What Happened to Ufology?

When people are still talking and writing books about the Roswell Incident more than sixty years after it happened, you have to wonder if the air has leaked out of ufology.
In Britain, the Telegraph reports,

Dozens of groups interested in the flying saucers and other unidentified craft have already closed because of lack of interest and next week one of the country’s foremost organisations involved in UFO research is holding a conference to discuss whether the subject has any future.

Back in the late 1940s–1960s, I think that there was a sense of movement: first the sightings of unknown “spacecraft.” Then visual sightings plus effects, such as burnt spots on the ground. Then sightings of aliens themselves (following J. Allen Hynek’s classification scheme).

Surely the truth would be learned soon, whether the aliens were benevolent or whether they were not and Earthlings had to overcome their political differences and fight for planetary survival.

But no.

Me, I am of the Jacques Vallée school: They have always been here, living “inside the walls.”

2 thoughts on “What Happened to Ufology?

  1. Rummah

    Perhaps the devotees themselves? Years ago I saw a beat-up car pull into a parking lot near a shopping mall outside Philly. Out emerged two of the fattest men I have ever seen in my entire life. I saw them hours later in a mega-book store buying stacks of UFO magazines and books.

  2. Pitch313

    I suspect that the grand story of UFOs has been over-told too many times. It has moved from fringe culture through popular culture to a sort of cultural sonambulism. ET visitors are low consciousness old hat stuff. Just more shoppers at the Walmart of postmodern mind…Attention, UFO shoppers…

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