You Foes
The UFO Phenomenon: Fact, Fantasy and Disinformation by John Michael Greer
My review
rating: 4 of 5 stars
The first half of the book could be described as a memetic history of the form the UFO took in the popular imagination and was later encountered by human witnesses. For example, some of the earliest UFO encounters were with zeppelin-like airships after those vehicles had been conceived and promised but before they were a practical reality. This first half of the book seems like subtle and kid-gloved debunking.
In the second half of the book Greer explains how the approaches of both the ETH (extra-terrestrial hypothesis) advocates AND those who favor the NH (null hypothesis) are both decidedly rhetorical and NON-scientific.
He also takes the position that the single biggest obstacle to unraveling the UFO phenomenon is the belief that it is a single phenomenon. Specifically, Greer argues that a sizable portion of UFO sightings were staged hoaxes by military and intelligence agencies meant to provide cover for the development of top secret aircraft.
He describes another class of encounters as "apparitions," and these are likely to have an element of high strangeness about them. This section of the book held the most interest for me and was too cursory for my liking.
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