Hi Vicky,
I am a feature writer for the Fortean Times. Perhaps you might like to take a look at my latest book, Politics of the Imagination. Love to all Forteans, UFOhunters, the dangerously sane, and also to that actor's negotiation called the Real. Attached document is safe to open. It has been swept by the Real, but is guaranteed to inspire, nevertheless. Forgive us if you have received this mail previously. Our computer argues frequently with the Real, as did Charles Fort, who said that intelligence is the courage to change the rules.Colin
"Mundane claims need mundane evidence"
"The need for disbelief is the most powerful force with the human personality, and therefore some people would disbelieve anything"
Previewing in Philosophy Now (October/November 2002 No 38). Major New Scientist review coming up this Autumn, plus two-hour USA Jeff Rense web radio interview.
Politics of the Imagination
By Colin Bennett, author of Looking for Orthon
The Life, Work and Ideas of Charles Fort
Published by Critical Vision, an imprint of Head Press, Manchester with a Foreword by John Keel, author of The Mothman Prophecies
Born in Albany, New York, in 1874, Charles Fort spent almost his entire life searching through periodicals in the New York Public Library and the British Museum, compiling evidence to show that science was a mere façade which concealed as much as it claimed to have discovered. In a series of four books -the Book of the Damned, New Lands, Lo! And Wild Talents - he argued that explanations are far more fantastic than the things they are supposed to explain, and that we only use them to get some sleep at night. Science, believed Fort, was a new form of social control whose object was to conceal the fantastical nature of the universe by means of editing out paradoxes, contradictions, miracles, paranormal events - anything that was unusual or which did not fit into a set scheme of things. This earned him the title "foe of science" as the New York Times described Fort in its obituary.
Politics of the Imagination
The Life, Work and Ideas of Charles Fort
By Colin BennetChapter 1: Imagination Wars
Chapter 2: Walter Mitty Strikes Back
Chapter 3: Gas Lamp Theatre
Chapter 4: Marketing Belief
Chapter 5: Intermediate States
Chapter 6: The Quest for Oswald: Facts as Art Form
Appendix: Scepticism as MystiqueAnd much more.
"Three giants have appeared against us. Their hearts are bubbles. Their bones wilt. They are the limp caryatides that uphold the phantom structure of Palaeo-astronomy. By what miracle, we asked, could foundation be built subsequently under a baseless thing. But three ghosts can fit anywhere." New Lands
ISBN 1-900486-20-2
Price £12.99
Pages 176pp
Size171x240mm
Publication July 27, 2002
Publisher Critical Vision, an Imprint of Headpress, 40 Rossall Avenue Radcliffe, Manchester, M26 1JD Great Britain. Tel/fax +44 (0) 161 796 1935 email david.headpress@zen.co.uk http:www.headpress.com/
VAT registration 719 4672 08
Available to the Trade UK&Europe/Turnaround 020 8829 3000
USA&Canada/CBSD Toll free:1 800 283 3572
Politics of the Imagination may be purchased from any UK bookshop, or online from Amazon.co.uk In the USA, it can be ordered from Arcturus Books 1443 S.E. Port St. Lucie Boulevard. Port St. Lucie, Florida 34952"Politics of the Imagination follows on from Bennett's successful Looking for Orthon. Don't find yourself without it" Bob Girard, Arcturus Books.
Now available from Amazon.co.uk or any bookshop in UK
American availability within five weeks, or can be ordered from any British bookshop or direct from the publisher
Colin Bennett's Looking for Orthon is also available from Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com
Looking for Orthon
"This study of Adamski has got to be one of the most eagerly-awaited UFO books to appear in the last few years. A worthy book indeed for every student of flying saucers." (Bob Girard, Arcturus Books)
Looking for Orthon
by Colin Bennett"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
"This book shines a whole new light onto America's most known UFO Spotter - was Adamski a hoaxer? One thing is for sure you cant ignore Looking for Orthon by Colin Bennett. - C.Whitlock UFO UK
".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 (Britain)
"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 and author of The UFO Encyclopedia
"Thanks for a very perceptive book" Jacques Vallee, author of Passport to Magonia.
"We are reading the book with very much interest and amazement" Jun-ichi Kato, Director of the Organization of UFO Research Japan (OUR-J).
".fascinating, amusing, confounding, occasionally insightful, and all in all delightful Looking for Orthon" Karl Pflock author of Roswell : Inconvenient Facts and the Will to Believe
"Looking for Orthon is the ufological dog's bollocks. It will put the sceptics to rout". Panzerben Sharkley, F**K Magazine
"We actually read this Bennett book word for word, and that is a rare thing for us to do. He is an intellectual of the old school." Jim Moseley, Editor, Saucer Smear
".. original and most excellent.all ufologists should read this outstanding book" John Chambers, Fortean Times 160
"Put Looking for Orthon on top of the book pile for reading this summer, right next to the new edition of Loren Coleman's classic biography of Texas oil millionaire Tom Slick. The tone of Bennett's book is set in the Foreword by John Michell. Colin Bennett is quite right in what he says here, that in the world of art and literature, during and after Adamski's time, talk of UFOs and related subjects was in no way cool, hip, PC or the proper thing. Right-wing types disliked it for upsetting established patterns of thought, while intellectuals saw it as a plot to divert attention from their revolution." Kenn Thomas, Steamshovel Press.
Reviewer: ernest.sears@amserve.net
"LOOKING FOR ORTHON" should be on every UFOlogist's bookshelf! Author Colin Bennett swoops back in time and uncovers and strips bare the truth about George Adamski whose subsequent reputation following his death some years after the bestselling "Flying Saucers Have Landed" was tarnished by the apparent lies and figements of his imagination. Colin shows how certain people were involved in cover-ups... a not strictly modern invention ! The book restores belief in man himself. It reinforces the complex, mystifying, tantalising world of the paranormal which stretches far wider than in Adamski's time in the fifties. An author with a perceptive and analytical mind, Colin Bennett displays such far beyond the sheer bravery of re-investigating a fifty year old "classic" incident (Adamski's alleged meeting with a 'Man From Venus') which he boldly claims 'the defining moment of the 21st century will prove to be 12.30 p.m. on Thursday November 26th, 1952'. Many of us will agree. Contemporary UFO incidents serve to back up THE TRUTH that Colin Bennett offers us.Reviewer: Mac Tonnies http://mactonnies.com/ufobooks.html
Plainly stated, 'Looking for Orthon' is one of the most compelling treatments of the UFO phenomenon ever written. Superficially, 'Looking for Orthon' can be read as a biography of the late flying saucer contactee George Adamski, but it's much more; Bennett probes the innards of 20th century society with an intellectual and literary dexterity seldom encountered in popular works on UFOs. Bennett treats Adamski's bizarre story as the multilayered mythological enigma that it is, recreating the heady and beautifully weird circumstances in which Adamski, good-natured opportunist and hobbyist astronomer, came into contact with a man from Venus: an event, Bennett argues, that rattled the world's epistemological bedrock - even if it never happened. There aren't very many books that address reality-challenging issues as ably or as wittily as Bennett's. 'Looking for Orthon'. It is a must for anyone seeking the roots of the postmodern condition, and destined to be a classic.Reviewer: Peter Coleman (peter.pec.coleman@talk21.com)
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 and at the same time. 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.Reviewer: Sean Casteel (UFO Magazine-America August/September 2002)
I can't remember when I've ever enjoyed a UFO-related book so much. The writing style is marvellously entertaining, and I hate having to put the book down to do more mundane things.Reviewer: David F. Godwin (Fate Magazine July 2002)
Bennett questions the value of accepted norms such as true or false, real and fake, frequently characterizing such distinctions as "industrial". In Hindu/Theosophical thought, (which Adamski followed) the phenomenal world itself is illusion. Therefore, anything can happen - or sort of happen, especially if there is a collision of "metaphors". This combination of biography, polemic and amateur ontology by a Robert Anton Wilson wannabe, shows Lee Harvey Oswald as being the same sort of pan-dimensional figure as Adamski."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?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 patrick@cloud9.netLooking for Orthon: 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."