SWAMP GAS TIMES is
a revealing memoir by a journalist who covered the UFO field for more
than twenty years. This honest, behind-the-scenes look at how the media
handle UFO stories also examines the dramatic events and major players
that transformed UFO research for a quarter century.
CONTENTS
Introduction / 8
Chapter 1 The “Raid” Over Washington D.C. / 20
Chapter 2 A Close Encounter with J. Allen Hynek / 29
Chapter 3 The Great UFO Paper Chase / 37
Chapter 4 UFOs and the CIA’s Photo Analysis Unit / 55
Chapter 5 Who Cares About Unexplained Cases? / 64
Chapter 6 Scientists Who Have Seen UFOs / 69
Chapter 7 Writ of Habeas Corpus Extraterrestrial / 78
Chapter 8 The Hudson Valley UFO / 84
Chapter 9 Aliens ‘R’Us / 87
Chapter 10 A UFO Carjacking in Australia / 90
Chapter 11 NASA’s Role in UFO Research / 93
Chapter 12 First Communion / 96
Chapter 13 Enfant Terrible / 98
Chapter 14 Cancer and UFOs / 104
Chapter 15 Past-Life Aliens / 106
Chapter 16 B-2 or Not 2-B? / 107
Chapter 17 Fly that Saucer / 109
Chapter 18 UFOs Framed / 112
Chapter 19 AWOL in UFO Heaven / 114
Chapter 20 Superqualified Observers / 118
Chapter 21 What the Government Knows / 121
Chapter 22 What the Dolphins Know / 127
Chapter 23 A Curious Hypersensitivity / 129
Chapter 24 Blaming the Japanese for Roswell / 132
Chapter 25 On the Russian UFO Scene / 135
Chapter 26 On the Mars UFO Scene / 138
Chapter 27 The Dark Side / 141
Chapter 28 Alien Writing / 157
Chapter 29 Manhattan Transfer / 160
Chapter 30 Extraterrestrial Transfer / 179
Chapter 31 Secret Agent Man / 181
Chapter 32 Would Someone Please Tell the President? / 184
Chapter 33 Fast Walkers / 191
Chapter 34 The Devil’s Design / 201
Chapter 35 Anatomy of an Investigation / 203
Chapter 36 Alien Implant / 219
Chapter 37 UFO Crime Lab / 224
Chapter 38 The Secret Invasion / 228
Chapter 39 An Unfiltered Abduction Tale / 242
Chapter 40 The Strieber Show / 248
Chapter 41 Paradigm Shift / 252
Chapter 42 Dick and Jane Meet ET / 258
Chapter 43 Against All Odds / 262
Chapter 44 Extraterrestrial Trash / 264
Chapter 45 On Horse Mutilation Mysteries / 266
Chapter 46 Military Abductions / 268
Chapter 47 Sagan’s Scintillating Evidence / 270
Chapter 48 UFO Home Videos / 273
Chapter 49 An Insider’s Account of Alien Contact / 280
Chapter 50 Those Top Secret NSA Documents / 288
Chapter 51 A New Day for UFO Research / 293
Chapter 52 Taking the Cause to Court / 298
Chapter 53 Are UFOs an Air Safety Hazard? / 304
Chapter 54 The Best UFO Case Ever? / 309
Afterword / 334
Acknowledgments / 341
Index / 342
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About
the author...
PATRICK HUYGHE was
a freelance science journalist for more than two decades. During this
time he wrote articles on UFOs for such publications as the New York
Times, Science Digest, Newsweek, and Omni, many of which
are reprinted
in this book along with commentaries and updates. Today he is the
editor of Anomalist Books.
What they are
saying...
“The UFO Beat, as Huyghe calls it, is a drama of many scenes based upon
a puzzling complex of physical, physiological, and psychological
phenomena...The personalities involved are fascinating; and Huyghe has
confronted many of them in his many articles...His interviews and
oversight give him an unrivaled vantage point from which to sketch out
one of the most fascinating social phenomena of our time...It's an
insider's view well told.” – William Corliss, Science Frontiers
“Having removed himself from the 'gutter-roots' of UFO group
controversy, Huyghe is able to combine an outsider's objectivity -
being in thrall to no group or partisan publication - with an insider's
knowledge of the complexities of the subject and of the politics and
personalities involved...each of the pieces in this book is a model of
literate UFO journalism...An essential book for anyone who wants a
rational guide through the UFO jungle...” – John Rimmer, Fortean Times
“H.G. Wells once wrote An
Experiment in Autobiography, and this title is a good
description of Swamp
Gas Times by Patrick Huyghe. There are very few books
about UFOs that put the phenomenon in a setting of the character and
atmosphere of a workaday journalistic world…[Huyghe's] vision raises
the sheer thrill of our dawning realization that we are indeed living
within domains of high strangeness…What makes this remarkable book
special is that it relates all these matters to American journalism as
it evolved over two decades. Both journalism and the UFO inhabit
unstable worlds; magazines, newspapers and staff are shown as being in
an almost constant state of change. Editors, private financiers,
policies, all can change within a matter of months… Thus his UFO
reporting is against a professional background of varying levels of
ever-changing technology, the whims of rich proprietors, and a rapidly
changing print and media culture, changing again in turn as regards
content and style, taste, fashion, and evolving social history. We see
in Swamp Gas Times
the UFO as a live cryptozoological animal, grazing on information flow
as it moves through many different dimensions and interpretations of
media, opinion, and changing forms of fashionable taste and expression…
These stories are of a world full of hairline cracks and fissures, a
world constantly crumbling at the edges of the discursive
investigational eye like an M.C. Escher drawing of possible
impossibilities... In the face of such things, [Huyghe] manages to
combine a vigorous analytic logic with a brave ability to face the
utterly absurd elements in many of the experiences he describes… Here
is great insight, as well as the irresistible thrill of UFOlogy…”
– Colin Bennett, Phenomena
Magazine
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