so much about proof? Or, isn’t by now, about understanding? And if this mystery unfolds, won’t we, the UFO community, need more answers from you, the UFO researchers?
Of course, I’m one of many, I’m sure, who doesn’t need proof. I’ve had the damn things (both UFO’s and aliens of more than one kind, along with personal confirmation from individuals who witnessed this phenomenon as being connected to me so I can’t really keep denying the buggers) plaguing me for years – from somewhere before the age of five to somewhere in my late thirties. Go figure, from the age of easy-to-manipulate to ending-fertility.
It wasn’t until I was desperately losing jobs, friends, and relationships because I wanted to talk, gain advice or support for my occasioned non-human being visitations and moments of being paralyze while in my bed while whatever-the-flip-it-was “talked” to me in what I can only best describe as raw mathematics, and since these events seemed less related to a religious experience and more related to a UFO/Alien experience, that I began reading material from “UFO researchers” and the “UFO community”. And when I did read such material, no offense please, the whole lot of it put me off.
Because I understand now what I was looking for. I wasn’t looking for proof. I was looking for others like me. People, who didn’t have to believe, but knew! For goodness sakes! I was looking for someone who had seen Earth from space as a child, who clearly remembered the experience and could talk about it, simply and plainly, without bells and whistles. I wanted to meet the others who were, no matter how they tried otherwise, were forever locked outside of mainstream.
And because I am out of mainstream forever I still keep reading UFO/Alien-related material. And, because there’re a lot of people out there like me, I assume there will always be a large audience