A voyage of exploration―to the outer reaches of our inner lives.
UFOs are a myth, says David J. Halperin, but myths are real. The power and fascination of the UFO has nothing to do with space travel or life on other planets. It’s about us, our longings and terrors, especially the greatest terror of all: the end of our existence. This is a book about UFOs that goes beyond believing in them or debunking them, to a fresh understanding of what they tell us about ourselves as individuals, as a culture, as a species.
In the 1960s Halperin was a teenage UFOlogist, convinced that flying saucers were real and that it was his life’s mission to solve their mystery. He would become a professor of religious studies—traditions of heavenly journeys being his specialty. With Intimate Alien, he looks back to explore what UFOs once meant to him as a boy growing up in a home haunted by death, and what they still mean for millions, believers and deniers alike.
From the prehistoric Balkans to the deserts of New Mexico, from the Biblical visions of Ezekiel to modern abduction encounters, Intimate Alien traces the hidden story of the UFO. It’s a human story from beginning to end, no less mysterious and fantastic for its earthliness. A collective cultural dream, UFOs transport us to the outer limits of that most alien yet intimate frontier: our own inner space.
This sparkling debut novel, set against the backdrop of the troubled 1960s, is a coming-of-age story that weaves together a compelling psychological drama and vivid outer-space fantasy.
Danny Shapiro is an isolated teenager living with a dying mother, a hostile father, and no friends. To cope with these circumstances, Danny forges a reality of his own, which includes the sinister 'Three Men in Black,' mysterious lake creatures with insect-like carapaces, a beautiful young seductress and thief, with whom Danny falls in love, and an alien-human love child who'if only Danny can keep her alive'will redeem the planet. Danny's fictional world blends so seamlessly with his day-to-day life that profound questions about what is real and what is not, what is possible and what is imagined, begin to arise. As the hero in his alien landscape, he finds the strength to deal with his own life and to stand up to demons both real and imagined. Told with heart and intellect, Journal of a UFO Investigator calls to mind the works of Michael Chabon and Jonathan Lethem.
'What's in this book? What isn't? History, mystery'even aliens, for God's sake. The most compelling and original coming-of-age story I've read in a long time.''Daniel Wallace, author of Big Fish