INTIMATE ALIEN: THE HIDDEN STORY OF THE UFO
UFOs are a myth, David J. Halperin says in his new book, forthcoming from Stanford University Press in March 2020. But myths are real.
The power and fascination of the UFO has nothing to do with space travel or life on other planets. It’s about us, our longings and terrors, especially the greatest terror of all: the end of our existence.
In the 1960s, Halperin was a teenage UFOlogist, convinced that flying saucers were real and that it was his life’s mission to solve their mystery. He would become a professor of religious studies, traditions of heavenly journeys his specialty. With Intimate Alien, he looks back to explore what UFOs once meant to him as a boy growing up in a home haunted by death, and what they still mean for millions, believers and deniers alike.
From the prehistoric Balkans to the deserts of New Mexico, from the Biblical visions of Ezekiel to modern abduction encounters, Intimate Alien traces the hidden story of the UFO. It’s a human story from beginning to end, no less mysterious and fantastic for its earthliness. A collective cultural dream, UFOs transport us to the outer limits of that most alien yet intimate frontier, our own inner space.
“It takes a classical scholar to fully challenge the belief in flying saucers, and David Halperin is the right expert for the job. Nearly fifty years after we realized we were pursuing the same mystery, I am delighted to see he has valiantly continued on this colorful and occasionally terrifying path.”
—Jacques Vallée, author of Passport to Magonia: From Folklore to Flying Saucers
“Whatever it is, the UFO is a real phenomenon. What David Halperin explores is how to interpret phenomena that are neither imagination nor physics but somehow both. Intimate Alien is a thoroughly fascinating dive into a third domain, a genuine twilight zone that is perpetually shimmering between mind and matter.”
—Dean Radin, author of Real Magic: Ancient Wisdom, Modern Science, and a Guide to the Secret Power of the Universe
“David Halperin doesn’t believe in the literal reality of flying saucers, but he understands that they needn’t physically exist to teach us lessons about a culture that sees them. Part folklorist and part psychologist, Halperin reads our UFO mythos like an alienist analyzing an extended collective dream.”
—Jesse Walker, author of The United States of Paranoia: A Conspiracy Theory
“On one level, this is a book about the UFO phenomenon. On another, this is a book about how a scholar of religion comes to be.”
—Jeffrey J. Kripal, Rice University
INTIMATE ALIEN WILL LAUNCH ON MARCH 24, 2020, AT FLYLEAF BOOKS IN CHAPEL HILL, NORTH CAROLINA. Pre-order now from Stanford University Press or from Flyleaf Books.
JOURNAL OF A UFO INVESTIGATOR: A NOVEL
Against the backdrop of the troubled 1960s, this coming-of-age novel weaves together a compelling psychological drama and vivid outer space fantasy. Danny Shapiro is an isolated teenager living with a dying mother, a hostile father, and without friends. To cope, Danny forges a reality of his own, which includes the sinister “Three Men in Black,” mysterious lake creatures with insect-like carapaces, a beautiful young seductress and thief with whom Danny falls in love, and an alien/human love child who—if only Danny can keep her alive—will redeem the planet. As Danny’s fictional world blends seamlessly with his day-to-day life, profound questions about what is real and what is imagined begin to arise. As the hero in his alien landscape, will Danny find the strength to deal with his real life, to stand up to demons both real and imagined?
Published in 2011 by Viking Press, Journal of a UFO Investigator has appeared in Spanish, Italian, and German translations, and is available on Blackstone Audio.
“Halperin’s gripping debut is less about aliens than alienation. … This heartbreaking coming-of-age story of a boy losing and finding his way in this and other worlds will resonate with many readers.”
— Publishers Weekly
“A thrilling romp through the domain of aliens and spacecraft, Halperin’s highly entertaining coming-of-age tale poses questions about the real and imagined and suggests that fusing the two might be the only way to survive adolescence.”
— Booklist
“Intricate and subversive … a captivating, wildly idiosyncratic book, a rare mashup of genre fiction and high-flying myth that lingers in the mind and invites rereading.”
— Stuart Schoffman, Jewish Daily Forward
“I might have laughed if someone had told me that it was possible to write an enthralling and deeply sad meditation on adolescence and Judaism in the guise of a novel that includes futuristic spacecraft, bug-eyed aliens, and conspiracy theories, but Journal of a UFO Investigator is that book.”
— Marnie Colton, BookBrowse.com
“Journal of a UFO Investigator is the story of a quest, for knowledge and self-knowledge, for growth and the secrets hidden behind the everyday, the strangeness lurking within the familiar. Most of all it is an exploration of the mystery of love, a story you will not be able to put down or forget.”
— Robert Morgan, author of Gap Creek
“The novel races along at a breakneck pace, revelation after revelation coming in a landslide of stunning moments and bittersweet epiphanies. We’re hurtling through a metaphor … glimpsing at the edges of a thing that only when we’ve put the book down will we be able to see the shape of. … In other words, marvelously well done.”
— Drew Williams, Little Professor Book Center
SABBATAI ZEVI: TESTIMONIES TO A FALLEN MESSIAH
Sabbatai Zevi (1626-76) stirred up the Jewish world of the mid-seventeenth century by claiming to be the Messiah, then stunned it by suddenly converting to Islam. His story is a landmark event in modern Jewish history and a dramatic example of what can happen when mystic dreams and messianic hopes combine in an explosive mixture.
Now, for the first time, English readers can experience these events through the words of those who lived through them, in lucid and compelling translations by a leading authority in the field.
Published in 2007 by the Littman Library of Jewish Civilization.
“Halperin’s detailed introduction and his numerous philological, theological, and history annotations permit the reader to gain a thorough understand of each text.”
—Federica dal Bo, Journal of Jewish Studies
“The translation is throughout felicitous, and the author’s style engaging, with frequent touches of irony.”
—Norman Solomon, Jewish Journal of Sociology
DAVID J. HALPERIN’S CURRENT TRANSLATION PROJECT: I CAME THIS DAY TO THE SPRING
The first translation ever of a Hebrew book of Kabbalah (Jewish mysticism), circulated in manuscript around the year 1725 but never published until very recently. Written by Jonathan Eibeschuetz, the young man who would become the leading rabbi of his time, it was intended as a charter for the world religion of the future, rooted in Kabbalistic Judaism but unlike any religion ever known. Among its tenets: universal human brotherhood, gender equality, recognition of gay sex as a legitimate form of sexual expression.
“After reading two or three paragraphs the hair of my flesh stood up. … Nothing like this was ever seen or known from any heretic or disbeliever of this world … the book is the work of heresy and sacrilege and it certainly deserves to be burned.”
—Rabbi Jacob Emden (1697-1776)
“This book is that of a complete heretic … who uproots and destroys the very fundaments of the Jewish faith. … I did not find such heresy even among all the religions of the Gentiles that ever existed.”
—Rabbi Ezekiel Landau (1713-1793)
