Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind: A Reporter's Notebook on Alien Abduction, UFOs, and the Conference at M.I.T. - Softcover

Bryan, C. D. B.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140195270 ISBN 13: 9780140195279

Publisher: Penguin Books, 1996

Synopsis

Recounts the cases presented at the conference on UFOs held at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1992, in which ordinary men and women reported being taken aboard extraterrestrial spacecraft and examined by aliens. Reprint. 20,000 first printing.

About this title

Review

Inspired perhaps by this summer's blockbuster film adaptation of Carl Sagan's Contact, a handful of nonfiction works have been reissued, all of which explore the possibility that we are not alone. C.D.B. Bryan's Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind--an engrossing work written for those skeptical about extraterrestrial visitors--is a compilation of testimonials and interviews about alien abductions. Bryan's sources, interviewed at a five-day academic conference held at M.I.T., include psychiatrists, researchers, science writers, "ufologists," and abductees, including John Mack, a professor of psychiatry at Harvard and author of Abduction: Human Encounters with Aliens. In addition, Close Encounters includes transcripts from hypnotherapy sessions with self-described "abductees." Bryan, journalist and author of Friendly Fire (1976), blends a reporter's objectivity with great compassion for the traumatized victims of these mysterious and horrific violations.

From Publishers Weekly

Bryan (Friendly Fire) brings top-notch reporting skills to this open-minded account of a five-day conference on UFO abductions held at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1992. Many of the purported abductees, who spoke at the symposium and in subsequent interviews with Bryan, tell of being floated aboard spacecraft by gray, four-foot-tall creatures with big heads who subjected them to clinical examinations. Bryan believes in the abductees' sincerity but remains undecided whether such experiences are encounters with nuts-and-bolts craft and real aliens, disturbances of the collective unconscious or something else. Among the ufology heavyweights attending the conference were bestselling abduction researchers Budd Hopkins and David Jacobs, who believe aliens are conducting an ongoing breeding experiment with humans; Harvard psychiatrist John Mack (Abduction), who emphasizes that close encounters often involve personal transformation and growth; folklorist Thomas Bullard; and Sacramento psychologist Richard Boylan, who divulges his own recent encounter with three "interdimensional" beings in the New Mexico desert. Bryan's thought-provoking report takes us to the frontiers of current UFO research and controversy. 50,000 first printing; BOMC and QPB selections.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Penguin Books
• Publication date: 1996
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0140195270
• ISBN 13: 9780140195279
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 496