The Edge of Reality: A Progress Report on Unidentified Flying Objects

By Jacques ValléeJ. Allen HynekJacques F. Vallée, et al.

Book Overview

Two of our country's most eminent scientists, both of whom have studied the UFO phenomenon for decades, have collaborated on this report of what serious scientists now believe about it. And they show that an increasing number of scientists are taking the UFO subject seriously. From the outset, Hynek and Vallee make their position clear: UFOs represent an unknown but real phenomenon. The far-reaching implications take us to the very edge of what we consider the known and real in our physical environment. Perhaps, say the authors, UFOs signal the existence of a domain of nature as yet totally unexplored. In this mind-stretching book, the authors sample UFO reports-including those allegedly involving humanoids-and describe the patterns that have been perceived in the behavior of the phenomenon. They also establish a framework for the further study of the UFO phenomenon. Where might such study lead? What can be studied, and how? What is the real nature of the UFO phenomenon? Does it originate with the actions of other intelligences in the universe? Does the UFO phenomenon have a purely physical explanation, or is there a vaster, hidden realm that holds the solution? J. Allen Hynek is Professor of Astronomy at Northwestern University. For years, he was astronomical consultant to the U.S. Air Force. Over the years, as Dr. Hynek focused on the UFO reports that appeared unsolvable, he began to believe that there is something most unusual going on. Jacques Vallee is the author of several classic UFO books. After obtaining his doctorate in computer sciences from Northwestern University, he joined the Computer Laboratory at Stanford University.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 153283067X
• ISBN13: 9781532830679
• Release Date: December 1975
• Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
• Length: 318 Pages
• Weight: 1.03 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 0.7" x 6.0"

Customer Reviews

A CLASSIC UFO BOOK WRITTEN BY TWO PROMINENT RESEARCHERS

J. Allen Hynek (1910-1986; see his other books such as The UFO Experience: A Scientific Inquiry) and Jacques Vallee (b. 1939; see his other books such as CONFRONTATIONS: A Scientist's Search for Alien Contact, REVELATIONS: Alien Contact and Human Deception, and DIMENSIONS: A Casebook of Alien Contact) were two of the most prominent UFO researchers in the 1970s and later. This jointly-written 1975 book (much of which are interviews with the two, separately or jointly) is a fascinating summary at that point in time by two sober researchers. They begin by stating, "The UFO represents an unknown but real phenomenon. It implications are far-reaching and take us to the very edge of what we consider the known and real physical environment." However, they also caution that "what is unidentified to one person or persons may certainly be identifiable by persons of greater technical training and experience. It has been demonstrated clearly that the great majority of what at first are reported to be UFOs are, after study by competent personnel, determined to be really IFOs, or Identifiable Flying Objects." Hynek was, of course, a scientific consultant to the Air Force's Project Blue Book. About the "Blue Book" period, Hynek notes, "We had so much crud in the Blue Book! It wasn't until '66 that I decided I had to revise my views and take a new look, literally a new look at the whole thing from a different vantage point. Then, suddenly, things began to make sense to me." Hynek's position is given in an interview: "One could spend all his energy confronting skeptics. That same energy is much better spent investigating the subject. Why waste time on people who have never bothered to learn the basic facts? It's their problem!" But he is skeptical of many famous reports; e.g., "It seems that these creatures, like the Pascagoula ones, certainly don't resemble the products of higher evolution as we conceive it. Who would think of a clawed creature coming down and being a representative of a very advanced technology? It just doesn't fit!" An expert on hypnosis interviewed admits about "regressive hypnosis," "A lot of times people use their imagination. A lot of times people fabricate things, from either wishful thinking, fantasies, dreams, things such as this." Vallee (who has suggested in his books such as Passport to Magonia: On UFOs, Folklore, and Parallel Worlds, The invisible college: What a group of scientists has discovered about UFO influences on the human race, and Messengers of Deception: UFO Contacts and Cults that UFOs are not necessarily extraterrestrial) asks, "Could it be a human phenomenon? In other words, do we really need aliens fo explain UFOs if they are real? Or could the human race have been developed in a very remote past out of a contact between an advanced race or primates and extraterrestrial visitors?" (Hynek notes, however, that Erich Von Daniken's books such as Chariots of the Gods are "illogical and unscholarly.")