No One Publishing UFO Books Anymore
A couple of weeks back, I had lunch with Patrick Huyghe (pronounced “hweezh”) from Anomalist Books, who told me once again that big publishers are turning down proposals for UFO-related books by the truckload. This has been the case for about six or seven years now. When asked for any further comments by email, Huyghe responded “Old Milwaukee is not the best beer in America.”
I have my own theory about the reason for this massive loss of interest in UFOs. It can be stated in three numbers: 9-11.
In September of 2001, I was working on an T.V. series called The Conspiracy Zone. They were about to send me out to Austin to cover the annual National UFO Convention, which that year was organized by my good friend Miles Lewis of Anomaly TV. The event was to kick off on Friday, September 14th. Obviously, no one could make it if they didn’t live in Austin, or near it. Poor Miles nearly lost his shirt.
9-11 threw the Conspiracy Zone production offices into temporary chaos. The executive producer wondered aloud whether we should even continue with the program, as some people might see it as an exercise in bad taste. One of the consultants, who used to lecture the staff on his view of the conspiracy cosmos during meetings, left the show in a paranoid frenzy.
In an atmosphere where the simple act of parking on the studio lot involved searches of individual cars with mirrors passed underneath even the most expensive Lambroghinis, it’s no wonder we thought that most people wouldn’t really care about the ravings of conspiracy advocates. When your life is in apparent danger on a daily basis, questions like “Who Killed Princess Diana?” “Who Shot JFK?” and even “Do you believe in UFOs?” take a distant backseat.
I can’t think of any major UFO book that was published from late 2001 until about two or three years ago. The days of six-figure advances for books on mysterious lights in small coastal Florida towns may be gone for good.
What may need to happen is that instead of doling out huge sums for members-only studies, people like Robert Bigelow, Laurance Rockefeller, and Joe Firmage may want to look into funding researchers who will produce books that we can all read. There are hundreds of titles on important but overlooked UFO subjects waiting to be published, and those with deep pockets should look for the widest possible dissemination of new data and viewpoints to move Ufology into the next phase, whatever that may be. Information belongs to those who can use it. There are also many good reasons to republish old titles that have become scarce collectors’ items.
For those of you who are clamoring for a reprint of Jim Brandon’s seminal title The Rebirth Of Pan, I have learned that publishers have been in touch with Brandon, but backed off when he apparently insisted that he would need to write a new forward including some of his controversial political views. If this is true, editors might be nervous about any backlash and possible legal action should they publish. What a shame. Perhaps some Ufological sugar daddy can convince Brandon to part with the rights to his title for a price, which apparently almost everyone has.
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Apr 02 2007 
April 3rd, 2007 at 12:53 am
9-11, yep I have to admit that after that the UFO thing dropped off my radar for a few years. It only makes sense, it’s so much friggin bigger and explosive and in your face.
Lets face it, UFOs have caused how many deaths in the last hundred years? Maybe five? Thats small potatoes to the rest of the worlds problems.
What kills me is the 9-11 conspiracy theories. I have no real love for the establishment or for a strong federal government. You might even say that I believe the U.S. has done some pretty insane or questionable stuff over the years. But c’mon, 9-11 was not an inside job. If you pay attention to how demolition techs bring down a building you can easily infer how the airliners brought down those other buildings. It’s fire science 101.
… and to have Rosie O’Donnell say “it’s the first time in history fire melted steel.” just absolutely confounds me.
How do you melt steel then? Enzymes? Catlylitic plasma venting? Warp exhaust? Gimme a GAWDamn break! Forget a conservative backlash to those remarks. Why havn’t the blacksmiths, metalurgists and steel workers pointed out the simple fact. . .
typical structural steel melts at 825 deg celcius. Harrumph! Jet fuels typically burn at 550 deg celcius, now I know what you are thinking but the conspiracy theorists always leave out an important fact, combustability. Combustible materials increase the temperature of a fire. So all your materials in the high rise except for steel, concrete and gypsum (found in drywall) are considered combustible in a 550 deg fire. They will increase the temperature. Thats why the building engineers coated the steel girders with fire retardant foam.
In the WTC building there was enough materials burning at high enough temperature to cause damage to unprotected structural steel, since the impact of the aircraft blew the foam right off the girders the directly affected floors didn’t have a chance. All it takes is for one level to be comprimised. The combined weight of all the levels above it will cause the structural collapse.
Bush & Co. may not be nicest guys on the block but it’s just insane to think that we would actually perform a strategic strike on ourselves to start a war in Iraq. We already had plenty of reasons to attack Iraq. 9-11 would not have changed that reality.
Jess
April 3rd, 2007 at 5:19 am
The truth is that public interest in unexplained aerospace phenomena had been declining long before 9-11. Most folks had come to believe that UFO’s were real and whatever UFO’s were they didn’t appear to be a physical threat to human life on a whole.
First and foremost the events of 9-11-01 were part of a conspiracy. What the goals of that conspiracy are of huge concern to all of humankind. IMHO Many folks in the 9-11 truth movement are bogged down in the details of how it was done and not why it was done? The official report and conclusions of how the WTC 1 and 2 collapsed is obviously about as accurate as next week weather report.
When you are constantly being lied to you tend not to trust the person(s) lying to you. The rest of the public has now received a gagging mouthful of bs about 9-11, the same kind of bs that the govt has been dishing out their knowledge about the UFO phenomena for decades. The public at large has taken to the 9-11 truth movement because it truly no longer trusts the govt. Especially after the obvious failings of the US govt’s law enforcement and intelligence departments to prevent the attack on 9-11 with ample evidence that the attack was preventable if competent personnel had been allowed to do their assigned duties.
The war in Iraq is about securing a military foothold in the region to ensure that the price of oil will be fixed by the global energy conglomerates and not the people who actually own this commodity. You don’t fight terrorism with massive armies, you fight it with special forces, law enforcement and intelligence services.
April 3rd, 2007 at 9:45 am
I would tend to think that crgintx is largely correct that a lot of the public-at-large interest in UFOs has tailed off and that this has been going on since before 9-11. The terror hits just exacerbated it. I know I am not nearly as ‘juiced’ about these things as I was in days gone by. I used to devour everything (Keyhoe, Edwards,
Ruppelt, Stringfield, Hynek, whoever)but now, increasingly, its like going to the grocery store when you aren’t really hungry. You see stuff and think “Nah. I’m tired of that”. And move on. Why? Because of “been there, done that” syndrome. I’ve seen a UFO and I’ve read forty-’leven books and watched forty-’leven UFO movies/tv shows over a great many years, and reached a point where I don’t feel a need to read everything new because only the names and dates change. The phenomonon rolls on as before. And, unless something BIG happens out of the blue, I see it still rolling on after I’m in the ground. I think a lot of the rest of the population is about the same. We BELIEVE in the things. We DON”T accept the government B.S. about them. SO? After a long while of same-old-same-old the sense of urgency wanes.
All is cyclical, though, and I am more than sure the publishing of UFO books will pick up as younger people pick up the zeal and interest us old farts used to have in quantity.
As to Jess’s comments on 9-11, I agree totally there. Popular Mechanics did a fascinating piece a while back on the silliness of the “government did it”
lunacy with regard to the technical facts of 9-11,and how the “cuckoo conspiracy club” version of what went down is rubbish. Jess’s assessment of the fire business at WTC is right there with what I’ve heard described from some knowledgeable types (and in opposition to the rantings of O’Doofus).
The cell phone calls people were frantically making from the planes themselves to their loved ones belies the crap that “the government” was doing this….these people were describing whack-job Muslims in control of their planes.
The government’s “guilt’ in 9-11 is the “guilt” that comes from bungling and bureaucratic stupidity and there’s so much of that with us every day in so many aspects of our daily lives that its hard to comprehend how some people can’t see it. The stupidity and bungling just shows up more re: 9-ll because the price tag there came so high and the event was so spectacular.
And government “shenanigans” re: 9-11?
That’s just bureaucratic business as usual; playing “CYA” so as not to get found out as being the incompetent you are. Same as with FEMA on the Gulf Coast.
What? You want to tell me Bush “MADE” Katrina in a secret lab and “unleashed” it for some incomprehensionable “malevolent”purpose?
Getouttahere!
April 3rd, 2007 at 11:57 am
Att: Bill
I think the reason a lot of attention has been lost is because we simply don’t have the ’sensationalistic’ media of the (pre-9/11) 90’s. What before might make it as a ‘campy-conversation piece for the water-cooler segment’ is now considered far too improper. There is a documented phenomena of ’societal maturation’ which occurs immediately following a war or military involvement. For example, research the history of Halloween in the US and you will discover that prior to WWI it was primarily an Adult holiday. Post-war and Pre-WWII it transformed into a night of teen/young adult mischief-making, while by Post-WWII it almost exclusively belonged to young children.
Interestingly, where I live there was an immediate ‘call’ for parents not to let their children trick-or-treat on Halloween 2001, and many people decorated their homes in traditional ‘4th of July’ material vs. the traditional spooky variety. Again, this is further evidence of the phenomena.
I personaly feel it’s some sort of self-punishment, that perhaps society as a whole feels guilt over allowing ourselves to embrace so-called ‘flights of fantasy’ and the imaginative realm, possibly causing us to fail to prevent the tragedy in the first place.
With regards to the UFO phenomena, I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that ‘gray tales’, not the the aliens ‘grays’, but true tales that people should automaticly know are false went extinct as well. There also aren’t a lot of ‘trickster’ cases, such as Ed Walters, to fans the fires of the imagination.
Speaking for myself, I tend not to get inerested unless there is some weird development or odd aspect of the story, as in ‘The Screaming Woman’ incident in KY.
-Jason
April 3rd, 2007 at 12:43 pm
It takes something pretty spectacular for me to get all wound up in each and every sighting case as well. There needs to be some “high strangeness” in something nowadays to peak my interest.
Thirty years ago somebody could tell me they saw a strange flashing light over “Hwy 19″ that made their car stall…and I’d be hot to tear out there and investigate. Today I could hear the same story , tell the person “UFO”, and head into the den to put “Flyboys” on the DVD player. This from the same person who used to go nuts over just READING about the Lubbock Lights, or Green Fireballs, or
hearing someone utter the phrase “Gort, Klaatu barada nikto” . Now I’m good for a shrug of the shoulders in most cases. What DOES get me cranking is when I’m around younger people who are really “into” this, and I can feel their enthusiasm and see the wonderment in their eyes and catch the energy of it in their voices. THAT will bring me around. And those are the folks that I think will start the book cycle going again, when the time is right.
April 3rd, 2007 at 12:53 pm
Hi Greg and all … SMiles Lewis here.
It’s interesting, as always, to read comments about my ill-fated hosting / organizing of NUFOC 38 - The Greatest UFO Conference nEVER! Greg, you forgot to fess up that you were to be an esteemed presenter there as well.
I was already Parapolitically minded before 911 - no stranger to conspiracy research. September 11th fortified me into a full-blown Conspiracy-Whack-Job and “O’Doofus” in the eyes of those who’ve not bothered to look into its many mysteries for themselves instead of gulping down the pablum of Hearst publications propaganda.
That said, I concur that there has been a significant downward trend in public ufological interest and even my own. Heck, many researchers have noticed that abduction reports dropped off dramatically. However, there had been a spike in ufo interest brought on by the most attended National Press Conference in history … Steven Greer’s Disclosure Project press briefing in May 2001 (not that I’m a Greer supporter).
My own interest in UFOs had already been steered towards the parapolitical by the works of Jacques Vallee and others. When investigating UFOs and perception one inevitably comes into contact with information about such conspiracies as the CIA’s MK-Ultra projects and the assimilation of the Nazis into American intelligence, science and other institutions with Project Paperclip. These things coupled with knowledge of the publicly known conspiracies like Iran/Contra, BCCI, the SnL scandals, and on and on and on serve to educate the public that it is just plain stupid to trust the most murderous institutions in human history … Government.
All of the above has not changed my view that there are likely a variety of human and non-human intelligences involved in the UFO phenomenon.
And while the era of six figure UFO book deals may be over (for now) there have been a number of good books published on the subject post 911. I just can’t think of any at this moment .
Finally, I guess I might as well go public with this here … Greg, a good friend of yours has invited me to co-author a decidedly different sort of book about 911 and I am incredibly excited to begin assembling the vast amount of material I’ve been collecting on the subject since that very morning (and actually before it).
SMiles
ps - I mean no disrespect to the other previous posters in the comments to Greg’s articles. While I am the first to admit that there are many elements in the 911 Truth Movement that embarras or even disturb me greatly (I would say the same about the UFO community) I honestly see them as this country’s last defense against becoming a complete Fourth Reich dictatorship (whether headed by the Left foot or Right foot of the Fascist two-party system).
April 3rd, 2007 at 1:34 pm
Was there ever an era of 6-figure book deals? If there was, it most definitely by-passed me! LOL.
April 3rd, 2007 at 2:34 pm
This post reminded me how back in September 2001, I was scheduled to cover the annual Texas Bigfoot Conf. in Jefferson for a Louisiana newspaper and how I cancelled because of 9/11. I wish I had gone after all. Anyway, I have noticed how few UFO books are getting published these days and am glad Greg is discussing it. I enjoyed “Project Beta” and “Strange Secrets,” among others, and was glad to have an opportunity to review them.
April 3rd, 2007 at 2:52 pm
Thanks Mulder re Beta and SS. The TX BF conference is always a good one.
April 3rd, 2007 at 3:12 pm
Craig and I were to share Loren Coleman as a speaker at both our events; NUFOC 38 and the first Tx Bigfoot Conf.
I didn’t make it to the first conference which went on despite the tragedy but I did make it to the second and wrote up a review of it for the upstart newspaper I was editing then (Austin Para Times #5 - From the (East Texas) Wilderness: “Living-n-Breathing Bigfoot - 24 hours in East Texas” or “Bigfoot Ate My Conference Notes” - 2nd Annual Texas Bigfoot Conference, October 12th 2002, Jefferson, Texas). Craig and company put on a most excellent event - it was my first Cryptozoology conference and it fantastic. It was the first time I finally got to meet Loren face to face.
And yes mulder4truth, I’d have to put PROJECT BETA and BODYSNATCHERS IN THE DESERT as two of the best post 911 UFO books to have been published to date.
SMiles
April 3rd, 2007 at 4:30 pm
The “9/11 Truth Movement” is an onymoron if ever there was one. The truth has been there for all to see from the get go. You can read most of it in the 9/11 Commission report, which, ironically, most “Truth Movement” types I’ve met don’t own and haven’t read.
As for the media and UFOs, its cyclical, as has been suggested. But I don’t think it’s 9/11 that’s been driving the downward trend - go to your local mass market bookstore and compare the number of books you’ll find on Wicca, Tarot and other New Age stuff, to serious tomes about UFOs. People interested in the paranormal have turned their attention elsewhere. Someday they’ll probably come back, especially if there’s a major “event” or, more likely, another show like “The X-Files”.
Paul
April 3rd, 2007 at 11:16 pm
I didn’t know that this would turn into an online debate on 9-11, but nobody expected the Spanish Inquisition, either.
April 3rd, 2007 at 11:31 pm
Paul:
I don’t know how things are up in Canadamerica, but the ‘new-age/paranormal’ section of bookstores in my area, let alone bookstores themselves, has greatly dwindled from ‘the golden age’ of the 90’s.
Greg:
What’s even weirder is to discover the roots of the Spanish Inquisition lay in Kaballah!
-Jason
April 4th, 2007 at 12:59 am
Bring out the comfy chair! More folks are getting a more honest but more satirical look at the news from The Daily Show or Bill Maher. Until we wrest control of the airwaves from the corporation, their marketing exec’s will decide what truth the mainstream media will present to us.
April 4th, 2007 at 9:00 am
Hi Greg and all,
Greg: not trying to hijack this thread (or any aircraft) but you know I feel very passionately about September 11th. And while I don’t think it’s the singular cause of what some perceive as a shift away from UFO publishing I think it definitely has a lot to do with it.
Paul: I respect your UFO efforts very much and … for the record, I own the 911 Omision, er, Commission report and have read parts of it and it is a whitewash of that days events and the issues surrounding it. Of much more value are the following:
The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions by David Ray Griffin
Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil by Michael C. Ruppert
9/11 Synthetic Terror: Made in USA by Webster Griffin Tarpley
The Coincidence Theorist’s Guide to 9/11 by Jeff Wells of Rigorous Intuition
Now … back to your regularly scheduled debate about UFOs (”Unrecognized Fascist Observatories” - John Judge - parapolitical researcher)
SMiles
April 5th, 2007 at 5:22 pm
Nick said:
“Was there ever an era of 6-figure book deals? If there was, it most definitely by-passed me!”
Sorry, a bit off-topic, but I had to post this in light of Nick’s comment. This from The Bookseller:
“Grand Central Publishing, the company previously known as Warner Books, has spent approximately USD 1.25 million for the story of Dewey, a rescued cat who lived in a library in Iowa for 19 years.”
So there it is. Forget aliens, CIA secret experiments, etc. Be on the lookout for a good cat story.
;)
Kind regards,
Greg
April 5th, 2007 at 6:45 pm
Greg:
LOL, now I know what to write about next time!