If there's anything more gauche and un-with-it these days than quoting Sigmund Freud with approval--which I do with some regularity--it's quoting Sir James George Frazer. Which I am now about to do, in connection with the problem of the "little green men." Nearly everyone has at least heard of … [Read more...]
Little Green Men – “Green Children” of Woolpit (Part 1)
The problem in a nutshell: In close-encounters-of-the-third-kind reports and UFO abduction stories, at least in the post-1947 era, the UFOnauts are seldom if ever described as being green in color. Yet the trope of flying saucers piloted by "little green men" endures, unshakeable and seemingly … [Read more...]
The Tunguska Explosion, Nuclear UFOs, and Isaac Asimov
"At the village of Strelka I met the old Tungus Vasily Okhchen who ... had been sleeping at the moment when the tent was torn away and had been thrown to the side by a powerful jolt. He had not lost consciousness. He said that he heard an unbelievably loud and continuous thunder; the ground shook, … [Read more...]
Marjorie Hope Nicolson, Moon Flights, and Little Green Men
It’s not very often you get to use the word "charming" for a piece of literary scholarship. That's precisely the word, though, that fits Marjorie Hope Nicolson’s Voyages to the Moon, published in 1948 by the Macmillan Company. The book is 66 years old, which the same age I am until my birthday … [Read more...]
“Ezekiel Saw the Wheel”
This is a P.S. to my post two weeks ago about African-American UFOlogy. It's inspired by Michael Lieb's discussion of Ezekiel's wheel in the African-American folk music tradition, in his extraordinary 1998 book, Children of Ezekiel: Aliens, UFOs, the Crisis of Race, and the Advent of End … [Read more...]
