Brad Steiger Strangers From the Skies (1966)
I've no idea where this one sits in the Brad Steiger bibliography, but his first was published in 1965 so it's pretty close to the beginning. You can sort of tell, Strangers being pretty much your standard saucer paperback of its time - a list of peculiar encounters, mostly just lights in the sky, nothing too weird and certainly no probes vanishing up anyone's bum, the usual excuses made by the air force, some vague mumbling about what science doesn't know and we're all wrapped up at around 160 pages. Presupposing for a moment that there's any value whatsoever in saucer literature, Steiger went on to write better, much weirder, and generally more satisfying by virtue of the theories he developed in an effort to tie all that paranormal stuff down to a single coherent cause; but even here, in this comparatively sober treatise, his writing shines and he keeps things interesting, and never insults the reader's intelligence as did many of his contemporaries - possibly excepting that of evangelical rationalist puritans. This is because, aside from selecting an interesting and genuinely surreal array of alleged cases - many predating Kenneth Arnold - he tends to report without any significant editorialising, pretty much leaving it up to us as to whether we believe what he's telling us. It also helps that he can string a sentence together.
I've read a ton of these things now, and I still don't consider myself a believer any more than I necessarily consider myself a sceptic. Strangers From the Skies hasn't done anything to change my mind, but is a fucking good read nonetheless.
I've no idea where this one sits in the Brad Steiger bibliography, but his first was published in 1965 so it's pretty close to the beginning. You can sort of tell, Strangers being pretty much your standard saucer paperback of its time - a list of peculiar encounters, mostly just lights in the sky, nothing too weird and certainly no probes vanishing up anyone's bum, the usual excuses made by the air force, some vague mumbling about what science doesn't know and we're all wrapped up at around 160 pages. Presupposing for a moment that there's any value whatsoever in saucer literature, Steiger went on to write better, much weirder, and generally more satisfying by virtue of the theories he developed in an effort to tie all that paranormal stuff down to a single coherent cause; but even here, in this comparatively sober treatise, his writing shines and he keeps things interesting, and never insults the reader's intelligence as did many of his contemporaries - possibly excepting that of evangelical rationalist puritans. This is because, aside from selecting an interesting and genuinely surreal array of alleged cases - many predating Kenneth Arnold - he tends to report without any significant editorialising, pretty much leaving it up to us as to whether we believe what he's telling us. It also helps that he can string a sentence together.
I've read a ton of these things now, and I still don't consider myself a believer any more than I necessarily consider myself a sceptic. Strangers From the Skies hasn't done anything to change my mind, but is a fucking good read nonetheless.
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