Posthuman Blues

Film-maker and alarmingly level-headed UFO blogger Paul Kimball has posted an essay questioning the historical accuracy of Richard Dolan's "UFOs and the National Security State." The low-down: Dolan's a smart, likeable guy, but his book (the first volume in an exhaustive two-part study) gravitates toward unproveable and/or unwarranted conspiracy theories. Specifically, Kimball focuses on Dolan's treatment of the deaths of two prominent UFO researchers and finds it sensationalistic and academically unbecoming.

I agree -- to a point. "UFOs and the National Security State" is one of the best chronological overviews of the subject ever written. It's true, incidentally, that Dolan waxes conspiratorial; some of the deductive leaps in his book exceed the available data. Nevertheless, Dolan is honest and articulate enough to let the reader know when he indulges in speculation -- something too many writers about Weird Things are unable and/or unwilling to do. So I was able to read "Security State" without too many misgivings. For a book couched in a stew of Cold War paranoia, Dolan does a good job of avoiding most of the typical pitfalls; the conspiratorial allusions are forgivable, if imaginative -- not major impediments. Ufology is a field so rich with strangeness and tangled insider politics that there's little or no need to invent fantastic scenarios, and I think Dolan's book reflects his fundamental understanding of this.

That said, Kimball has sounded an astute word of caution for the uninitiated.