The UFOs That Never Were

by Jenny Randles and Andy J. Roberts

In this ground-breaking book, three noted ufo-logical investigators uncover the truth about famous UFO sightings and prove them to be genuine mistakes, fakes and false identifications. The chapters... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1902809351
• ISBN13: 9781902809359
• Release Date: December 2000
• Publisher: Allison and Busby
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 1.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.4" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

SAME AS IT NEVER WAS

following is the text of a review I wrote that appeared in the Fortean Times:SAME AS IT NEVER WAS Some famous UFO cases yield less than meets the eyeThe UFOs That Never Were Jenny Randles, Andy Roberts and David Clarke London House, London, 2000, hb £16.99, pp244, index, notes, illus. ISBN 1 902809 35 1I once had the opportunity to ask a brusquely competent literary agent what he knew about the UFO book market. Not much, he replied, but "I know books that say they don't exist don't sell." Let us hope that bleak Fate bypasses this excellent volume, which gives its game away in bold block letters on the cover.*The UFOs That Never Were* is a collaboration between Jenny Randles, one of the field's most consistently interesting authors, and Andy Roberts and Dr. David Clarke, both veterans of numerous inquiries into mysteries of British earth and sky. Their book deconstructs in detail a number of well-known UFO cases, primarily British, which on closer examination appear attributable to mundane causes. These include events such as the mysterious sky phenomena off the Butt of Lewis in 1996, the Howden Moor "crash retrieval" rumors, and the legendary Rendlesham Forest incident, here subjected to a lengthy and masterful deflation. Randles draws on the admirable work of James Easton to argue compellingly that this "best-attested case of a UFO crash outside the US," as it has been described, was in fact caused by, well, a lighthouse. It's a depressing finish for a tale that once promised to achieve something of the mythopoeic status of Roswell.In a broader sense, *The UFOs That Never Were* is a welcome antidote to the sloppy research that fills a good deal of the saucer bookshelf. "Famous cases" easily achieve a life of their own, the garbled details repeated faithfully by one hack after another. Yet such cases sometimes evaporate under close scrutiny, and it's a pleasure to watch these authors take us step by step through the detective work involved in a genuine investigation.Reality being a messy business, the answers they find often are incomplete and complex. Andy Robert's solution to the Berwyn Mountain "UFO crash" of 1974, for instance, involves an earthquake, bolide meteors and poachers hunting at night with powerful lamps, a coincidence that leaves one longing for the parsimony of a simple spaceship. Roberts is well-known for his barbed wit concerning Britain's hapless alphabet soup of saucer organizations; here he seems restrained, but the comedy still seeps through in his description of the angry conniptions that ensued in some corners of ufology following his discovery that the perfectly good flying saucer of Yorkshire's Cracoe Fell was in fact a shelf of reflective rock on a hillside.If ufology seems clueless, the "authorities" remain gutless, as Randles found while investigating film footage of a ball of light seen by numerous witnesses near Long Crendon in 1973. A half-dozen of the UK's leading atmosph

SAME AS IT NEVER WAS

I once had the opportunity to ask a brusquely competent literary agent what he knew about the UFO book market. Not much, he replied, but "I know books that say they don't exist don't sell." Let us hope that bleak Fate bypasses this excellent volume, which gives its game away in bold block letters on the cover.*The UFOs That Never Were* is a collaboration between Jenny Randles, one of the field's most consistently interesting authors, and Andy Roberts and Dr. David Clarke, both veterans of numerous inquiries into mysteries of British earth and sky. Their book deconstructs in detail a number of well-known UFO cases, primarily British, which on closer examination appear attributable to mundane causes. These include events such as the mysterious sky phenomena off the Butt of Lewis in 1996, the Howden Moor "crash retrieval" rumors, and the legendary Rendlesham Forest incident, here subjected to a lengthy and masterful deflation. Randles draws on the admirable work of James Easton to argue compellingly that this "best-attested case of a UFO crash outside the US," as it has been described, was in fact caused by, well, a lighthouse. It's a depressing finish for a tale that once promised to achieve something of the mythopoeic status of Roswell.In a broader sense, *The UFOs That Never Were* is a welcome antidote to the sloppy research that fills a good deal of the saucer bookshelf. "Famous cases" easily achieve a life of their own, the garbled details repeated faithfully by one hack after another. Yet such cases sometimes evaporate under close scrutiny, and it's a pleasure to watch these authors take us step by step through the detective work involved in a genuine investigation.Reality being a messy business, the answers they find often are incomplete and complex. Andy Robert's solution to the Berwyn Mountain "UFO crash" of 1974, for instance, involves an earthquake, bolide meteors and poachers hunting at night with powerful lamps, a coincidence that leaves one longing for the parsimony of a simple spaceship. Roberts is well-known for his barbed wit concerning Britain's hapless alphabet soup of saucer organizations; here he seems restrained, but the comedy still seeps through in his description of the angry conniptions that ensued in some corners of ufology following his discovery that the perfectly good flying saucer of Yorkshire's Cracoe Fell was in fact a shelf of reflective rock on a hillside.If ufology seems clueless, the "authorities" remain gutless, as Randles found while investigating film footage of a ball of light seen by numerous witnesses near Long Crendon in 1973. A half-dozen of the UK's leading atmospheric physicists viewed the film, decided it was not ball lightning and agreed they had no other explanation for it, yet declined to investigate further. After all, there are research grants to be pursued, and no one condemned to toil in academic mills wants a whiff of heresy clinging to his name. (Somew