Customer Reviews

Out There: Out There

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

There are many more holes here than substance. The book depicts the author's journey, including a number of meetings with anonymous sources that lead to nothing newsworthy, and is not a coherent well-researched account of UFO phenomena or its many subsets (black budget research, disinformation deception and cover stories for classified research, aerospace technologies, immense amounts of UFO data from the forties, fifties, sixties, and seventies, research into metamaterials, nanotechnology and cloaking technologies, the psychology sociology and spirituality of UFO investigation and reporting, etc, etc.) so the reader who does not have a broad understanding of the field and its several subcultures will be left more confused and uninformed than when s/he began the book. I understand the publishing pressures to bring such an incomplete account into print and sell the TV and movie rights, in the hope that an X-files-like narrative may result, but the book does not even lend itself to that. Suggestions of conspiracy are light and fluffy, despite the evidence in the book itself for disinformation and intentional confusion on a meaningful scale - and for good reasons. This book shows why a domain that is nine tenths under the water lends itself to just about anybody and everybody saying anything and everything. The bad thing about that is that it might suggest to the uninformed that there is nothing worth investigating. These few dots are not connected to each other or to the many other dots that might suggest plausible and meaningful patterns - patterns that are not simply imposed on the data but are sugested by it as hypotheses worth exploring.

Although "Out There" by Howard Blum is dated, published in 1990, I think it is worth reading even now in 2011 for those who have an interest in the labyrinth of confusion in regards to the subject of UFO's and the search for extraterrestrials. As an investigative reporter and author of other best selling nonfiction books Blum has taken on a subject where it is highly difficult to prove anything on this subject. Blum investigates layers of cover up, misinformation, and dead ends in his quest to obtain facts from government agencies that have been and still are cloaked in the mystique of claiming "National Security." In this day and age it has become even more difficult to believe everything the government tells us. So what does "Out There" contribute to the public that reads it? It makes one reflect on all the past misinformation on all subjects we have been fed over the past decades that is only now surfacing. Blum does a good job in explaining the beginnings of the SETI program, the Drake Equation, and the Dolphin Group. I leave it to the reader to decide on his report on the "Working Group."

What originally sparked my interest in this subject was while visiting New Mexico I visited the UFO Museum in Roswell and saw a blowup of the famous photo of Brigadier General Roger M. Raney and Colonel Thomas J. Dubose with the supposed wreckage of the weather balloon. General Ramey is holding a piece of paper in his left hand, a memo with its wording facing partly towards the camera. With technology today the wording is partly decipherable and the words "The victims of the wreck" and "in the "disc" they will ship" plainly appear. This information does not appear in Blum's book because at the time computer enhancing technology was not at its present level. However, it helps support many of the contention that we are being deceived and lied to by our government.

I recommend the book but with only 4 stars. Again it is dated, but perhaps much that he writes about will someday be exposed. The reason for 4 stars is because Blum does little speculation and appears to have been truthful in his investigation while trying to penetrate the secrecy that surrounds the UFO subject in regards to the government. I look forward to the day when the Truth, one way or another is revealed.

The opening of the book concerns NORAD's Cheyenne Mountain Complex. I worked there for years and have had the opportunity to look into every nook and cranny. The Author's facts about the Mountain concerning elevators and Box 9 etc, are absolutely wrong. If he really did have a source for these facts, he was steered off the factual road and didn't follow up. It brings the entire book into question.

Howard Blum is a journalist who takes a look at the state of UFOs after he gets a tip of NORAD officers making some claims of unknown phenomena. The book "Out There" follows his journey into this interesting culture which looks at it from all points of view. Mr Blum does not take sides and ultimately there are no answers given at the end of the book which may leave some readers disappointed. It was very rare for a journalist to take a look at this subject and not face ridicule. I do commend Mr Blum for writing this book and opening doors for others.

If one is a skeptic or doesn't know much about UFOs or ufology, this book is a good source. It is hard to find books on this subject written from a journalists point of view. Mr Blum has nothing to gain by taking any side, but reports what he has learned on the subject. He does show there is a real mystery which should not be dismissed.

Leslie Kean has also written a book on the same themes, and it is good to read both books starting with this earlier one.

Recommended for those who are serious collectors and as a gift for those on the fence about the subject.

I have long respected Blum's other works, so tend to believe his version of events here. But there is a gap, or a hole (wormhole?) in his account. He must either de-bunk the vast literature on Roswell (July, 1947), including versions with multiple eye-witnesses descriptions, some from military personnel present, of that event (or was it of two crashes, less than a day apart, within a hundred miles of each other?--see Crash at Corona by Friedman and Berliner) OR he needs to explain how much access the purported UFO Working Group had to military records surrounding those events (and to the allegedly collected remains of the craft(s) recovered, and, for that matter, other craft widely reported down at other sites since). True, much of the best material on most of these was published after Blum's, even his paperback edition, but we deserve a chapter or two on the subject. So: is Blum merely a dogged reporter, or an unwilling conduit for disinformation, or a mix of both? Given his record in the past, much of his account must be close to accurate. Maybe he has written more recently clarifying the matter, but none of the published reviews at this Amazon site deal with any of this, so we are left, as usual in UFOlogy, confused and frustrated as much as than enlightened.

Blum's book appears to be highly researched. Although not arriving at a conclusion as to the existance or origin of U.F.O.s, it certainly is eye-opening as far as showing the reader the truth or lack thereof regarding our government's official position on the phenomenom and the actions they are actually taking regarding said reports. Highly recommended as a research tool

A truly objective book written by Howard Blum, with no contamination from debunkers, fanatics of psuedoscience, or religious fanatizism. Written in a story with a who or what is going on, in our world, just out of reach of the average citizen. Makes one wonder, look up and go hmmmmmmm.

A pretty good read as UFOs book go. Only problem I had with it, is how it directly contradicts so much other UFO research. This books says a secret Pentagon "UFO Working Group" was convened in 1987 to study UFOs and the existence of aliens. However, numerous other books and UFOologists will tell you the government's known all about UFOs since the 1940s -- and there is a lot of evidence to back that up. So why would all these spooks in 1987 be so unaware of this fact?

Some interesting information is presented if one skips the sensational. Why would the Pentagon have a group to mislead Blum and others - By using the UFO phenomena such as "alien abduction" to deflect inquiry from mind control methods for field use such as "altered states".See DOE's Final Report on Human Radiation Experiments, Mar.'97.

Some interesting information is presented if one skips the sensational. Why would the Pentagon have a group to mislead Blum and others - By using the UFO phenomena such as "alien abduction" to deflect inquiry from mind control methods for field use such as "altered states".See DOE's Final Report on Human Radiation Experiments, Mar.'97.