I’m very pleased to announce that Daily Grail Publishing has released a reprint of Jacques Vallee’s UFO classic Messengers of Deception: UFO Contacts and Cults, which you can pick up from Amazon US and Amazon UK. The new edition has had a re-edit by Dr Vallee, as well as being typeset anew. Most readers will know of Jacques Vallee’s high standing in the field of ufology, and Messengers of Deception is one of his most acclaimed titles. The prescience of Vallee’s research is obvious, when one considers two of the groups which he identified as being of note in this seminal 1979 book – the Raelians and the Heaven’s Gate cult – have since gone on to enter the public consciousness, for exactly the reasons Vallee predicted. In the latter case, the section of the book “It only costs your life” was later proven to be, rather sadly, right on the mark.
Too many cases of “accidental” alien contact…UFO cults praying to the skies…secret “psychotronic” weapons for bending the human mind. The evidence Jacques Vallee reveals, after many years of scientific investigation, adds up to something more menacing than monsters from outer space. Messengers of Deception documents the growing effect of UFO contact claims on our lives and of the belief systems prevalent in our society. It explores the hidden realities of the cults, the contactees, the murky political intrigues and the motivations of the investigators.
“As suspenseful as a Hitchcock Thriller, brilliantly argued…a smashing achievement.” – Robert Anton Wilson
I’m hoping to get Jacques to have a talk with TDG about this book, and some of his other work, in the coming weeks, so stand-by for that too. I’m really proud to have helped in making this book available again – not least because of the important warning it provides to ‘alternative thinkers’. In the newly written Foreword to this latest edition, Jacques offers his thoughts on the UFO phenomenon, based on more than 40 years of scientific research:
I believe that UFOs are physically real. They represent a fantastic technology controlled by an unknown form of consciousness. But I also believe that it would be dangerous to jump to premature conclusions about their origin and nature, because the phenomenon serves as the vehicle for images that can be manipulated to promote belief systems tending to the long-term transformation of human society.
I’ve always held Jacques Vallee in the highest esteem. And that was before I saw his CV…
Dr. Vallée was born in Pontoise, France. He received his Bachelor of Science degree in mathematics from the Sorbonne, followed by his Master of Science in astrophysics from the University of Lille. He began his professional life as an astronomer at the Paris Observatory in 1961. He was awarded the Jules Verne Prize for his first science-fiction novel in French.
He came to the United States in 1962 and began working in astronomy at the University of Texas at Austin, at whose MacDonald Observatory he worked on NASA’s first project making a detailed informational map of Mars.
In 1967, Vallée received a Ph.D. in computer science from Northwestern University. While at the Institute for the Future from 1972 to 1976 he was a principal investigator on the large NSF project for computer networking, which developed the first conferencing system, Planning Network (PLANET), on the ARPANET many years before the Internet was formed.
Along with his mentor, astronomer J. Allen Hynek, Dr. Vallée carefully studied the problem of UFOs for many years and served as the real-life model for the character portrayed by François Truffaut in Steven Spielberg’s film ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind’.
This release is the first in a number of new publications I’ll be releasing over the next month, including Darklore #2. All book sales obviously help to keep TDG running, so if any take your fancy, it’s a good way to get something for yourself and contribute to the Grail at the same time. And, of course, I appreciate your help in spreading the word to others about these quality publications!
