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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2.0 out of 5 stars
George Adamski: contactee, messiah or charlatan?,
By
This review is from: Flying Saucers Have Landed (Hardcover)
What are we to make of George Adamski? An early contactee in the 1950s who gained international fame/notoriety (depending on your point of view) for his alleged contact with benign, beautiful blond-haired extraterrestrials from other planets in our solar system, he died in 1965 and is generally seen in retrospect as a fraud and a charlatan. Certainly, all the signs of a flying saucer cult leader were present: claimed exclusive access to space-brother ETs bearing a message of peace and love for humanity whilst producing no evidence to support his claims except intriguing monochrome photographs of exotic aerial vehicles (more on this later). Published in 1953, "Flying Saucers have Landed" is in two parts, one written by each of the co-authors. Book One written by Desmond Leslie - a British aristocrat, ex-RAF Spitfire pilot and cousin of Winston Churchill - takes up 170 pages. It's a sober and reasonably informed examination of the flying saucer phenomenon throughout world history, a run-through of the other planets in the solar system as understood in 1953 (it was assumed the visitors must come from nearby, as the prevailing understanding of physics at the time forbade an interstellar origin to be even considered) and claims that ETs had connections to The Great Pyramid etc. This essay establishes a mostly credible scientific paradigm into which Adamski's space brothers are then inserted. Book Two, written by Adamski, is much shorter at 54 pages. He describes his repeated photography of exotic space ships mostly through his reflector telescope at Mount Palomar in California, leading up to a pre-arranged meeting in the nearby desert with one of the supposed space-brother extraterrestrials who arrived and departed in his flying saucer. He was supported by three other witnesses who swore affidavits before a lawyer that they watched this event from a distance. This reported encounter was the first of many subsequent episodes in which Adamski claimed he was taken for excursions as a guest in one of the aliens' flying saucers, eventually attended an interplanetary meeting on the planet Saturn as a representative of the human race, and had a secret audience with the Pope - and so it goes on. Delusional? Fraudulent? - maybe. Far-fetched? - you bet. Evidence? - tenuous. The whole Adamski saga has much in common with other "contactees" from the period, including Howard Menger and Truman Bethurum. It seems to have been predominantly a phenomenon of the time, confined to a small number of publicity-seeking showmen and their cult-like followers - though Billy Meier is an obvious more recent example of the syndrome, in all essentials indistinguishable from 1950s contactees. The conatctees have not had the 50-year persistence or global reach of the reported abduction phenomenon, where something real and persistent does seem to be going on with large numbers of people worldwide and where credible academics have studied the subject and become convinced of its veracity. However, the intriguing thing about George Adamski is that his photos of "scout ships" with their distinctive three-pod saucer design, together with the cigar-shaped "mother ships" covered in lights, seem to be genuine. Over the years 14 different professional image analysts have stated on the record that they are either large airborne objects, or else life-size (in other words, enormous) mock-ups very skilfully manufactured and photographed in the air. Adamski's distinctive "scout craft" have been claimed by debunkers to be variously the roof of a chicken brooder, the lid of an ice cream machine or a lamp shade. It now seems the images were of none of these things. In 1950, Adamski offered US$2000 to anyone who could prove his photos were faked: no takers, no claimants for the US$2000. This precise shape and design of UFO has been photographed around the world many times over the decades by other witnesses and the images, when professionally analysed, are usually pronounced to be of real airborne objects of substantial size. The researcher/writer Timothy Good is one of many who have had Adamski's photographs professionally image-analysed and concluded they are of large, airborne objects and not fakes. Adamski also made public a convincing 16mm film of the "saucers" in flight. Moreover, Adamski had the close confidence of many high-level international figures including European royalty, and is buried in Arlington National Cemetery. So we have an enigma, don't we? Due to the controversy surrounding Adamski and this book's quite thin content, it deserves only two stars - two rather than one because of Adamski's consistency and the fact he was never proved beyond all doubt to be a charlatan. He may have been a fraud, but we need to explain those troublesome and apparently authentic photographs and cine-film of the "space ships"...
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
So boring it must be true,
By Ashtar Command "Seeker" (Stockholm, Sweden) - See all my reviews What are we to make of a man who meets a space alien (with the obligatory long, golden and flowing hair) and acts as if he had just missed the bus, gone out with the dog, or made the laundry? In fact, "Flying saucers" is so boring, that I almost think it must be a true story! As for Adamski's Venusian friend, his message sounds like good old Theosophy, complete with the usual sacred swastikas and fishes (ICHTYS, mind you). Perhaps the sequel, written by Brother George himself, is better? It's called "Inside the space ships". At least in later editions, it includes Adamski's part of "Flying saucers have landed", so you don't have to miss anything. However, I haven't read it, so I really can't tell. My telepathic mind tells me it's about the author's journeys to Venus, Mars, the Moon... Didn't the king of Mars give him a big dog as a parting gift? Thus, I recommend everyone to read the sequel instead. Nice cover, though. But the contents made me yawn.
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