Swamp Gas Times: My Two Decades on the UFO Beat [Paperback]

Patrick Huyghe (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 1, 2009

SWAMP GAS TIMES is a revealing memoir by a journalist who covered the UFO field for more than twenty years. This honest, behind-the-scenes look at how the media handle UFO stories also examines the dramatic events and major players that transformed UFO research for a quarter century.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"The UFO Beat, as Huyghe calls it, is a drama of many scenes based upon a puzzling complex of physical, physiological, and psychological phenomena...The personalities involved are fascinating; and Huyghe has confronted many of them in his many articles...His interviews and oversight give him an unrivaled vantage point from which to sketch out one of the most fascinating social phenomena of our time...It's an insider's view well told." --William Corliss, Science Frontiers

"Having removed himself from the `gutter-roots' of UFO group controversy, Huyghe is able to combine an outsider's objectivity - being in thrall to no group or partisan publication - with an insider's knowledge of the complexities of the subject and of the politics and personalities involved...each of the pieces in this book is a model of literate UFO journalism...An essential book for anyone who wants a rational guide through the UFO jungle..." --John Rimmer, Fortean Times

"H.G. Wells once wrote An Experiment in Autobiography, and this title is a good description of Swamp Gas Times by Patrick Huyghe. There are very few books about UFOs that put the phenomenon in a setting of the character and atmosphere of a workaday journalistic world...[Huyghe's] vision raises the sheer thrill of our dawning realization that we are indeed living within domains of high strangeness...What makes this remarkable book special is that it relates all these matters to American journalism as it evolved over two decades. Both journalism and the UFO inhabit unstable worlds; magazines, newspapers and staff are shown as being in an almost constant state of change. Editors, private financiers, policies, all can change within a matter of months... Thus his UFO reporting is against a professional background of varying levels of ever-changing technology, the whims of rich proprietors, and a rapidly changing print and media culture, changing again in turn as regards content and style, taste, fashion, and evolving social history. We see in Swamp Gas Times the UFO as a live cryptozoological animal, grazing on information flow as it moves through many different dimensions and interpretations of media, opinion, and changing forms of fashionable taste and expression... These stories are of a world full of hairline cracks and fissures, a world constantly crumbling at the edges of the discursive investigational eye like an M.C. Escher drawing of possible impossibilities... In the face of such things, [Huyghe] manages to combine a vigorous analytic logic with a brave ability to face the utterly absurd elements in many of the experiences he describes... Here is great insight, as well as the irresistible thrill of UFOlogy..." --Colin Bennett, Phenomena Magazine

About the Author

PATRICK HUYGHE was a freelance science journalist for more than two decades. During this time he wrote articles on UFOs for such publications as the New York Times, Science Digest, Newsweek, and Omni, many of which are reprinted in this book along with commentaries and updates. Today he is the editor of Anomalist Books.

Product Details

• Paperback: 350 pages
• Publisher: Anomalist Books (December 1, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1933665459
• ISBN-13: 978-1933665450
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.4 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,438,120 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful trek with a GREAT writer, August 6, 2001

By 

reader - See all my reviews

This review is from: Swamp Gas Times: My Two Decades on the UFO Beat (Paperback)

Patrick Huyghe's book skips along from place to place with a well-written light-hearted seriousness that has been missing in the study of this subject for years. Not a flippant investigator at all, this science journalist talks to some of the most intriguing people on earth - and takes us along for the ride. It examines its subject, ufology, so closely from the inside out, it makes your feel like you are right there with Huyghe. Highly recommended. This is the most level-headed, down-to-earth, funny, scientific look at the day-to-day investigations of ufology that I have ever read.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Not what I was Expecting, February 27, 2003

By 

Doug Traversa "Doug Traversa" (Tullahoma, TN) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Swamp Gas Times: My Two Decades on the UFO Beat (Paperback)

Mainly a collection of articles from Omni, many from the anti-matter section. Not a lot of depth to most of them, which is to be expected, since anti-matter was a collection of short articles about the paranormal. I was hoping for something along the lines of "Shockingly Close to the Truth" by Mosely, so we could get a deeper look at the investigative process, which is what I thought I was buying. I found it a bit dull, and can't recommend it.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Inevitable Classic, September 10, 2001

By 

Larry W. Bryant (Alexandria, VA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Swamp Gas Times: My Two Decades on the UFO Beat (Paperback)

When the occasional UFO-oriented reporter interviews me about my UFO activism, I offer this word of caution: "Be careful: UFOs are habit-forming!" As seen from "Swamp Gas Times," Patrick Huyghe (rhymes with "Weege") has chosen not only to ignore my warning but also to heighten his, my, and every other inquiring mind's addiction to the quest for UFOtruth. Let's hope that this landmark in serious UFO literature ends up in every public library, where it can entice a whole new generation of inquiring minds to start asking the right questions of the right people. -- Larry W. Bryant (Director of Governmental Affairs for the Mutual UFO Network, Inc.)