Those were the days

"UFOs: The Greatest Mystery" by Hilary Evans was probably the first book I read about UFOs as a kid. It's short, concise, and has large colour illustrations, many of them credited to the Mary Evans Picture Library, co-founded by none other than Hilary Evans himself! Apparently, it's very convincing too, since I had a "UFO phase" as a preteen. Later, I became more fascinated by the fact that people can believe whatever they want to believe. And these days, I'm just tired of it all.

The book manages to cover virtually all aspects of UFOs and the UFO subculture, despite being so short. Cases mentioned include Socorro, Lakenheath, the Papua observations, the death of captain Mantell, and the Hill abduction case. However, there is very little about alien abductions overall in this book, probably because it was written in 1979. The abduction craze didn't start in earnest until the 1980's and 1990's. George Adamski is prominently featured, and the book also mentions some more bizarre speculations about Nazi-UFO connections, "the hollow earth" and MIBs. The Roswell saga is notable by its absence, and so are Billy Meier and the lovely Semjase. Nor does the book mention Erich von Däniken. Still, it's surprisingly comprehensive for a work only 100 pages long, where almost half of the pages are illustrations!

"UFOs: The Greatest Mystery" ends with a dramatic and apparently real photo of a human crowd anticipating the landing of an interstellar space craft. Alas, it's not really real. It's actually from the movie "Close encounters of the third kind". Still, it's a fitting close. Evans' book was published during a period when the UFO phenomenon was still interpreted by many people as benign, and perhaps even as a chance at salvation. It was an optimistic mystery waiting to be solved. If you pick up a ufology book today, a very different picture emerges...

Times have changed, apparently. And so have the mysteries.