2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Strange Saga Shows The Right Way To Do UFO Investigations, December 1, 2005
This review is from: Strange Saga (Book & Audio CD) (Paperback)
Many books that deal with UFOs and other strange phenomenon are written by "armchair journalists"...writers who have never investigated a weird event in their lives. However, UFO researcher and writer, Timothy Green Beckley is one of the few who believed that you had to go into the field to properly investigate UFO reports. Beckley's new book, Timothy Green Beckley's Strange Saga, is a collection of articles by Beckley published in Ray Palmer's magazines Search and Flying Saucers as well as Saga and UFO Report.
These excellent articles show the importance of conducting UFO research where it happens by talking first-hand to the eyewitnesses and carefully checking out the locations for oneself. Beckley shows that good investigation can uncover details that would have been lost to researchers who never bothered to go beyond the initial reports.
Timothy Green Beckley's Strange Saga is an excellent book and a must read for those who are interested in the UFO phenomena and the world of the strange and bizarre. As well, it is a treasure-trove of information that has often been overlooked in recent times. It is fortunate that Beckley has hung on to his files and allowed this priceless info to be published again for those of us who are interested in all of the facts, and not what has been filtered down to us from other writers who are only interested in promoting their own personal theories and bias.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Some comments from a colleague, November 4, 2005
This review is from: Strange Saga (Book & Audio CD) (Paperback)
How do you begin to measure your life's work? How do you reduce a lifetime of experience into little more than a hundred pages of labor and sweat? Timothy Green Beckley answers that formidable challenge by offering his readers a short course on the crazy roller coaster ride that is the pursuit of the truth behind various paranormal phenomena, such as UFOs, alien abduction and the Men-In-Black.
The book is called "Timothy Green Beckley's Strange Saga," and it begins with an introduction (that I was privileged to write) in which he chronicles his childhood encounters with poltergeists and ghostly phantoms and UFOs seen bobbing over the houses across the street from his boyhood home one warm summer night in New Jersey. The unknown was clearly reaching out to Beckley from an early age, and he has done his best to answer its call ever since.
Beckley caught the writing bug in his adolescence, and was soon writing columns on UFOs for national magazines like "Flying Saucers From Other Worlds," published by the legendary Ray Palmer. In his mid-teens, Beckley also published his own mimeographed newsletter called "The Interplanetary News Service Report," which was read by UFO buffs throughout the world and built up a circulation of around 1500 copies.
Beckley soon moved his interest in UFOs into the mainstream, writing for the newsstand publication "Saga," and began to work with veteran journalist Harold Salkin. The two collaborated on numerous UFO-related pieces, including one that is featured in the book about sightings by astronauts in space. While NASA publicly pooh-poohed the idea of astronaut encounters with UFOs, Beckley and Salkin were able to make a case for frequent sightings by astronauts based on NASA's own storehouse of records open to public of the many manned space-fight missions that had taken place by the mid-70s.
Another interesting aspect of Beckley's work over the years is his tireless hands-on, in-the-field research. In the 60s and 70s, Beckley could often be found knocking on the doors of farm houses in the middle of the night, tracking down witnesses to some local UFO sighting or paranormal event in the hope that the truth could be unearthed in the stories people had to tell about the strange things that had happened to them. There are few if any researchers now who are willing to do the same kind of punishing legwork.
At one point, Beckley attracted the attention of Lord Brinsley LePoer Trench, a member of the House of Lords in London. Trench invited Beckley to lecture at a meeting of Parliament members who had an interest in UFOs, and Beckley happily obliged. Just one of the many moments when all the hard work seemed to have finally paid off.
But the real point of "Timothy Green Beckley's Strange Saga" is the writing itself, the articles that have accumulated over more than forty years (most written by Beckley as well as a few written about him) and the rich tapestry of UFO history that they provide for the reader in the present day. As our perceptions of just what we're dealing with in regard to the paranormal have changed, so do the tone and attitudes of Beckley's collected articles change and grow. In this book, we can make Beckley's journey with him. We can stumble down the same muddy trails, camera in hand and one eye fixed on the nighttime sky; we can grow up along with the awestruck child staring out across the street at the mysterious lights of what is surely some kind of alien spacecraft beckoning to him on his front porch.
The book comes with an audio CD in which I interview Beckley about his life and work. One can hear his many stories firsthand, in his own voice.
Yet how do you sum up Beckley's lifetime of research and writing? Perhaps the better question to ask is, "Are you prepared for what's coming next?"
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