UFO Profiling: Mac Tonnies
As well as posting regular news, reviews, interviews and occasional guest-posts, I thought the other day about doing a kind of semi-regular profile of people within Ufology: the good, the bad, the ugly, the dead, the living, and those somewhere in between.
And so, why not? I’ll start with one of the good: friend Mac Tonnies.
I first became acquainted with the work of this intense, yet fun, thirty-something coffee-fiend in 2004 when Patrick Huyghe sent me a copy of Mac’s newly-published book After the Martian Apocalypse - a detailed study of the controversy surrounding the so-called “Face on Mars” and other, seemingly anomalous structures on the red planet.
I took the book with me on holiday to Mexico that year where (utterly in vain) I spent 14 days trying to tan my pale and pasty English skin, but only ended up looking like a radioactive tomato. Nevertheless as my wife and I sat sprawled on the beach, I dug deep into Mac’s book and raced through it in two days.
By then, the book was battered and bruised from a combination of sand, sea-water, spilled margaritas and hot sauce, yet it was also fully devoured and thoroughly enjoyed. And I was pleased to see that Mac was not a rabid debunker; nor was he a card-carrying member of the “I want to believe” club.
Rather, he logically and with a clear head on his shoulders, argued as to why he felt there were decidedly strange things afoot on Mars - and possibly deep below its surface too.
Well, I caught up with Mac shortly afterwards, and we kept in touch by email, and finally got to meet at Paul Kimball’s New Frontiers Symposium in Halifax, Nova Scotia in late 2006.
But it’s Mac’s new book I’m looking forward to: The Cryptoterrestrials, which takes a fresh, and decidedly unconventional look at the UFO presence on our world.
Frankly, there’s nothing worse (aside from death, global famine, nuclear disaster and all-round armageddon) than seeing players in the UFO field fawning all over their peers at conferences as they seek acceptance into the ufological sand-pit by saying the “right thing” to the “right people.” Thankfully, there’s none of that in Mac’s world.
As I did with my Roswell expose, Mac is doing likewise with The Cryptoterrestrials: namely, he is presenting a theory to explain key aspects of the UFO mystery that have zero to do with alien visitations.
Rather, the intriguing path that Mac is following suggests that our alien visitors may, in reality, be the survivors of an ancient terrestrial race that is perhaps on an evolutionary downslide. The “alien motif” is nothing less than an ingenious cover that allows them to surface from the shadowy parts of our world in which they live, to walk among us, to use and exploit us, and then return to those same shadowy realms to plot their next actions and activities.
I predict that when Mac’s book comes out he’ll get a response similar to that which I received when Body Snatchers was published: namely, the old-guard won’t like it because it threatens both the ufological status quo and the “UFO community.”
They want the good old days to remain in place: they want interplanetary ships, alien abductions, radar-visual cases, crash-retrievals, and honest-to-goodness ETs. They don’t want cryptoterrestrials, DMT, LAM, trickster elements and the like - well too bad: the old days are coming to an end and the 50s and 60s will soon be nothing but memories.
Agree with him or disagree with him, but Mac is making people (a) think outside the box and (b) address issues that would otherwise remain untouched.
Support him and support his work by checking out his blog: http://posthumanblues.blogspot.com and his website: http://www.mactonnies.com
For the next profile, I think I’ll pick someone in ufology I viciously hate. So many, yet so little time…
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Mar 18 2008 
March 19th, 2008 at 10:06 am
“I took the book with me on holiday to Mexico that year where (utterly in vain) I spent 14 days trying to tan my pale and pasty English skin, but only ended up looking like a radioactive tomato.”
That’s because you didn’t drink enough Tequila. You gotta work the tanning from the inside out, güero!
March 19th, 2008 at 4:48 pm
RPJ:
LOL, I’ll remember that!
March 20th, 2008 at 1:09 am
Mr. Redfern, I’ve read a few of your books and I’m an occasional reader here and at your other website. Your profile series seems a fitting place to post this.
Recently, I acquired a box of old UFO magazines. Multiple issues of Flying Saucer Review, Flying Saucers, Flying Saucers: UFO Reports, etc., were included much to my unrestrained glee.
I find them utterly fascinating. The letters, in particular, give insight into ufological history and, sometimes, in the case of Ray palmer’s mags, good old fashioned American heartland wackiness.
For instance, in the 4th issue of Flying Saucers:UFO Reports, published by Dell in 1967, I found a very strange letter from John Keel. I’m assuming it’s tongue in cheekily written, but still, it is quite odd.
In it, he says this :
“It is time that we discarded all of the half-baked, uneducated speculation and got down to the basic facts. The unidentified flying objects should be recognized for what they really are: unlicensed aerial vehicles (UAVs). They are violating our airspace without proper authorization and have shown complete disregard for our aircraft zoning regulations. These are criminal acts and as such they deserve an all-out investigation by both the USAF and FAA.
We cannot prove that they are from another planet, or that they are constructed by an alien race with superior technology. But we can prove they are constantly breaking our laws. This should, therefore, be recognized as a legal problem as well as a scientific one. We have agencies which are financed by our taxes to investigate and cope with such blatant violations of our laws. These agencies should be forced to investigate the “problem.”
It appears that his plea fell on deaf ears.
The issue also contains 2 articles by Mr. Keel. One concerns UFOs seen by astronauts in space and another, quite curiously, asks the eternal question, “Are UFOS Using The Earth For A Garbage Dump.”
I bet you’d love to know the answer.
Thanks for some good reads by the way.
March 20th, 2008 at 10:55 am
Joseph
Many thanks for the posting and comments.
In my view, Keel is one of the most important figures within Ufology, and someone who truly thinks outside the box.
March 22nd, 2008 at 12:01 am
Nick and all,
Mac is one of the few people in the field who make think “I wish I’d said that!”
Nick, you left out that he is a pretty good artist too.
March 22nd, 2008 at 12:02 am
RPJ,
“Güero ” is probably more dignified than “Gringo con nalgas hueras.”
Straight tequila is my favorite drink, BTW. I like Penca Azul and a couple of others…