FLYING SAUCERS FROM BEYOND THE EARTH: A UFO RESEARCHER'S ODYSSEY (SOFTCOVER EDITION) by Gordon Lore

ISBN  9781629333434

Flying Saucers From Beyond the Earth is Gordon Lore’s fifteen-year UFO odyssey through the 1960s and 1970s, the most formative research and investigation years of this constantly ongoing phenomenon. It is highlighted by his work with Major Donald E. Keyhoe, known as  “Mr. UFO” because he wrote the first book and article on the subject in 1950, Richard H. Hall, and James E. McDonald, one of the premiere UFO scientists during the 1960s whose tragic death in 1971 left an enduring gap in the early history of UFO research and investigation.

 
This new book gives the reader both personal and scientific insights into many perplexing flying saucer sightings and the author’s investigation and research highlighting their importance. The author has worked with such respected UFO researchers and scientists as Dr. J. Allen Hynek, Dr. Jacques Vallee, Francis Ridge (honcho of the NICAP website), Barry Greenwood, Jan Aldrich, Raymond Fowler, Stanton Friedman, and Paul Cerny. The book also highlights the author’s personal investigation of prominent UFO sightings in several states and his leading the NICAP subcommittee work of a number of prominent investigators. He can be seen sitting with Major Donald E. Keyhoe and Richard Hall at a conference table at the National Press Club in 1968 in a segment of NASA’s Unexplained Files—“Secret Aliens.”

“I was fascinated by Gordon Lore’s account of UFO history and NICAP’s ceaseless struggle to uncover and reveal the truth. Working with highly-charged, up-to-the-minute material, the author invokes military and civilian aviators, police officers, trainmen, abductees, scientists, CIA moles, gold miners, FBI bureaucrats and the everyday people whose sightings are the backbone of the UFO phenomenon. If a book dedicated to evidence-based research can be thrilling, Flying Saucers From Beyond the Earth is it.”
—David J. Hogan, author of UFO FAQ: All That’s Left to Know 
About Roswell, Aliens, Whirling Discs, and Flying Saucers

“Gordon Lore provides us with a marvelous look at the Golden Era of flying saucers and UFOs, giving us an uncommon look at the past from the perspective of one who actually lived it as an official of NICAP in Washington, D.C. This inside look at many classic saucer sightings comes from the time when UFOs made national headlines, were the subject of official Air Force investigations, and were targeted for two Congressional hearings in 1966 and 1968. It is pure nostalgia for those curious about the controversy over life in space.”
—Barry J. Greenwood, co-author of Clear Intent: 
The Government Coverup of the UFO Experience

“Gordon Lore has given us a careful, comprehensive and honest reportage of the UFO phenomenon based on his many years of investigating the phenomenon. He is neither an alarmist nor a radical in his conclusions. The reader will find this an essential counterweight to distortions that sometimes muddy this ever-timely subject.”
—Neil Earle, author of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz 
in American Popular Culture

Mike Stein, the Editor/Publisher of FILMFAX plus, The Magazine of Unusual Film, Television, Retro Pop Culture, had this to say about my book in the Summer 2019 edition of  FILMFAX:

“When a book about UFO sightings is written in the first person by someone who was alive at the time of those events, and who investigated them for [the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP)], its credibility becomes undeniable. Flying Saucers From Beyond the Earth:  A UFO Researcher’s Odyssey by Gordon Lore gives its readers a genuine feeling of having been there.

“After a short instruction describing some of his earliest personal UFO sightings, Lore segues directly to his recruitment by the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP) in 1965, where he worked for the next five years with Major Donald Keyhoe and mentor Richard Hall.

“Actual UFO encounters, told in a ‘you-are-there’ narrative style, begin with ‘Incidents at Loch Raven Reservoir’ in 1958 and extend into 2017 with ‘UFOS Cavort Over Pittsburgh’ (370 pages later). Along the way, sidebar chapters regale the reader with a look into details of the author’s personal ‘odyssey’ mentioned in the book’s subtitle. Revealed is his discovery of two letters sent to Major Keyhoe from the celebrated psychologist Carl Jung (a former student of Sigmund Freud) who had written his own book, Flying Saucers:  A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Sky. Also documented are Lore’s many appearances on radio, television, and as a lecturer, highlighted by his entertaining anecdotes of all the celebrities he met along the way, many of whom had their own UFO stories to tell.

“And how could any UFO book be worth its cosmic salt without some visual evidence of its apocryphal subject matter? Twenty-four pages of clearly reproduced photographs, many of them of actual UFO sightings, as well as the individuals involved in the investigations, are included.

“The real-world ramifications of UFO studies are also cataloged. J. Edgar Hoover’s personal obsession with the Roswell incident; the 1966 Congressional UFO hearings at which Carl Sagan testified; the invaluable research of J. Allen Hynek, who became world famous after Steven Spielberg’s [film] Close Encounters of the Third Kind, after one of Hynek’s codifications, [was released] and more.

“The list of UFO pop culture references could go on and on, and it does in Gordon Lore’s definitive handbook. This is a fun read for both the casually curious and the serious-minded student of UFOs.”

Visit the author's website

Flying Saucers - Best of Coast to Coast AM - 10/1/18

Gordon Lore | National Investigations Committee On Aerial Phenomena

08 August 31 2018 Jan Aldrich and Gordon Lore Nicap

Read the Filmfax review: 

In the summer of 1955, author Gordon Lore would experience an encounter in his hometown of Solomons Island, Maryland. Two events prior to that seemed to form a kind of predisposition for what was about to occur:One of the events was his having just finished reading "the fascinating, first book on the UFO, or flying saucer phenomenon in 1950" and, in his own words "I was a convert." The author of the book was Major Donald E. Keyhoe (USMC-Ret.), with whom, in due time, Gordon would form a personal and professional relationship, one of the most significant relationships

in his life. The other prior event was was having seen the film The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) for the second time. What Gordon was to experience on the end of a pier just over from Chesapeake Bay could have been a scene from that film. A "large silver disc shaped object that appeared to be about half the length of a football field" approached from over the Patuxent River. The object dropped into the water and, upon re-emerging, discharged what appeared to be tons of water from a large panel below, showering Gordon at his location on the pier. Subsequently he would experience two more similar encounters which he would document and report to NICAP (National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomenon) of which Donald E. Keyhoe was co-founder and director from 1957 on. A chance meeting in Washington D.C. in 1965 with NICAP investigator Dick Hall led to Gordon being hired on to the NICAP staff where he would work in a number of capacities over the next five years.

Flying Saucers From Beyond the Earth is a summary and overview of Gordon Lore's experiences and observations at NICAP as investigator, Vice President, Assistant Director and Secretary Treasurer which then was the world's largest UFO organization, headed by the aforementioned Major Donald E. Keyhoe. FSFBTE is the second book by Gordon Lore for Bear Manor Media, the first being Connections: A Lifetime Journey Through the World of Celebrity which covers not only highlights of his NICAP experiences but his many faceted career as a writer/editor. Having been out of the field of UFO phenomena examination for some time, he decided to take both an inventory of his experiences along those lines as well as a fresh look at current investigations, the result being his current volume. The book goes into painstaking detail about known and lesser known UFO incidents as investigated by himself and other NICAP investigators as well as outside sources. One such fascinating section uses reports from his book Mysteries of the Skies: UFOs in Perspective (1968) going back hundreds of years. For example  at around 10:00 p.m. on October 11, 1492  Admiral Christopher Columbus, while making his rounds on his flagship The Santa Maria, observed "a light glimmering at a great distance" which was later seen bobbing up and down "in sudden and passing gleams." "The light was first spotted about four hours before land in the New World was sighted... The next morning, October 12 (annually celebrated as Columbus Day) land was discovered and the beginning of foreign occupation of the North American and parts of the South American continents had begun." (p.68). The Area 51 controversy and other crash-and-retrieval incidents are also addressed.

According to noted ufologist Jerome Clark, "Major Donald E.) Keyhoe was widely regarded as the leader in the field of ufology in the 1950's and early to mid-1960's." After sustaining an arm injury in 1922 while serving in the Marines, Keyhoe began writing as a hobby during his convalescence. He later managed a coast-to-coast tour by Charles Lindbergh following his solo transatlantic flight, leading to his first book in 1928, Flying with Lindbergh, Keyhoe retired from WWII active duty in a Naval Aviation Division at the rank of Major, He had already written numerous fantastical air adventure stories for pulp magazines such as Weird Tales, which seemed to provide a predisposition for him also, in terms of his attraction and interest in flying saucers which were drawing widespread public fascination in the late 1940's. In 1950 Keyhoe wrote his groundbreaking book The Flying Saucers Are Real, which created an active momentum leading to his co-founding of NICAP, providing the fertile ground for a new generation of ufologists, of particular interest here being the author of this book, Gordon Lore.

The most troubling, concerning and overarching thread in the book is that of the ongoing efforts of the U.S. Government, Air Force and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to discredit and debunk the most meticulous investigations of UFO incident phenomena, including efforts by the CIA to infiltrate and eventually bring down the research group. Gordon's perceptions and insights penetrate and often run contrary to the accepted narrative which usually focus on real or imaginary faults of the group, ignoring the hidden intent to actually eliminate it..

Why the desire to suppress such detailed evidence? Gordon quotes his fellow author and UFO colleague john Fuller, with whom he had appeared on the late Joe Franklin's beloved and highly rated talk show, and whose comments might shed some light on possible repercussions for disseminating such information to the general public: "(T)here could be far-reaching implications concerning the history of Planet Earth. It would promote reevaluations of our religions, politics, scientific efforts and literature. We would have to reevaluate our international relations with an urgent need for a continuous examination of the UFO phenomenon. Even today, the United Nations Secretary General and others are talking about a major scientific probe. It was Tennyson who said 'Maybe (our) wildest dreams are but the needful preludes of the truth'" (p.81). Many years later, armed with this book and the new social media, can a difference be made? We shall see.