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Looking for Orthon by Colin Bennett. New York: ParaView Press, Brenda Denzler
Was George Adamski a genuine contactee or just a con-man? Did he have real experiences with Venutian visitors, or was he making it all up? For those seeking a straightforward historical narrative with simple yes-or-no answers to these questions, Looking for Orthon is not likely to be a satisfying read. But for those who can tolerate an answer of yes-and-no, Colin Bennett's book is a sheer delight. Unlike other writers who have tried to make sense of Adamski and his claims of alien contact, Bennett tries less to weigh and judge the raw historical facts of the claims than to come to terms with the mythico-psycho-social parameters of them. But this is not an attempt to turn the UFO phenomenon into nothing more than a collective fantasy which can therefore be dismissed, with Adamski serving as the chief delusional instigator. Instead, Bennett suggests that UFOs are an "evolving part-fiction" that works on real and unreal levels at the same time by combining deception with "more convincing elements" (p. 76, pp. 169-70). Thus, if we take the phenomenon seriously, he says, we may have to replace the "real" versus "unreal" dichotomy altogether (p. 206). The life of George Adamski, in Bennett's hands, becomes the paradigmatic example of the 1950s and '60s contactees. A 20Th-century shaman bringing banished bits of reality back into the life of Western culture, Adamski before his experiences seemed to lead a life that was, "in any bourgeois sense at least, [a] complete waste of tinge" (p. 203). But the experiences that he reported transformed him into "the White Rabbit of the 20" century" (p. 65) who, in an act of "visionary cheek" (p. 14) exerted an enormous influence on Western culture (p. 12). "Our world would have been a much more comfortable place had Adamski been proved to be an imposter” notes Bennett (p. 208). But that kind of proof was not to be had. Yet there is also no doubt that Adamski was a "likeable rogue" (p. 158) who at times "tarted up" some of his experiences (p. 175). And for Bennett, that may explain it all: "He and others like him may forever be the prey of a process that chooses them precisely because they will most willingly create new episodes to follow from the first `genuine' episode." After that, they "become hopeless addicts" who create ever more dubious--and more absurd-reports (p. 124; cf. p. 84). According to this interpretation of events, Adamski could not have become the "metaphysical Pied Piper" (p. 28) that he did without the collusion of the UFO-nauts selves, who, Bennett suspects, "may not be so much deceiving [us] as trying to make good guesses, and making an unwittingly comic hash of it" (p. 77). Or, less charitably, the intelligences behind the UFOs may be using humanity not for "slavery, exploitation, experimentation, or even food. We may just be used as a joke," (p. 72)a source of "story-protein" (p. 124) that nourishes an intelligence for whom such complex play is the meaning of existence. And that, of course, would be "psychologically devastating' to our collective pride (p. 77). This may in part explain why it is that government officials took an interest in Adamski from early-on (p. 28, p. 30, p. 135). "Plant a bomb and the State knows how to deal with you," Bennett observes. "Say you met a man from Venus and a far deeper State anger is aroused out of all proportion to your nonexistent physical threat" (p. 125), because Authority `knows that vital new images can change society just as can ‘fact.’ Authority therefore watches image-makers." The many verifications of Adamski's claims that came pouring in after publication of Flying Saucers Have Landed in 1953 created a climate of "delicious insanity" (p. 69, p. 33) and revealed the existence of a plethora of apparently odd people that Authority could not ignore. "Odd folks trouble Authority," notes Bennett, "if only because it doesn't understand them . ... The odd person is made to feel that no matter how small they may be ... they have nevertheless been noticed" (p. 141). And as a ringleader of the odd, Adamski was definitely noticed-not only by officials but by all of Western culture, as his claims "sponsored debate on the deepest and most interesting levels concerning the most important contemporary matters" (p- 176). Looking for Orthon is the kind of book you get when the forces described in Jacques Vallee's Passport to Magonia are studied as they manifest in the concrete life of one man and thereby leave their mark upon a culture. That mark is as much one of buffoonery as of revelation. Other venerable UFO researchers, like James Moseley, have also suggested that whatever intelligence lies behind the UFO phenomenon nlav be "having us on," as Bennett maintains. The difference between Bennett's take and Moseley's, however, is that while Moseley focuses on deceptions and inconsistencies hi saucer reports as obscuring and distorting whatever truth there may be behind the phenomenon, Bennett focuses on such inconsistencies as signs of an inevitable linkage between hoax and reality, fiction and fact. Bennett is the first postmodern thinker from within the UFO community, to tackle the subject of UFOs. (See Jodi Dean for an example of someone more on the outskirts of the UFO community who uses postmodernism to evaluate ufology as a social phenomenon.) Postmodernism has been around in the academy for decades; the fact that it is just now filtering down into UFO-dom is telling. The cries of "That makes no sense!" that are being heard from the more traditional UFO thinkers are all very familiar, too. But postmodernism is slowly losing ground in the academy. It seems to have been a tool that bored into anything it touched and brought up new ways of thinking about things and new insights yet like all tools, it has its limitations. I doubt that this way of approaching ufology will be the last word, though it may take some time for it to run its course in the field and give us whatever it is capable of giving. Meanwhile, the cries of tormented and confused ufologists who are faced with postmodernist takes on their subject are almost predictable. But for those who can face defining the box, then thinking outside of it, and then realizing that there never was any real box to begin with. Bennett's book is well worth the effort. Brenda Denzler The Abduction Millennium Project Project Director PO Box 995 Carrboro NC 27510 www.abduction project.com bdenzler1@email.msn.com
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