When United Airlines workers reported a UFO at O'Hare Airport in
November 2006, it was met with the typical denials and hush-up that
usually accompany such sightings. But when a related story broke
the record for hits at the Chicago Tribune's website, it was clear
that such unexplained objects continued to occupy the minds of
fascinated readers. Why, wonders Thomas Bullard, don't such
persistent sightings command more urgent attention from scientists,
scholars, and mainstream journalists? The answer, in part, lies in
Bullard's wide-ranging magisterial survey of the mysterious,
frustrating, and ever-evolving phenomenon that refuses to go away
and our collective efforts to understand it. In his trailblazing
book, Bullard views those efforts through the lens of mythmaking,
discovering what UFO accounts tell us about ourselves, our beliefs,
and the possibility of visitors from beyond. Bullard shows how
ongoing grassroots interest in UFOs stems both from actual personal
experiences and from a cultural mythology that defines such
encounters as somehow ""alien""-and how it views relentless
official denial as a part of conspiracy to hide the truth. He also
describes how UFOs have catalyzed the evolution of a new but highly
fractured belief system that borrows heavily from the human past
and mythic themes and which UFO witnesses and researchers use to
make sense of such phenomena and our place in the cosmos. Bullard's
book takes in the whole spectrum of speculations on alien
visitations and abductions, magically advanced technologies,
governmental conspiracies, varieties of religious salvation,
apocalyptic fears, and other paranormal experiences. Along the way,
Bullard investigates how UFOs have inspired books, movies, and
television series; blurred the boundaries between science, science
fiction, and religion; and crowded the Internet with websites and
discussion groups. From the patches of this crazy quilt, he posits
evidence that a genuine phenomenon seems to exist outside the myth.
Enormously erudite and endlessly engaging, Bullard's study is a sky
watcher's guide to the studies, stories, and debates that this
elusive subject has inspired. It shows that, despite all the
competing interests and errors clouding the subject, there is
substance beneath the clutter, a genuinely mysterious phenomenon
that deserves attention as more than a myth.
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