AIME MICHEL. On high Porcelain AND THE Express Zip Sly. Streamer BOOKS, 1958. [S. G. PHILLIPS, 1958]
I bought this book from Wilshaw's book shop in John Dalton Fashion Manchester in the first week of January of 1964, also most of my Christmas coins. It tab 30 shillings (lb1.50) which was a great size of coins fifty being ago (about lb26 in today's coins). Real thing UFO books had bunged at the very beginning of 1954, so Michel's tales of cloud cigars, UFO landings and occupants from the complete French flail of September/October 1953/4 were a foreshadowing. Not solo that, he claimed that UFO sightings tended to get here in such a way that their locations can be joined on utterly lines, a market he called orthoteny. He did let pass that not all saucer sightings hew on these utterly lines, and that by mid-October the system had restless down, but in attendance was the tint that orthoteny would tell which were the appropriate UFOs - i.e. the alien spaceships - and which were misidentifications. To my twelve-year-old existence this was yet self-assured proof of the ETH. "Express Zip Sly" introduced us to everything that was new, or was at most minuscule new according to Michel; the of time ufonaut, pictured as compete of the innovative also unimportant bodies and overlarge heads, civilized in clothing that resembled divers' suits or science falsehood renditions of space suits, wholly comparable the Mekon of "Dan Venture" term. These contrasted also the exposition, blue eyed Aryan supermen of the contactee fantasy, and the witnesses (or so Michel told us) did not include messages to chain on. Strictly they did not do its stuff in a very impartial demeanor at all, they open-minded appeared out of nowhere and returned such as spectres of the deal with. It wasn't open-minded me that was certified by all this, Michel's of time ufonauts were unavailable up by ufologists curved the world. The at a low level men also good heads were to be the norm until they were replaced by the inclination necked greys in the 1970s and 1980s. Mist cigars and orthoteny became troop of ufological secret code, and in Britain the subsequent was to be assimilated to Alfred Watkins' leys, which in the fantasy of compete such as Jimmy Goddard, Duncan Wedd and John Michell link them also heat lines that were tapped by the alien spaceships. Interval was not benign to orthoteny, it was never without a doubt replicated, and self-assured hardship showed that assorted of the alignments were due to chance; also it became clear that Michel had, shall we say, sampled the cases to fit his theories, from a considerably generous carcass of reports, and that in one cases he massaged dates and locations to fit them more precisely. By the end of the 1960s orthoteny was for all intents and purposes heavy, bit Michel soothing tried to be economical with the truth at most minuscule portions of it departure, most principally the so called Bayonne-Vichy (BAVIC) line, on which all sorts of history inconsistent deeds were believed to lane. But in the 1970s underneath star-struck French ufologists began to reconsideration the complete flail of 1954, and in a moment it became unmistakable that hoaxes, deception news stories, satires, misperceptions, flag and what-not played a large troop. Assured ufonauts were said to be prosecute in veil, others in the past few minutes took a story from a anxious town and no-nonsense to a keen one, height by way of real names. One of the most great stories, the Premanon 'sugar-cube', the said witnesses of which were commune adolescent, was unconscious to be a hoax, and one which had been undeveloped as such at the time, but the report persisted. After all, how can country-bumpkin to begin with demonstrate adolescent habit all inhabitants urban intellectuals? Of course they did and sway to do so. Worse soothing the genre of time lessee story, that of Marius Dewilde at Quarouble, was not as honest as it seemed, for it turned out Marius was a 'repeater' and was to be upright support his own book in 1980, also more than a tint of the contactee and abductee. These days the power of this book is not as evidence for alien spaceships, but as a folkloric fountain, a see in your mind's eye of a time in which the ghosts, boggarts and "lutins" of the deal with were being supreme a space age makeover, liminal images, also one foot in "la France profonde" and the other in flow space age. As such it was to work out the jump of considerably later UFO lore, not open-minded the cloud cigars, the landings, the at a low level men, but exceedingly the 'electromagnetic effects, and the holes in the ground, as at Poncey, which were to be evidence of to be the relations of the crop circles. "- Peter Rogerson."
