The Coming of the Saucers

The Coming of the Saucers is a 1952 book by original 'flying saucer' witness Kenneth Arnold and pulp magazine publisher Raymond Palmer.[1][2][3] The book reprints and expands early articles the two had published in Palmer's Fate magazine.[4] The work blends first-person accounts attributed to Arnold with third-person summations of UFO reports.[5]

The Coming of the Saucers
Front cover
AuthorKenneth Arnold and Raymond Palmer
Original titleThe Coming of the Saucers: a Documentary Report on Sky Objects that have Mystified the World
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
SubjectUnidentified flying objects
Publication date
1952
Media typeHardcover
Pages192
OCLC4432597
LC ClassTL789 .A7

The book features the first appearance of a "man in black",[3] later expanded into UFO folklore by Gray Barker in his 1956 work They Knew Too Much About Flying Saucers.

Contents

In the book's first chapter, "How the Big Story Happened", Arnold describes his initial report of flying discs near Mount Rainier, his role in the 1947 flying disc craze, his collaboration with the crew of the Flight 105 UFO sighting, and his being contacted by Raymond Palmer.[6]

In Chapter Two, "The Tacoma Affair", Arnold describes his initial investigation of the Maury Island Incident and his meeting with Fred Crisman. In Chapter Three, "The Mysterious Informant", Arnold becomes convinced that he is being bugged and summons military investigators. Chapter Four, "Death Takes A Hand", features the crash of a B-25 carrying the investigators and an anonymous claim that the plane had been shot down. Chapter Five, "Get Out - For Your Own Good!" describes Arnold's departure from Tacoma.[6]

The sixth chapter, "Project Saucer Report", summarizes a report by J. Allen Hynek on Project Saucer, including the Mantell UFO incident, the Chiles-Whitted UFO encounter, and the Gorman dogfight. Chapter Seven, "Comments on the 'Project Saucer' Report" features conspiratorial speculation about military secrets and a chemical analysis of the slag rocks from Tacoma.[6]

Chapter Eight, "One Thousand Years of Flying Saucers" details historic reports of unusual airborne sightings; Chapter Nine, "The Strange Foo Fighters", examines sightings during World War Two. The tenth chapter, "Foreign Sightings" and Chapter Eleven "American Reports" respectively detail international and domestic reports from 1947 to 1951.[6]

The Rhodes flying disc photos of Phoenix were reprinted in book

Chapter 12 presents concluding analysis, while the remainder the book, Chapter 13 "Camera Story of the Saucers", features alleged photographs of the discs, such as the Rhodes UFO photographs.[6]

Reactions and legacy

One journalist recalled his skeptical response to the book: "It was a hair-raising account -- an adventure straight out of pulp fiction. I was fascinated, but also suspicious: Palmer had been a publisher of science fiction, so how much of the book was fact and how much was fiction?"[7] Air Force UFO investigator Edward J. Ruppelt cast doubt on the book's accuracy, noting: "As Arnold's story of what he saw that day has been handed down by the bards of saucerism, the true facts have been warped, twisted, and changed. Even some points in Arnold's own account of his sighting as published in his book, The Coming of the Saucers, do not jibe with what the official files say he told the Air Force in 1947."[8][9]

For his role in promoting UFO folklore, Palmer would later be dubbed "The Man Who Invented Flying Saucers".[10] Popular science writer Martin Gardner argued that "no one can deny that [Palmer] played an enormous role ... in tirelessly promoting the craze".[11] The book "fueled" the extra-terrestrial hypothesis among "an increasingly saucer-hungry public".[12] Despite coming to no definitive conclusion about the origin of the discs, the book argued the issue was 'vitally important".[13]

Today, the flying disc craze described in the book would be regarded as an example of mass hysteria.[14] The Coming of the Saucers would be cited as influence on Bill Cooper, author of 1991 conspiracy tome Behold a Pale Horse which popularized UFO conspiracy theories within the right wing anti-government movement.[15]

References
  1. Arnold, Gordon (December 3, 2021). Flying Saucers Over America: The UFO Craze of 1947. McFarland. ISBN 9781476687667 – via Google Books.
  2. Bloecher, Ted (October 9, 1967). "Report on the UFO Wave of 1947" – via Google Books.
  3. Nadis, Fred (June 13, 2013). The Man from Mars: Ray Palmer's Amazing Pulp Journey. Penguin. ISBN 9781101616048 – via Google Books.
  4. Clark, Jerome (October 9, 2003). Strange Skies: Pilot Encounters With Ufos. Citadel Press. ISBN 9780806522999 – via Google Books.
  5. Wilkinson, Frank G. (May 28, 2017). The Golden Age of Flying Saucers: Classic Ufo Sightings, Saucer Crashes and Extraterrestrial Contact Encounters. Lulu Press, Inc. ISBN 9781387000470 – via Google Books.
  6. Arnold, Kenneth Albert; Palmer, Ray (October 9, 1952). "The Coming of the Saucers: A Documentary Report on Sky Objects that Have Mystified the World". Privately published by the authors – via Google Books.
  7. Sutherly, Curt (October 9, 2001). UFO Mysteries: A Reporter Seeks the Truth. Llewellyn Worldwide. ISBN 9780738701066 – via Google Books.
  8. Ruppelt, Edward J. (April 9, 2020). "The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects". e-artnow – via Google Books.
  9. May, Andrew (September 13, 2016). Pseudoscience and Science Fiction. Springer. ISBN 9783319426051 – via Google Books.
  10. Nadis, Fred (June 13, 2013). The Man from Mars: Ray Palmer's Amazing Pulp Journey. Penguin. ISBN 9781101616048 – via Google Books.
  11. Gardner, Martin (March 9, 2011). The New Age. Prometheus Books. ISBN 9781615925773 – via Google Books.
  12. Picknett, Lynn (March 1, 2012). The Mammoth Book of UFOs. Little, Brown Book Group. ISBN 9781780337012 – via Google Books.
  13. Story, Ronald (March 1, 2012). The Mammoth Encyclopedia of Extraterrestrial Encounters. Little, Brown Book Group. ISBN 9781780337036 – via Google Books.
  14. Bartholomew, Robert E. (May 23, 2001). Little Green Men, Meowing Nuns and Head-Hunting Panics: A Study of Mass Psychogenic Illness and Social Delusion. McFarland. ISBN 9780786409976 – via Google Books.
  15. Jacobson, Mark (4 September 2018). Pale Horse Rider: William Cooper, the Rise of Conspiracy, and the Fall of Trust in America. ISBN 9780698157989.
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