Spaceships of the Pleiades: The Billy Meier Story (Hardcover)

by Kal K. Korff (Author) "Eduard Albert Meier, or "Billy" as he prefers to be called, was born February 3, 1937, in the small village of Bulach, near the city..." (more)
Key Phrases: Billy Meier, Wendelle Stevens, Kal Korff (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
The case of Eduard 'Billy' Meier has gained world-wide attention for his claims of being in 'on-going contact' with aliens from the star cluster known as the Pleiades. Purported to be the most documented UFO account of all time, Meier has taken 1,000 photographs and 12 motion picture films of the visiting spacecraft. Through thousands of pages of 'contact notes', Meier has 'passed on' the wisdom and advanced technical knowledge from his conversations with these aliens, designed to help guide our evolution. In addition, it is claimed that 40 independent eyewitnesses have also seen the alien ships and observed Meier's contacts with them.The aliens also 'left' numerous 'landing tracks' in the ground, and gave Meier various rock, metal, mineral, and crystal samples as "proof" of their visitations. Korff conducted the most thorough examination ever into the case of Billy Meier and all its alleged evidence, and reveals here how a one-armed, handicapped Swiss farmer hatched and continues to maintain the most elaborate UFO hoax in history.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 439 pages
• Publisher: Prometheus Books (December 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0879759593
• ISBN-13: 978-0879759599
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.7 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #470,030 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Forgot Something?, October 7, 2000

By	Edward Lopez (The Big Apple, NYC) - See all my reviews

Before I got this book in 1995 I had bought Kal's first effort back in 1985. Both need(ed) a good editor! That aside, this book has its good and bad points. The good ones have been pointed out by the other reviewers. My complaints, as a former editor, are about the poor, pixelated quality of most of the photos - making them almost useless, the excessive use of Kal's name and/or initials on almost every page (ego, here), the continuance of his erroneous claim that Meier's 35mm RANGEFINDER camera is a 35mm SLR, and the worst omittance, that of any meanigful comments and examination of Meier's films which, when viewed, have to give one thought about what is going on with Meier. His photos may have been proven questionable or downright hoax but, please, explain how Meier hoaxed the films. How, as one can see in the video of his films, he made the craft dematerialize and materialize in one frame with the accompanying optical effects. Please explain how the craft MATERIALIZES at the bottom of the mountain after disappearing from the top of the screen and when you see this on frame-by-frame analysis the craft doesn't materialize all at once, as you would expect of a hoax. It does so in stages! Eventually becoming a full craft from a pinpoint that gets "fatter." Explain how a model, no matter how large, can look huge as does the craft that emits lights and does a "pendulum" act in the constant wind (not the one over the tree). Please don't come back with poles and strings. We need Kal to do a similar effort for the films as he did for the photos. And if he does, I hope that the quality of the finished product will improve over "Spaceships..." I admire what he did, but the execution (book) left me wanting.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Shoddy Journalism, February 1, 2008

By	Benjamin Stevens "Benjamin" (Shelocta, PA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

It does not matter whether the Billy Meier Case is legitimate or not when writing a review on Kal's book. The fact of the matter is, as another reviewer has already put it, Kal's investigative approach is seriously lacking.

The Billy Meier case has over 100 independent witnesses who have witnessed some form of "evidence" of alien activity connected to Billy Meier over the years to this present day. Kal makes no attempt to try to let any of them speak in his book. Without any good basis for doing so, he basically accuses all 100+ witnesses of being liars and/or of being in on this "grand hoax" without offering any good motive or explanation for why there would be so many witnesses in the first place and why all of the witnesses, even the many who are in no way affiliated with Meier, would be caught up in such a scheme.

There are over 360 photographs still in existence to this day that can be examined, some which still have the original slides in existence despite what Korff has falsely stated. Korff makes every attempt in his book only to analyze the least impressive of the photographs still in existence and expects the reader to assume that all of the arguments against the weakest ones will also hold up against the more impressive ones that baffled those who can definitely be considered experts in the field of photography and such, as opposed to Korf. As was stated by another, he makes no attempt to analyze any of the videos but tries to let the reader believe that his explanations for the least impressive of the photos can also be used to explain all of the videos and all of the other photos. He has no "smoking guns" as he states. He only says how Meier COULD have created even the least impressive photos but no definitive proof even of these that would hold up in a court of law.

I have read better research papers from 6th graders than this book by Kal Korff. For most of the book, Kal sounds like he is an angry teenager talking on the phone to one of his friends. As other analyses of this book have shown, Korff takes no care to make correct references to other Meier literature, he seems to deliberately falsify other documentation (likely with the hope that his reader won't have access to the other documents that he is referencing so that they won't be able to verify what he writes). He makes no attempt to try to look into the story itself (despite the title of the book being the Billy Meier STORY) and all of the various events that surrounded the case while the photos and other evidences were being produced, such as the people who were actually living in the Meier home for weeks at a time, searching for models, photo labs, science journals, etc. and who were unable to find anything. It is basically a work of name-calling, baseless accusations, deliberate falsifications, and to say the best: shoddy journalism.

If the Meier case is a hoax, Kal's book is not the definitive expose of revealing the hoax. All areas of the case, especially the evidences that have already been documented and analyzed by experts, need careful attention to be given to them, with good explanations for each of them in order for it to be properly debunked. How easy is it to complain about all of the weak evidence of the case while completely ignoring all of the strong evidence and try to form one's conclusions based on one's ignorance? Many, like Kal, do this on a regular basis.

The reason I gave this book a two-star rating is because the case DID need some effort on the con- side. All other books (not articles) that have been published in English on the case are on the pro- side. Kal did certainly spend a lot of time and effort on the con- side to give the whole controversy some balance so I'll give him a star for that. However, if this is the only definitive con- book ever published on the case, it seems only to add more credibility to the case rather than disproving it if one looks into all of the available material that has been published on the case. "Smoking guns" must come in other forms than what Kal has given to us.

10 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Some people just HAVE to believe....., December 30, 1998

By A Customer

"Billy" Meier is a sort of latter-day George Adamski, but twice as hard to swallow. Obvious from the reviews below, there are some people who just HAVE to believe the malarkey coming out of Switzerland. In spite of the fact that Meier's films make Ed Wood's flying saucers look good, they have a NEED to believe that beautiful, blond, benevolent aliens have selected a Swiss with a shady (to say the least) background as their front-man to save civilization from itself. The saucers, cobbled together from trash-can lids and assorted odds and ends, have a sort of Victorian, "H.G. Wells-ian" look about them that is charming in it's naivete, but are awfully hard on the gullibility index. I wish I had a rack of "I WANT TO BELIEVE" posters to sell these unfortunate people, but the next best thing would be to sit them down and have them read this book. The deprogramming may not be comfortable, but it's for your own good.

If Korff has an axe to grind, it's that he himself has had a UFO sighting experience, and is essentially sick and tired of the subject being the butt-end of jokes because of charlatans such as Meier (who claims to have traveled with the UFOnauts through time and space, met Jesus, and had all SORTS of wonderful trip to the mushroom planet adventures).

Korff went undercover to the Meier compound to see for himself what was going on, and documents his findings here. It isn't a pretty picture. Meier has made some big-time bucks over the years preying on the extra-terrestrial hopes of some apparently very impressionable people. It's about time somebody asked hard questions about exactly what is this clown up to, and Korff does a pretty good job of it. The main shortcoming *I* see is that Korff himself seems to be a UFO newbie, or he would recognize some of the old-tyme hogwash from Adamski's days.

Those who find Korff's tone harsh or accusatory certainly haven't read any Phil Klass, probably the best known UFO debunker. Korff isn't a "debunker" as such: he's a sceptic, and demands a whole lot better evidence than Meier is able to come up with. He's no friend of the old phoney, and doesn't mind letting that come through in his writing. More power to him. With all the "Sightings"-variety baloney on the idiot box, a good dose of pragmatic investigation is worth it's weight in gold. Keep up the good work, Kim.