Strange Creations: Aberrant Ideas of Human Origins from Ancient Astronauts to Aquatic Apes [Paperback]

Donna Kossy (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1, 2001

Charles Darwin wasn’t the only one to come up with a contemporary explanation for the origin of human beings. Homespun fantasies and myths abound — the imaginative creations of dreamers, cult leaders, amateur scientists, racists, and rogues. Among the theorists this collection introduces are the eccentric English lord who believes that men are a cross between extraterrestrials and their Martian servants, a successful television journalist whose book suggests that humans evolved from aquatic apes, and a UFO investigator convinced that humans were bred as pets for brilliant dinosaurs.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Curiosity about the origins of human life has birthed some strange theories, and Kossy examines a fascinating cross-section of them. Concentrating on espousers as much as espousings, she profiles the likes of spiritualist Madame Blavatsky, artist Stanislav Szukalski, and Marshall Applewhite. While Blavatsky pioneered polite modern occultism, Szukalski warned that humanity was under attack by a racial offshoot of apes that interbred with it--an odd theory promulgated in an "illustrated treatise" called Thoughtful of Pearls/Behold!!! The Protong. Applewhite, of course, led the notorious asexual sect involved in the Heaven's Gate mass suicide. Kossy objectively outlines each strange dogma in the appropriate thematic chapter ("Extraterrestrial Origins," "Race," "Creationism," etc.) and, while mindful of odd and tortured logic, never mocks. Good entertainment for weirdness fans and a genuine resource on such phenomena as The Urantia Book and The Isis Papers. Be sure to dig Kossy's take on individual European cultures' views of their own privileged places in the Bible. Seems each bunch of white people constitutes, somehow or other, God's chosen tribe. Mike Tribby
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Product Details

• Paperback: 264 pages
• Publisher: Feral House (June 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0922915652
• ISBN-13: 978-0922915651
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.9 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.3 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,556,607 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Did our ancestors eat brains to gain sexual potency?, August 5, 2001

By 

Matthew W Rossi (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Strange Creations: Aberrant Ideas of Human Origins from Ancient Astronauts to Aquatic Apes (Paperback)

Oscar Kiss-Maerth thinks so, and he's just one of the many interesting people with interesting theories you'll meet in this book. From the berserk Theosophical tales of root races to the devolutionary theory of Kiss-Maerth to the reptoids of such fellows as David Barclay (how she misses David Icke is beyond me, and that's the only reason this book doesn't get five stars) and even the ideas of Marshall Applewhite (aka Do) and the Next Level Crew that have become known as Heaven's Gate after their website, Donna Kossy has assembles a mad tea party of speculative thinkers. Some of their theories are racist, some are insane, some are merely oddly plausible, but all are worth taking note of. If you wondered where the band DEVO got its musical inspiration, or if the eugenics laws of Nazi Germany were inspired by Americans, this is the book to read. A value at twice the price, as my grandmother would say.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Strange Creations, April 17, 2008

By 

Cwn_Annwn (Copenhagen, Denmark) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Strange Creations: Aberrant Ideas of Human Origins from Ancient Astronauts to Aquatic Apes (Paperback)

This book covers various "fringe" beliefs pertaining the creation/origins of the human race. Extraterrestrial origins, the aquatic ape theory, Theosophy, Eugenics, several explanations of human origins from a racist angle, some somewhat fringe variations on mainstream creationism theories, The Church of Urantia, etc are covered. Whole books could, and have been written on all of these so your only getting a little more than a summary but this book kept my attention.

My criticisms are a lot of what made it into Strange Creations is more or less a repeat of material that was in another book of written by Kossy, Kooks. Also although she remains objective and unbiased for the most part on everything else, including beliefs of racist black groups, she throws in plenty of biased politically correct comments when covering the white racist beliefs. I also don't understand why Ben Klassen and the Church of the Creator was even covered in this because while his views on racial and other matters are certainly on the fringe his beliefs on human origins is more or less that of a mainstream atheist/Darwinist. But overall this was not a bad read for a basic overview of the subject matter.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Stirring Collection of Bizarre Ideas About Origins., May 31, 2002

By 

New Age of Barbarism "zosimos" (EVROPA.) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Strange Creations: Aberrant Ideas of Human Origins from Ancient Astronauts to Aquatic Apes (Paperback)

_Strange Creations_ by Donna Kossy presents some of the most bizarre and far-fetched ideas and theories which have been conceived by the human consciousness to explain human origins. In an attempt to challenge the accepted scientific accounting of origins, Darwinian evolution, attempts have been made to claim our ancestors were space men from the stars, that evolution occurs in reverse, that eugenics or racism is necessary to explain human development, that the biblical account of creation in Genesis is to be interpreted literally, that our ancestors were aquatic apes, that the Urantia Book explains our origins, and that a certain UFO cult holds the secret to human conscious evolution ("Heaven's Gate"). The book includes a fairly decent discussion of Nazi ideas concerning evolution and eugenics as well as Social Darwinism. Among the more bizarre theories suggested are those of the devolutionists (including the punk band DEVO). For instance, the book _The Beginning Was the End_ by Oscar Kiss Maerth suggests that we owe our existences to cannibalistic brains-eating apes. Another bizarre theory is that of Stanislav Szukaski, who contends that an ongoing struggle between true humans and Yeti-humans has shaped our history. The book includes a bizarre discussion of the UFO cult which ended in tragic suicide, "Heaven's Gate". Overall this book presents a strange concoction of some of the ideas floating at the further extremes of human consciousness.