Adamski produces faux UFO abduction phenomenon
By: Aaron Sakulich
Issue date: 11/11/05 Section: Sci-Tech
Originally published: 11/10/05 at 9:57 PM EST
Last update: 11/10/05 at 9:56 PM EST
Originally published: 11/10/05 at 9:57 PM EST
Last update: 11/10/05 at 9:56 PM EST
Adamski had something that, often times, people who report meeting aliens have: a prior interest in meeting aliens. Before he was tasked with his important mission to save mankind from the atomic inferno, he was an author of bad sci-fi books; in fact, in his later books written about the impact space aliens were having on society he just re-writes some of the things he'd mentioned in his first, all-fiction book.
But why is a stark-raving madman like Adamski worth knowing about? One of the things that I frequently hear from UFO enthusiasts is that before being kidnapped by space aliens, people usually have never heard about UFOs, or alien 'abductions', so on and so forth. That's a wad of baloney. At the height of his popularity, Adamski's books were best sellers, he was on major TV talk shows, he was even discussed in major magazines, such as Time. (Time, to its' credit, called Adamski the "Crackpot from California.") And Adamski was only one of the contactees; there were hundreds of others, all working as hard as they could to spread their story and gain believers. For most of them, of course, this was the first step to getting something more important: their believers' money.
The modern UFO enthusiast would have you believe that the phenomenon of "Alien Abductions" came about in a vacuum: no one had ever heard of flying saucers or alien kidnapping, and then one day space ships appeared and started stealing people and chopping up their cattle. They are quick to dismiss the Contactees as cranks, to downplay their fame at the time, or to ignore them all together.
This is not true. Alien abductions did not begin in a vacuum. It was slowly and inexorably blended into the popular culture over a period of some odd hundred years. I've already written until I became blue in the face about how the "gray aliens" (supposedly from Zeta Reticuli and allied with Majestic 12, the true one-world government) were originally developed in the 19th century as part of a ploy to sell more newspapers. Combine this with the Contactees and add a dash of movies, TV shows, or books, and you've got everything you need to fabricate the UFO phenomenon today.
But why is a stark-raving madman like Adamski worth knowing about? One of the things that I frequently hear from UFO enthusiasts is that before being kidnapped by space aliens, people usually have never heard about UFOs, or alien 'abductions', so on and so forth. That's a wad of baloney. At the height of his popularity, Adamski's books were best sellers, he was on major TV talk shows, he was even discussed in major magazines, such as Time. (Time, to its' credit, called Adamski the "Crackpot from California.") And Adamski was only one of the contactees; there were hundreds of others, all working as hard as they could to spread their story and gain believers. For most of them, of course, this was the first step to getting something more important: their believers' money.
The modern UFO enthusiast would have you believe that the phenomenon of "Alien Abductions" came about in a vacuum: no one had ever heard of flying saucers or alien kidnapping, and then one day space ships appeared and started stealing people and chopping up their cattle. They are quick to dismiss the Contactees as cranks, to downplay their fame at the time, or to ignore them all together.
This is not true. Alien abductions did not begin in a vacuum. It was slowly and inexorably blended into the popular culture over a period of some odd hundred years. I've already written until I became blue in the face about how the "gray aliens" (supposedly from Zeta Reticuli and allied with Majestic 12, the true one-world government) were originally developed in the 19th century as part of a ploy to sell more newspapers. Combine this with the Contactees and add a dash of movies, TV shows, or books, and you've got everything you need to fabricate the UFO phenomenon today.
