Roswellian Alternatives

[Gary Oswald]

Discuss this article by @M_Kresal here

 

[Coiler]

Great article. I've heard that one of the reason why UFO conspiracies were so rampant in the 1950s was because the Cold War led to a lot of genuine secret aircraft (ie, U-2s) flying around. That and air travel becoming more common in the postwar period.

 

[Puget Sound]

Great article. I've heard that one of the reason why UFO conspiracies were so rampant in the 1950s was because the Cold War led to a lot of genuine secret aircraft (ie, U-2s) flying around. That and air travel becoming more common in the postwar period.

There's at least one author who argues that the U.S intelligence community encouraged UFO conspiracies as a way to cover up sightings of classified aircraft...

 

[Hendryk]

One commercial AH story featuring the alleged UFO sighting is L. Neil Smith's Roswell, Texas, but as is typical of his work the plot hook is just an excuse to engage in ideological pontification. (In that TL the battle of the Alamo goes differently, Texas remains independent and expands further West, and it eventually becomes an anarcho-capitalist utopia).

Regarding Dark Skies, I wonder if the early cancellation of the series was due to The X-Files stealing its thunder? As far as the general public is concerned, that's the one that comes to mind when discussing 1990s paranormal conspiracy shows.

 

[Thande]

One commercial AH story featuring the alleged UFO sighting is L. Neil Smith's Roswell, Texas, but as is typical of his work the plot hook is just an excuse to engage in ideological pontification. (In that TL the battle of the Alamo goes differently, Texas remains independent and expands further West, and it eventually becomes an anarcho-capitalist utopia).

Also responsible for the world's best "HOW NOT TO DO IT" panel when it comes to the "As you know, Bob" trope.

 

[Ricardolindo]

There's at least one author who argues that the U.S intelligence community encouraged UFO conspiracies as a way to cover up sightings of classified aircraft...

Could you, please, name the author?

 

[Puget Sound]

Could you, please, name the author?

Mirage Men by Mark Pilkington

 

[M_Kresal]

There's at least one author who argues that the U.S intelligence community encouraged UFO conspiracies as a way to cover up sightings of classified aircraft...

Could you, please, name the author?

I believe @Puget Sound may be referring to Mark Pilkington's Mirage Men published in 2010 and later still a documentary film of the same title. Pilkington largely focused on the oddness that's become known as the Bennewitz Affair (which I talked about in a review of a book called Project Beta and which I could very well cover for the blog if @Gary Oswald was up for it). During which the Air Force's Office of Special Investigation targeted a particular UFO researcher in the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s with disinformation that's become the source of much of modern UFO lore. In writing the book and making the documentary, he also investigated decades worth of disinformation and outright manipulation of those in the UFO field by various military and government agencies dating back to at least the 1950s.

EDIT: I see as I was typing this that Puget Sound confirmed this to be the case!

 

[heraclius]

I was a fan of 'Dark Skies' in the 1990s, and hoped it would carry on for longer; I did wonder why it closed down so suddenly and if the US government or the CIA pressurised the relevant TV stations in case people thought it was real! Or they asked awkward questions?

There was a barely noticed British children's semi-sci-fi 'take' on the whole UFO sensation as early as the mid-1950s in the UK, namely detective mystery author Malcolm Saville's children's novel 'Saucers Over the Moor'. In this one of the author's 'Lone Pine' series about a group of teenagers and their younger siblings/ friends getting into 'Famous Five'like crime adventures with crooks or spies, which ran from the Second WW to the 1970s, the lead characters are investigating sightings of the 'saucers' on Dartmoor (hence the title) and a group of foreign spies with violent intent are watching a secret govt 'research station' on the moor and planning to rob it and kidnap some scientists there. The 'saucers as aliens' story turns out to be a UK/ US govt 'cover' for real investigations into new systems of propulsion with smaller 'saucers', which it is hoped will fool the 'enemy' (ie Russia) into thinking it's aliens so there is no point spying on the UK about it. (The book ends with a govt-allowed story on the truth for the kids' journalist friend, not an order to cover it up or else - unlikely.) Given that Saville had no obvious govt or secret service contacts but journalist/ news media friends, was he just guessing?

 

[Yokai Man]

One commercial AH story featuring the alleged UFO sighting is L. Neil Smith's Roswell, Texas, but as is typical of his work the plot hook is just an excuse to engage in ideological pontification. (In that TL the battle of the Alamo goes differently, Texas remains independent and expands further West, and it eventually becomes an anarcho-capitalist utopia).

Not to mention the Mexican-French Empire,Malcolm X and George Lincoln Rockwell being best mates and not racist because of Libertarianism,Walk Disney having his own dictatorship,Japan annexing Finland and Hitler being couped by a IRA-Jewish plot and now all Nazis are gay.

Also responsible for the world's best "HOW NOT TO DO IT" panel when it comes to the "As you know, Bob" trope.

I still don’t know how Hitler became Fuhrer if he emigrated to Mexico and married Frida Kahlo beyond “he became jealous and resentful of his wife being more successful as an artist”.