Venus Rising: A Concise History of the Second Planet

London Book Festival Honorable Mention
Southern California Book Festival Honorable Mention

Dr. Keller's book explores many facets of conditions and life on Venus in many dimensions from a perspective of conspiracies, history, theosophy, ufology and current events, especially space research. Dr. Keller has lived and worked in 43 different countries and has been writing about UFOs and paranormal activity since 1967. He was the founder and director of the Outer Space International Research and Investigations Society (OSIRIS) of Hilmar, California, as well as the publisher and co-editor of the New Millennial Star, a monthly pre-Internet tabloid newspaper.

Raymond Andrew Keller, II, was born in Cleveland, Ohio and currently serves as an AmeriCorps VISTA (Volunteer in Service to America), attached to In Touch and Concerned, a United Way agency in Monongalia County, West Virginia, where he assists persons with disabilities, seniors and veterans in securing affordable transportation options. He also teaches various social studies classes as an adjunct professor at West Virginia Northern Community College in Wheeling, West Virginia.

Keller has been involved in active UFO research since 1967, when he was a reporter for the Bedford Times Register in his hometown of Bedford, Ohio, and a research associate with Earl J. Neff, the founder and director of the Cleveland Ufology Project (CUP). Keller established his own group in 1986, the Outer Space International Research and Investigations Society (OSIRIS) and was the publisher and co-editor with Ballarion Starr of that organization's monthly organ, The New Millennial Star. Keller has conducted numerous excursions to UFO hot spots throughout the world and has communicated directly with extraterrestrials on many occasions. Venus Rising is his second book; the first being Emergence of the Afro-Zulians in the Transatlantic World, 1722-1811 (Lewiston, NY: Mellen Press, 2013).

He graduated from Bedford Senior High School in Bedford, Ohio and went on to honorably serve in both the United States Navy, where he was the feature editor of the Miramar Naval Air Station Jet Journal in San Diego, California; and in the United States Army, where he worked as a voice intercept operator in the Spanish language throughout Latin America. He received an associate degree in business from the University of Maryland and his bachelor of arts in world history from the University of Maryland, both degrees while on active duty. In 1989 he successfully completed the Multicultural Education Program at the College of Santa Fe in New Mexico, whence he went on to become the Director of English as a Second Language and Bilingual/Multicultural Education programs for secondary education at the Hilmar Unified School District in the San Joaquin Valley in California from 1990-1995.

Keller was employed by VENUSA (Venezuela-United States Academy) in Mérida, Venezuela, in 2001 and 2002 as an ESL instructor and editor of the textbook division. He also was attached to La Universidad Valle del Momboy in Valera, Venezuela, from VENUSA. He returned to the United States in 2002 to accept a scholarship in foreign languages at West Virginia University, receiving his master's degree in Spanish with an emphasis on Latin American literature in May 2004. He enrolled in the doctoral program in the Department of History in the fall of 2004, and mostly taught classes on Africana Studies, with some World History and Latin America.