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UFOs
Neil Nixon
Harpenden: Pocket
Essentials, 2002; £3.99
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Pocket Essentials are the
publishers who have had the taste and good sense to publish my Conspiracy
Theories and The Rise of New Labour; and will publish a
volume from Lobster contributor John Burnes on MI5 this year. So, yes,
this is a shameless plug. However Nixon's book is really rather good. Though
neither a beginner's guide nor a comprehensive summary of the subject - how big
would that be? - this manages to contain elements of both within a 90 page
extended essay which rattles through both the history of UFOs and much of the
con-temporary agenda. This is quite a trick to pull off with such a vast and
slippery subject. Some of the content was familiar to me and some not; Nixon
clearly knows a great deal; and he can write. Nixon doesn't really adopt a
position though he is inclined towards the Fortean view that whatever this
phenomenon is, it isn't the arrival on earth of thousands of extra-terrestrial
craft containing aliens bent on abducting and impregnating the women of
America.
In short, Nixon gives the reader a witty guide to the
major mystery of the post-war era, from its pre-history in the late 19th
century airship flaps, through to the attempt by Albert Budden to explain the
phenomenon by the effect of electromagnetic fields on the human brain.
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