When the folks at Llewellyn first approached me about the idea of doing a book about UFOs, I must confess to having had some reservations. It's not that I lacked an interest in the subject—I've been curious about UFOs since I was a kid—but as there are so many books on the subject already, I wasn't sure what I might have to add that hadn't already been done to death. However, after some careful consideration, I finally decided to take a crack at it, the end result being my recently released book, UFOs: The Great Debate.

So how if my book any different from all the others out there? I believe it takes a more atypical approach than does the standard UFO book out there in that it approaches the entire subject from a more objective—and some my say, more skeptical—position which asks the hard questions about the entire phenomenon few ufologists are willing to ask. For example, I ask whether a space-faring civilization is even scientifically feasible and, if so, why it might choose to traverse the vastness of space to study us (And if it did, how likely is it that alien visitors could actually operate in our skies largely unnoticed, much less possibly abduct people?) I also wanted to take a closer look at the potential extent of our government's possible role in suppressing information about this phenomena, as well as consider how likely they would be able to successfully maintain such a massive conspiracy for so many years. In other words, I wanted a book that is specifically designed for the person who enjoys looking at things a little differently as well as for the open-minded skeptic that holds the reader accountable for using their deductive reasoning powers and common sense in drawing their own conclusions, which I believe to be the only truly honest approach to attempting to ascertain the truth behind the entire phenomenon. Hopefully the reader will come away from the book with a fresh perspective from which to make up their own mind about this fascinating and extremely important phenomenon. (To read the book's Table of Contents and Introduction, click here.)

In any case, while researching the book I have come across a great deal of what I consider to be either poorly thought out, spurious, or just plain silly stuff—some of which I talk about in my book and some of which I don't. For the stuff that didn't fit in the book, I thought this would be a good place to store it in the hopes that others might be able to benefit from the fruits of my labors. Of course, I realize that challenging some of the more deeply entrenched and cherished beliefs about extraterrestrials currently in vogue makes me something of a heretic to some people, but the truth is that I'm not really the hardened skeptic some might imagine. I've never had a problem with the idea that "they"—whomever "they" are—might be a part of our reality, but as I've grown older I've become a bit more cautious about this stuff and so less willing to take everything at face value. I don't think that necessarily makes me a bad person, but it does make me far more open to exploring other options in trying to explain these things. Of course, like everything else on this site, these are just my opinions and nothing more, so feel free to take 'em or leave 'em.

As always, I'd enjoy corresponding with anyone who would like to open a dialogue on these issues. Also, I'm always looking for some compelling UFO photos (please, no strange lights in the skies. It's almost impossible to tell anything from a static photo, especially at night. I'm looking for more substantial, daylight photos and please, no trickery.)

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