Description
This intriguing collection of essays presents reflections upon the birth, proliferation, enduring appeal, and future of extraterrestrial mythology. Highly respected authors and researchers representing the varied and sometimes competing perspectives of ufology and the sociology of religion provide a fascinating and instructive voyage into the social worlds of UFOs, abductees, and contactees. Reports of aliens and the changing nature of abduction experience, even its sexual dimension, are explored in relation to literature, cultural practices, and ideology. The influence of abduction therapy and support groups is considered, as are new religious movements with extraterrestrial themes. Alien Worlds will enlighten anyone wanting to understand what and how the academic world thinks about UFOs, contactee groups, and alien phenomena.
Table of Contents
Introduction, Diana G. Tumminia
PART ONE: Contactee Religions
1. Hagiography and Text in the Aetherius Society: Aspects of the Social Construction of a Religious Leader, Mikael Rothstein 3
2. The Odyssey of Sister Thedra, Jerome Clark
3. Galactic Messenger! Overview of the Universal Industrial Church of the New World Comforter, Diana G. Tumminia
4. Presumed Immanent: The Raelians, UFO Religions, and the Postmodern Condition, Bryan Sentes and Susan Palmer
5. In the Dreamtime of the Saucer People: Sense-Making and Interpretive Boundaries in a Contactee Group, Diana G. Tumminia
PART TWO: Abductees and Contactees
6. Toward an Explanation of the ''Abduction Epidemic": The Ritualization of Alien Abduction Mythology in Therapeutic Settings, Georg M. R0nnevig
7. Secondary Beliefs and the Alien Abduction Phenomenon, Benson Saler
8. Alien Abduction Narratives and Religious Contexts, Scott R. Scribner
9. Close Encounters of the French Kind: The Saucerian Construction of "Contacts" and the Controversy over Its Reality in France, Pierre Lagrange
PART THREE: Myth, Folklore, and Media
10. Consciousness, Culture, and UFOs, Jacques Vallee
11. Aliens from the Cosmos: A Discourse of Contemporary UFO Myths, Anna E. Kubiak
12. All I Ever Want to Be, I Learned from Playing Klingon Sex, Honor, and Cultural Critique in Star Trek Fandom, Jennifer E. Porter
PART FOUR: Ufological "Science" and Therapy
13. Observations from Archaeology and Religious Studies on First Contact and ETI Evidence, James F. Strange
14. A Confederacy of Fact and Faith: Science and the Sacred in UFO Research, Anne Cross
15. Ancient Alien Brothers, Ancient Terrestrial Remains Archaeology or Religion? Pia Andersson
16. The Raelian Creation Myth and the Art of Cloning Reality or Rhetoric? Christopher Helland
17. UFO Abduction Support Groups: Who Are the Members? Christopher D. Bader
Appendix A: Some Known Contactee Religions
Appendix B: Some Types of Aliens
References
Index
About the Author
Diana G. Tumminia teaches sociology at California State University, Sacramento. She is author of When Prophecy Never Fails: Myth and Reality in a Flying-Saucer Group.
May 2007