Superb new book on aliens and UFO sightings, especially by US military personnel

Few published writers over the past 25 years can claim to be in the same league as UK researcher Timothy Good when it comes to the credible academic study of the UFO subject. From his 1987 best-seller `Above Top Secret’ through half a dozen subsequent mainstream/hardcover publications, he has impressed both the idle curious and the committed skeptic to take this subject seriously by his meticulous research methodology, interview transcripts with high-level military/political contacts, and reliance on official published documents attesting to the reality of these phenomena.

Good’s new 2013 publication is `Earth: an Alien Enterprise’, claimed by the author to be the result of several years’ work. The book contains an abundance of new material but “goes further than ever before” (the author’s words) towards embracing a grand-conspiratorial narrative of international government cover-up of this issue, hinted at and hedged around in this author’s previous work but never before laid out so boldly as here.

There is much here to like. Good is no re-cycler of old cases from the archives but a genuine researcher of the new & original, traveling to interview his informants/percipients often on repeated occasions, taking photographs, analyzing evidence, seeking out official documents and presenting the subsequent material `warts and all’ for the reader in intelligent, fluid and literate prose. This high standard of writing alone makes his books stand apart from perhaps 95% of publications on this subject. The editing from Pegasus Books is exemplary; an object lesson in how to present such information to a thinking and critical readership.

Some of this case material is compelling, though the committed debunker is unlikely to be convinced by the extraordinary `Amicizia’ case (written up in greater detail in Professor Stefano Breccia’s book `Mass Contacts’) and the many `contactee’ cases personally investigated and reported here. The extraordinary case of persistent phenomena in the Solomon Islands is genuinely spooky with some details revealed here for the first time resembling those from the Belem area of Brazil in the 1980s.

Criticisms already leveled at this book are that the author is sometimes too gullible and readily accepting of what he is told, and does not always adhere to the rigorous standards of evidence demanded when dealing with extraordinary claims. Many quoted sources are anonymous or `flaky’, and those of a more cynical disposition steeped in UFO lore are unlikely to be impressed by anything associated with Steven Greer, or accept the now-generally discredited claims [JdN: I disagree] of the late Philip Corso. Equally John Lear – who maintains the US government perpetrated the 9/11 attacks using holograms of airplanes, has huge submarine bases under the Nevada Desert and is currently engaged in mining operations on the moons of Saturn – will hardly be seen as a credible source of information by most readers. [JdN: I disagree]

Tim is also unusual in this field in his outspoken conviction of the veracity of the late George Adamski’s contactee claims [JdN: Adamski says many “aliens” were very friendly humans speaking German.]

Many will no doubt feel it unfortunate that such controversial material is allowed to contaminate the more obviously legitimate elements of the narrative; this sorting-signal-from-noise problem will not only dilute the impact of the overall message but hand a truckload of lethal ammunition to the professional debunkers, and the legitimacy of the UFO subject in the public mind is likely to suffer as a consequence.

However, those who believe in grand conspiracy theories will find their deepest convictions confirmed by the book’s conclusions. Whether persuaded or not by the author’s courageous stance on the subject he should be respected for his intelligence and decades-long persistence as a dedicated researcher of these phenomena.

In summary: not a flawless book, but a good one. Though unlikely to convince the skeptic, `Earth: An Alien Enterprise’ is one of the more literate and professional published works on these phenomena, and a useful summary of this author’s position on the subject after 40 years of diligent investigative work. Moreover the book is a beautiful artifact; a fine hardcover publication with 407 pages of text, a 32-page photo section, copious chapter notes and an excellent index.

Earth “ An Alien Enterprise by Timothy Good is a compendium summarizing most of what is important about UFOs and “secret” government involvement with more than 400 pages of material. Timothy Good is regarded as one of the most respected authors on UFOs and in this work he has brought together hundreds of essential UFO stories and information to give a reasonable accounting of what as been accumulating with UFO encounters over the last 70 years.

To counter the critique that much of what is in this book is “unsourced” the author includes 26 pages of references, as well as having personally interviewed many of the sources. If he had woven all the source references throughout the book it would have interrupted the narrative of what I found to be a fascinating read, not to mention significantly expanding the size of the book to that of an encyclopedia with the degree of explanations some people want.

This is a very difficult subject area to unequivocally substantiate and prove, and the difficulty is compounded with disinformation, denials, and delusions. What does exist are piecemeal reports which leak out from the cloak of secrecy surrounding this subject, often stated with reservations due to serious threats to those reporting what they know or experienced. This author has done as much as a person could in seeking out and personally contacting as many as possible to hear first-hand what they experienced, or those close to them experienced, and then he gives his educated opinion on the credibility of the scenarios. The author gives a lengthy list of people who were sources of information in compiling this book in his acknowledgments at the back of the book. He has done a most valuable job of reporting the observations and conclusions that have grown around the stories, and he leaves it up to an intelligent reader to choose what to accept and what to reject.

Some have said the author comes across as too trusting of people’s stories, but what else do we have to go on with this subject? Everything we find on this subject is hearsay and subject to interpretation, distortion, and, in some cases fantasy, but this author gives us his informed perspectives and merely wants the reader to know what the stories are. Many of the sources referenced in this book are highly respected, well credentialed, and very credible people in positions to know whereof they speak. To say that it is all second and third person references is a disingenuous criticism as the author makes many references to personally interviewing dozens of sources to discern the validity of claims.

One interesting technique I see critics using, is to say that a source has been discredited by others. That is a statement that could be made about anyone on earth, but it causes a reader to view with suspicion everything revealed on this subject. Such critiques usually don’t give sources, and even when they do, the same could be said of the sources. As John Lydgate, and President Lincoln said, “You can please some of the people all of the time, you can please all of the people some of the time, but you can’t please all of the people all of the time.”

Because some sources have been discredited on some subjects does not mean that all the information should be thrown out. Since there is no official disclosure on this subject at this time, what we have are stories and reports that invite conjecture and the subsequent creation of a mythology. Until what is really happening in secret is made public we shall continue to speculate and form conclusions based on partial information, but it is a mistake to criticize this book for what it isn’t, because there is so much value to what it is.

I especially appreciate the accessible writing style which is not only easy reading but as engaging as a novel. Some accounts do stretch credibility, but the author acknowledges that view, and yet chose to include the stories because there may be value, and those accounts form an essential piece of the UFO story.

Another criticism of the book has been a seemingly lack of cohesiveness or organization of the material and I find this completely unfounded. The fact is that most of the encounter stories are not related to each other, and therefore each story must stand on its own merits. The author did a meritorious job of including hundreds of the most reported cases that help fill in the puzzle pieces of the UFO activities no matter how incomplete the picture may be.

Although the book does touch on some aspects of why aliens are visiting Earth and what their interests and intentions are, it does not go very far with theories on this aspect of the story, perhaps because those issues are even more speculative than the reported encounters with UFOs.

No, this book won’t convince a closed-minded skeptic, but with the amount of information coming to light and reported in books such as this, anyone who negates the subject completely hasn’t done an open-minded investigation of the evidence; or, perhaps, they are cynics, have unrealistic expectations, or they are intentionally “debunkers” protecting their own positions.

To be sure there are more questions than answers on the entire alien presence, and until those who have access to greater direct involvement decide humanity as a whole is ready for the disclosure, most of those questions will remain unanswered for the masses. There is no doubt that a complete disclosure would precipitate a massive overhaul in the way governments and industries operate as they expand their role to include humanity into a larger community of intelligent species throughout the Universe. This would rock our economic system for the time being as well as the beliefs and philosophies of a large portion of humanity who are still locked into a limited perspective on humanities’ history and future. However, that day will come.