Glacial Errata, No. 40

One: Round Trip to Hell in a Flying Saucer

The singular and wonderful science fiction author Jack Womack (who is also, as it happens, a truly great human being) amassed a large collection of science fiction and UFO literature and ephemera over his lifetime, and about ten years ago published a book …Flying Saucers Are Real! that documents some of the highlights. This week, five books from that collection, along with a few of his choice descriptions.

Two: Howard Menger, From Outer Space to You

“At age ten, New Jerseyan Howard Menger (1922-2009) met his first alien, a beautiful blonde woman sitting on a rock. Later, after the war, he found himself in regular contact with men and women claiming otherworldly origins. He helped them move freely through earth life; they took him to the moon and let him hold a space potato. In 1956 he met Connie Weber, who he perceived to be the reincarnation of the Space Sister he’d met long before. Three years later he wrote From Outer Space to You, where among much else he tells of serving as Barber to the Space People, and why graham flour is good for digestion.”

Three: H. T. Wilkins, Flying Saucers on the Moon

“Long interested in Forteana and mysterious phenomena, late in life [H. T. Wilkins] turned his attention to flying saucers. Flying Saucers on the Moon (published as Flying Saucers on the Attack in the US, 1955) showcases his inimitable style, applied to the subject. The lights seen in the sky are, at various times, ‘gleaming silvery viamanas,’ ‘vast, bat-like machines,’ and ‘colossal death ray aeroforms.’ Describing himself as an ‘open-minded skeptic’ he proceeds to tell of an alien spotted in a small restaurant in Kentucky recognizable as such by his ‘five-toed shoes’ [ital. in original]. Wilkins is certainly one of the most enjoyable (and unreliable) of enjoyably unreliable narrators. His following work, Flying Saucers Uncensored (1956) is even more delirious. Wilkins is known to have finished the manuscript for a third saucer book, The Phantom War of the Flying Saucers, before his death, but its present location is tragically unclear.”

Four: The Message Given to Me by Extra-Terrestrials

“In the founding document of Raëlism, the Message Given to Me by Extra-Terrestrials (post-1973), former race-car driver Claude Vorilhon (a/k/a Raël) explains that the Elohim, or extraterrestrials, created people, that on Earth, Elohim are perceived as angels, gods, saucer people or the like; and that as recipient and prophet of their final message—‘world peace is good’—Raël personifies the Elohim on earth. Within Raël’s immediate circle is the Order of Angels, a group of young Raëlian women sworn to protect his life at any costs, and who are allowed to sleep with prophets, or the Elohim. Raëlism’s symbol, a swastika embedded within a Star of David, was once in common use, but no longer. The Raëlians are perhaps best known for having falsely claimed to have cloned a baby girl in 2002.”

Five: Those Sexy Saucer People

[A lot more where that came from here!]