A Genealogy of the Extraterrestrial in American Culture

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elievers, all carried through the earlier models of contact and dissemination developed in nineteenth century Spiritualism. What was different was that his mode of contact was no longer simply spiritual (though strictly speaking, neither was Spiritualism, given its emphasis on physical manifestations as exhibited via the creation of sound using visible instruments and the appearance of ectoplasm), but had attained a clear physical component. The other primary difference of course was that the Others in question were not from heaven but from other planets. Adamski interacted with embodied extraterrestrials in real time and entered the craft upon which his contacts had descended from the skies. Given the level of public interest in UFO phenomena, it was in the interest of Adamski to place great emphasis on the craft itself—note the aforementioned title of Adamski’s book. But the flying saucers that hosted him did nothing to fundamentally alter the established narrative tropes of the alien-human encounter. The Others who presented themselves to George Adamski were still recognizably “human.” Their Otherness, as in earlier cases of the displaced utopian imaginary, sprang from their point of origin and their both implicit and explicit perfection. Their ships were merely further evidence of their mastery over time and space, further material evidence of the utopian future that waited if only humans would accept their counsel and align themselves properly with the cosmos. Adamski drew ridicule and contempt from “mainstream” ufology. His claims and exploits smacked of a style of religious charlatanism that had long been known within American culture and appeared to be simply old-fashioned religious faddism dressed up in space-age clothing. He had no convincing evidence to offer and everything to gain from claiming contact. His behavior clearly indicated he was willfully profiting from the public attention gained via their claims. Adamski went so far as to publicly admit that forming a religion was the best way 151
he could think of to obtain permission to make a certain highly profitable commodity, especially in times of prohibition—wine. Adamski was active as a lecturer on the occult as early as the 1930’s, though it was not until after the beginning of the modern age of the flying saucer that he began lecturing on saucers. In the 1930’s Adamski founded the Royal Order of Tibet (further shades of Theosophy) through which he obtained a license to make sacramental wine. Thus during prohibition Adamski manufactured “enough wine for all of Southern California.” It was in 1949 that Adamski began his career as contactee. In that year Adamski published a science fiction novel, Pioneers of Space: A Trip to the Moon, Mars and Venus. The book contained detailed accounts of space travel that bore a remarkable resemblance to the accounts that “the professor” (so-called by his students) provided of his own later alleged space travels. That same year he began lecturing on saucers, claiming to have witnessed the passage of a large space ship while observing a meteor shower with friends on the evening of October 9, 1946. According to Adamski, a military officer told him some weeks after this encounter, that the object he had seen was definitely a craft from another world. Adamski further claimed that the government had knowledge of the existence of UFO’s (a claim that would become an idée fixe for more conspiracy-minded ufologists) derived from tracking a 700 foot spacecraft “on the other side of the moon,” and the arrival of these craft was imminent because as science now knew, “all planets are inhabited.” 236 Adamski’s authority was somewhat buttressed by the mistaken association between him and the Palomar Observatory. His association merely extended to the fact that he and his wife ran a café at Palomar Gardens, which included a small observatory of its own, some miles away from the observatory itself. Adamski claimed that in 1947 he had witnessed 184 UFOs passing overhead in groups of 32 (this story is repeated across a variety of sources, even though 184 is not quite divisible by 32). He later produced two photographs, ostensibly taken through his 6- 236 Jerome Clark, “Adamski, George (1891-1965),” in The UFO Book: Encyclopedia of the Extraterrestrial (Detroit: Visible Ink, 1998)19. 152
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The Extraterrestrial in US Culture
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The Extraterrestrial in US Culture
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III. Chapter 2: Contact…………
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oth in their rich and bizarre detai
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Fukuyama also describes the histori
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and belonging that are native to th
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modernity, Weber stressed over and
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While positivism would emerge as th
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figure that serves as a medium betw
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sources of Spiritualism, Swedenborg
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The series of moments and discourse
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estful comprehension. It straddles
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The second chapter examines the eme
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Ch.1 The Dead INTRODUCTION Since th
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sense this dream of perfected commu
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political registers as well. This c
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In the late eighteenth century, Mes
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inverted form) along which the unde
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consciousness that is highly mobile
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up the process of thinking”. 38 S
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umor - and irony - would have it, w
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sense that Swedenborg’s researche
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Spiritualist movement, whose medium
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minded, loves to roam in the woods
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etween humans and God as unthinkabl
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esearches was a tailor by the name
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concerns and from the fact that the
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simultaneously in the world of the
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which God has revealed to them and
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assessed the Fox sisters as the “
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each in turn Lockwood elaborated hi
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as miraculous or supernatural? 85 T
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hearts of men to help their brother
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the corrupting influence of the wor
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All manner of proscribed activities
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dawn of a new era, and you must not
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qualities the coarser and heavier t
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full of mischief as any child in th
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keynote in public (and much of the
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masculine traits), the figure of th
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The first was that all world religi
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space brother religion, The Great I
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and the menopauses.” 141 A genera
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Ch.2 Contact INTRODUCTION Contact w
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as spiritual aspirations embodied.
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magazine, the latter edited by icon
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featured female characters who were
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keeping with the recurring integrat
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harmony with the universe (“if yo
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world were still struggling to asce
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hermetic credo as above, so below,
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insistence on the survival of the i
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Page 119 and 120: promises of evolutionary progress h
Page 121 and 122: such as St. Germain could make thei
Page 123 and 124: Ch. 3 The Saucer INTRODUCTION The t
Page 125 and 126: The arrival of the saucer promised
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Page 141 and 142: signing.” 210 Gill’s amused res
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Page 145 and 146: DOROTHY MARTIN While ufology began
Page 147 and 148: attention. Without knowing why, I p
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Page 151 and 152: Dr. Laughead first encountered Doro
Page 153 and 154: In the case of Dorothy Martin and h
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Page 163 and 164: ecome small, self-sufficient commun
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Page 173 and 174: The shift from contact to abduction
Page 175 and 176: science. 256 The Hill case was the
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Page 185 and 186: And he said it was a pregnancy test
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Page 191 and 192: seems to have suggested that humans
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Page 197 and 198: David E. Mack, a Harvard trained an
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Page 201 and 202: In the space brother scenario, the
Page 203 and 204: Everything is now. The past is now;
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eaching our innate potential. The h
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It is in this desire for dissolutio
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abductees feeling like guinea pigs.
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attack. Nietzsche writes of the blo
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Hill. Barney recalled his first gli
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The Gaze as philosophical and psych
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constituted modes of visuality. To
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traum or dream further indicates th
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educed not in the relatively benign
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will of the abductee—all speak to
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esultant exposure to the Real. The
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understood moorings, left to drift
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desired utopian state. The Others c
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were, more or less, ascended master
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Reports back from the spirit realm
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generally silent, but when they do
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to narrative structural positionali
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sensibilities, though one that woul
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of full transparency between interl
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BIBLIOGRAPHY Aber, W.W. “A Guide
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_____. “Adamski, George (1891-196
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_____. Discipline and Punish: the B
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_____. The Seminar of Jacques Lacan
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_____. Something about Soulcraft. N
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Streiber, Whitley and Anne, ed. The
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