World UFO Day will be celebrated on July 2, 2024, so I hope you have your telescope set up to scan the skies for otherworldly objects. Whether or not you believe in UFOs and ETs (extraterrestrials), the idea of life on other planets is a fascinating one. What do I think? There’s a line in Carl Sagan’s novel “Contact” that resonates with me: “The universe is a pretty big place. If it’s just us, seems like an awful waste of space.” Indeed.
The Roswell, N.M., incident in 1947, the Betty and Barney Hill abductions in 1961, the disappearance of Travis Walton in 1975 (which inspired the 1993 film “Fire in the Sky”) are but a few examples of alleged encounters between humans and aliens. UFOs have been reported all over the world, but mention the term “flying saucer,” and one can’t help but think about Area 51. Located within the Nevada Test and Training Range, the Air Force facility is near State Route 375, dubbed the Extraterrestrial Highway. Apparently, Nevada is a magnet for extraterrestrial activity. If you’ve ever been to Las Vegas, you know what I mean.
Are we alone? Maybe we are, maybe we aren’t.
What I can tell you for certain is that the library has a variety of out-of-this-world books. If you’re out there, ET, please call home … and visit the library.
- “The Close Encounters Man: How One Man Made the World Believe in UFOs” by Mark O’Connell.
- “Cover-Up at Roswell: Exposing the 70-Year Conspiracy to Suppress the Truth” by Donald R. Schmitt.
- “The Day After Roswell” by Philip J. Corso.
- “The Little Book of Aliens” by Adam Frank.
- “Space Oddities: The Mysterious Anomalies Challenging Our Understanding of the Universe” by Harry Cliff.
- “UFO Secrets Inside Wright-Patterson: Eyewitness Accounts from the Real Area 51” by Thomas J. Carey.
