Posthuman Blues

There appear to be two principal ways of approaching the alien abduction enigma, provided one doesn't brush it off as psychological aberration. One camp sees abductions as the workings of physical space visitors who are here to harvest genetic material, apparently for an obscure reproductive agenda. (Think "hybrids.") The other laments our Western fixation on materialism and addresses abductions as "imaginal" events -- that is, real events that somehow don't fit into normal waking ontology.





But both outlooks are beginning to merge. In his latest online journal entry, Whitley Strieber reveals that when he was stuck with the infamous "rectal probe" in 1985, a jolt of electricity stimulated him to an unwanted and unpleasant orgasm. He now suspects the aliens wanted a sample of reproductive fluid. This is something of a revelation coming from Strieber, who has always dodged the question of what, exactly, his "visitors" are for the admirable reason that he isn't sure. But now he describes an unmistakably physical scenario that wouldn't look out-of-place in Temple University professor/abduction researcher David Jacobs' "Secret Life." Strieber makes no attempt to attach any metaphorical interpretation to his unsolicited sperm sample; he thinks his abductors sincerely wanted to get their hands on his DNA. In other words, the event was physical, and so were the beings orchestrating it.

Meanwhile, materialist Budd Hopkins ("Intruders," "Sight Unseen") is recounting bizarre case-files that read like episodes from Strieber's books. Strange figures in bizarre costumes walking the streets of contemporary America. "People" in outlandish garb who appear and disappear in unlikely places like John Keel's beloved Men In Black. Apparently if a researcher sets off to prove a nuts-and-bolts explanation for UFO abductions, he's eventually forced to acknowledge the weirdness factor that leads other, more spiritually inclined researchers (i.e., Harvard's John Mack) to think that aliens are far more challenging to empirical analysis than "mere" extraterrestrials.

The growing acceptance of multiverse theory is welcome to both groups, and is possibly the single-most important factor leading to a "grand unified theory" of alien abduction. Who needs outer space when you have unlimited parallel universes? In a very real sense, beings from a coexisting universe would satisfy criteria for "nonphysical," since they're presumably able to duck back and forth at will, eluding our eyes and instruments. Our science isn't up to this challenge yet, but perhaps -- if we keep doggedly pursuing our strange guests -- it will be eventually.

What the UFO world needs now is a new book by Jacques Vallee, who anticipated all of this a long time ago.