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The Silly Season: An Entr'Acte

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Susan Holtzer's other University of Michigan mysteries are a joy to read: Anneke and Karl are well developed, likeable characters and the University setting is an integral part of the unfolding of events. But "The Silly Season" doesn't continue with the same fine writing and skill. Holtzer admits she's trying for a 'farce', an entr'acte, something light and humorous. What she ends up with is a monumental bore. The murder (of a character so poorly developed we don't much care whether he's dead or not) is set among some supposed UFO sightings, and the action is populated by some cartoon-like, one dimensional Believers, who squabble among each other like hungry ducks fighting over breadcrumbs of ideas. Anneke and Karl are back--the policeman and his fiancee whom he improbably invites to witness all kinds of action--and Zoe the student reporter and her superficial friends. The story is bogged in UFO lore, and shallow people argue and play tricks on each other and somebody even murders one of them. But by the time the reader discovers that the UFOs are a lie and the murder is real, the book has degenerated to a farce and the only truth is his yawn.

When student-news reporter Zoe Kaplan observed the UFO flying over the 106,000 capacity University of Michigan stadium, she assumed a hoax was being perpetrated. Zoe soon learns that she was not alone as numerous individuals from all the various walks of life that make up Ann Arbor claim the same sighting. Soon, an army of ufologists and reporters, rivaling Woody Hayes and his Ohio State football team "visiting" that college to the North, invade the city. THE SILLY SEASON lives up to its title as it is an inane, but absolutely jocular who-done-it. The story line is loaded with weird circular thinking from ufologists, professors, and reporters, so much so that Mr. Spock would suffer from a nervous breakdown. However, in the hands of Susan Holtzer, the plot becomes a lighthearted satire, spoofing the alien invasion, and the media and public who love and support it. Susan Holtzer takes pleasure in debunking the UFO crowd and the media frenzy that follows them within her witty and humorous tale.

In the mythology that has grown up around unidentified flying objects, Ann Arbor was the place to be in 1966, when a variety of strange lights were spotted in the skies above the University of Michigan. In the days before the Internet, cable television, tabloid news shows, news of the sightings were slow to spread, and the story has taken on a life of its own.

Flash forward to the present day, when summer school student and reporter Zoe Kaplan sees a triangle of lights whizzing through the sky. Her article makes USA Today and sets off a media firestorm that also attracts a wide variety of nut cases, including a paramilitary unit who had seen "Mars Attacks" too many times, a New Ager who channels the alien K-Tel, and a college professor who may or may not have found a way to prove that aliens really exist.

Susan Holtzer captures the madness and, well, silliness that surrounds a story that takes on a life of its own. While there are mysteries to be solved in "The Silly Season," its primary pleasures lay in revealing saucer mythology to those of us who had let our subscriptions lapse to Popular Science (my primary source of UFO information during the 60s) and Fate magazines. Bet you didn't know America signed a treaty with the aliens in 1954, allowing them to build secret bases and carry on human abductions and experiments. In between sightings and factional infighting among the true believers, Holtzer also sneaks in the rationalist point of view as explained by the Snorg Hypothesis (which, at its heart, is the fact that you can't prove a negative).

Lost in all the action is her detecting couple, police lieutenant Karl Genesko and his fiancee Anneke Haagen, but that's all right. It's really the story of how Kaplan learns that pitfalls of ambition in the pursuit of a story, and I can't tell you how nice it feels to meet a character who gives a credible imiation of a reporter. "The Silly Season" is a hoot of a book, and the temptation to read parts of it aloud is hard to resist. Those who believe that the "X-Files" is a documentary will find this offensive in the extreme. To the rest of us, "The Silly Season" is a wild carnival ride into the middle of a media whirlwind and out the other side.

Ms Holtzer has lampooned a number of groups - foodies, the moral nannies concerned with everyone's well being, antique buffs, computer nerds and now she takes aim at two more - the UFO crowd and their skeptics. The UFO crowd is easier to criticize with the mythology & now the various factions - illustrated here with great humor. Are aliens friend or foe? Are they gray or blue? What about the deep coverup, the abductions, the implanting of cranial devices, the invasion, etc?

U.M. student reporter Zoe Kaplan sees strange lights in the sky, stops in a parking lot to watch. Suddenly the lights in the lot go out and the UFO vanishes. She writes the story for the weekly university rag and the tale begins. We meet Thomas Stempel, an "anti-historian" professor who is also an expert in ufology, the "science" of UFOs. His enemy, Conrad deLeeuw of the Society for Logical Rationalism, warns that our civilization will collapse unless we rid ourselves of the forces of pseudo-science (despite the fact that modern society is by far the least superstitious in history - go figure). Of course Anneke and her boyfriend, police lieutenant Genesko, get involved, particularly when one of the main characters is found dead. The resolution is vintage Holtzer.

"The Silly Season" is a lighthearted, entertaining and, yes, silly mystery that centers around UFO sightings during the summer term at the University of Michigan. Are extraterrestrials responsible or is it all an elaborate hoax? And who murdered the ufologist history professor? This well-written spoof really is great fun. Among the targets sent up are UFO freaks, postmodernists, New Agers, animal-rights extremists, "victim" groups demanding reparations, news reporters, conspiracy theorists, true believers generally, and even the professional skeptics whose viewpoint the author shares. And if you don't already know what the Snorg Hypothesis is, you can find out by reading this book.