Posted: Sep 22, 2015 8:07 pm
The Extraterrestrial in US Culture - D-Scholarship@Pitt by Mark Lowery Harrison (2006) covers not just ET's but also the spirit world according to Spiritualists. ET's being physical inhabitants of our physical Universe, as opposed to spiritual or whatever entities.
Its account of UFO's is too hard on UFO skeptics, IMO. I think that the UFO skeptics are essentially right about the identities of the large majority of the UFO's that people have seen -- something that the more responsible of "believer" UFOlogists will often concede.
But I like the great contrast between UFO friendly contacts and UFO abductions that he makes.
Its account of UFO's is too hard on UFO skeptics, IMO. I think that the UFO skeptics are essentially right about the identities of the large majority of the UFO's that people have seen -- something that the more responsible of "believer" UFOlogists will often concede.
But I like the great contrast between UFO friendly contacts and UFO abductions that he makes.
Beginning in 1961, the beautiful, loquacious ambassadors from the stars were increasingly displaced by grimly silent homunculi. Journeys of wonder and enlightenment began to give way to ones of terror and confusion. ...
Earlier alien interlocutors—from Spiritualism through the space brothers—were all centrally concerned with communicating something. But in order for those interlocutors to communicate, their human counterparts had to remember what had transpired. The recurring motif of lost time in the abduction narrative, in that it was based on forgetting, pointed not to communication but its absence or erasure. ...
By and large the abduction scenario offers little or no purchase for identification—its surfaces recall stainless steel and its dramatis personae offer no words or affect. This is a far cry from the warm environs and generous hosts of Adamski and the familiar textures of heaven.