“Bennett walks a subtle, sophisticated, and brilliant line between idolatry on the one hand and harsh scientific scepticism on the other.” (Gazelle Books Esoterica Catalogue)
“One of the most brilliantly written UFO books I have ever come across” Jeff Rense, Paranet Radio
“No book better illuminates how UFO lore originated than Looking for Orthon” Louise Lowry, World of the Strange.
“…the potential to be one of the all time greats in the history of Ufology … a masterpiece” Sheryl Gottschall, UFO Encounter
“…if you choose to acquire Orthon you will not be disappointed by its contents.” Kate Miller UFO Magazine
“Just finished the book: brilliant, masterpiece!!!!!!!!!!!!” Michele Bugliaro
http://utenti.tripod.it/ufopsi
"I really enjoyed this book" Jerome Clark, Editor The International UFO Reporter
“We are reading the book with very much interest and amazement” Jun-ichi Kato, Director of the Organization of UFO Research Japan (OUR-J).
“…certainly an interesting read and leaves you scratching your head in wonder!” Malcolm Robinson, SPI (England)/BUFORA.
Book Description:
In a literary tour-de-force, Colin Bennett advances the daring thesis “that the defining moment of the twentieth century will prove to be 12.30 pm on Thursday, 20 November, 1952, when George Adamski met Orthon, a long-haired youth from Venus. It happened in the Californian desert in the presence of witnesses. From that moment the cat was out of the bag, the space people were among us, and nothing has ever been the same since… The effects of this on popular culture are to be seen everywhere… In the modern imagination the UFO is a constant, not just a space-craft but a reminder that the world is not as rational as our educators pretend.. [Adamski] was an impressive old rogue, like Madame Blavatsky and in the same tradition. Such people, according to Plato are the kind whom the gods choose to enlighten us.” -- From the Foreword by John Michell, author of The New View Over Atlantis and Who Wrote Shakespeare?
Avg. Customer Review: *****
March, 2002
Reviewer: (peter.pec.coleman@talk21.com) from Yorkshire England
Colin Bennett summarises this book when he says that "the problem here is that in the 20th century we have lost the relationship between imagination and fact".
Bennett will be viewed as either an apologist for an obvious and outrageous fraudster (George Adamski), or as having the insight to see beyond the superficial straw that Adamski worked with to perceive the small but priceless quantity of gold produced. In fact both views are correct. In other words we are in contradictory territory here and Bennett is a wise guide.
In discussing the power of metaphor (central to his thesis) Bennett says attempts to alter meaning will cause "forces beyond all belief to be summoned". This is truly stated and can be easily inverted to produce an equal truth. Such is the nature of this perplexing book - all is ambiguity.
The old showman that was George Adamski deserves this book. It offers a wonderful, rich, rewarding and finally fabulous journey to the dream/reality factory. Go visit.
Colin Bennett lives in London, and he is the author of two novels, The Infantryman’s Fear of Open Country and The Entertainment Bomb. His book on Charles Fort, Politics of the Imagination is to be published by Head Press Manchester (info.headpress@telinko.co.uk) in May 2002. This book has a Foreword by John Keel, author of The Mothman Prophecies, now made into a major film starring Richard Gere. Colin Bennett will be giving a talk, Scepticism as Mystique at the Fortean Unconvention in April this year.
Copies of Looking for Orthon may be obtained from Amazon, Arcturus Books (rgirard321@aol.com), or in Great Britain from:
Susanne Stebbing, 41 Terminus Drive, Herne Bay Kent CT 66 PR s.stebbing@bushinternet.com
Lionel Beer, 115 Hollybush Lane, Hampton, Middlesex TW12 2QY (020 8979 3148)
Turnaround Publisher Services, Unit 3, Olympia Trading Estate, Coburg Road, Wood Green, London N22 6TZ 0208 829 3000.
ISBN 1-931044-32-5
Published by Paraview Press 1674 Broadway, Suite 4B, New York NY1009
Chapters:
1. When we Imagine We Create a Form of Life
2. Meeting in the Desert
3. Saucer Nights on Palomar
4. Enter Desmond Leslie
5. Orthon’s Shoes and Mr. Silas Newton
6. Cargo Perspectives
7. The Ufonauts are the Liars, Not the Contactees
8. The Doll’s House Machine
9. The Last Contact
10. Entertainment State is Born
11. Management of Mysteries
12. The Sub Plot
13. America Mystica: 1958
14. Adamski’s 1959 World Tour
15. Winter on the Magic Mountain
16. Miracles Must be Small and Not Happen Very Often
17. Things that Haunt the Outer Edge
Afterward:
“Adamski had something in him of the dark genius of the covered wagon and riverboat rascals of Mark Twain and Herman Melville. Like Howard Hughes and L. Ron Hubbard, he brought down fire, if not from heaven, certainly from an elemental somewhere. But unlike Hughes and Hubbard, he didn’t make any money, and so America ignored him.
But America will have to face Adamski sooner or later, and bring him, if reluctantly, into the pantheon of scarred American heroes. Like many with a streak of genius, he didn’t really know the difference between work and play, dream and religious impulse, inspiration and rational thought. But his faulty intellectual grasp saved him: it allowed him to play with all these things, and in playing he chanced upon something that talked to him. But like Francois Seurel in Alain-Fournier’s novel Le Grand Meaulnes, Adamski was to lose the enchanted house in the forest that once he saw. Like Ahab, the quest finally consumed him, and like Hemingway’s Old Man, he was left with only fragments of wonder as a magical defiance of time and decay. When we say that what Adamski saw was created by his “imagination,” we show how far our world has fallen, not progressed. We seem to have forgotten that there is nothing at all which is not conceived by the imagination, and that includes “fact” in itself. In forgetting this, we have lost the long trail between the ravings of visionaries in back rooms, the launch of a space station, and the death of a President. If Adamski’s life can do anything at all, it can teach us how to rediscover that trail.”
I would like to give my best wishes & success for Colin's new book.
Brian