MUFON’s last conference of the millennium (as Walt Andrus introduced it) was staged in Washington in July. Appropriately it was a remarkable reflection of the AC/DC nature of modern ufology, where the subject has become so polarised that we now have two warring factions. This is not ufologists versus the sceptics, but fringe ufologists against the last bastions of rationality.
The recent furore over the 'memoirs' of an Auschwitz 'survivor' who turned out to be a Swiss citizen who had never been a concentration camp inmate, as well as the various scandals surrounding fake guests on a variety of TV chat shows and documentaries, highlights once again the difficulties in assessing the truth or otherwise of any narrative. They reinforce us in our suspicion that a very high proportion of the narratives in UFO, Fortcan and paranormal literature are fictions.
Camille Flammarion (1842-1925) is largely remembered as an important French astronomer whose textbooks were standard references for the profession. He is an important figure in the tradition of the plurality of worlds. He believed that intelligent life filled the universe like many intellectuals did, but he was an important advocate of the growing view that those other worlds would not be inhabited by beings identical to man.
