Micah Hanks: The UFO Singularity

This is Micah Hanks latest book:

Published by New Page Books, a Division of The Career Press, Inc., Pompton Plains, NJ -- $15.99, available at online and brick and mortar bookstores: Anomalist, Amazon, Powell’s, Barnes & Noble, et cetera.

I couldn’t wait to tell you about Mr. Hanks’ 287 page book.

It is chock full of everything I (and most of you) like about the UFO topic.

It is theorizing, supplemented by anecdotes and tales that you should know about, but don’t.

The title uses the word “singularity” which is a common epithet in quantum mechanics and theology, meaning, as Mr. Hanks uses it, this (from Wikipedia):

Proponents of the singularity typically state that an "intelligence explosion", where super-intelligences design successive generations of increasingly powerful minds, might occur very quickly and might not stop until the agent's cognitive abilities greatly surpass that of any human.

Mr. Hanks applies the definition to the UFO phenomenon and adjusts the definition (above) accordingly.

Mr. Hanks is one of the brighter lights in the UFO pantheon known as ufology.

His conjectures are respected by the old and new guard people in UFOville.

Mr. Hanks resides in a circle of youngish ufologists who keep the topic alive with new ideologies and perspectives: Greg Bishop, Nick Redfern, Paul Kimball, and the late Mac Tonnies.

His book reflects the thinking that these fellows generate; they don’t eschew speculation and Mr. Hanks writes about this particularly in Chapter Two -- Assembling an Anomaly: The Collation of Future Science and Alien Technology.

One might think Mr. Hanks is an ET advocate, but I find him to be agnostic and objective about that prominent view held by many of the old-guard ufology group.

Mr. Hanks provides almost every view extant about UFOs: what they are, where they come from (he likes the time-travel scenario), and what they portend, as the phenomenon drives us and itself toward Mr. Hanks’ singularity concept.

What I like about the book – and there are many things to like – is the extensive esoteric material about UFOs: the 1890s airship sightings, the alleged Nazi “flying saucer” creations, and witness accounts that are not prominent in the UFO literature.

I did find the elaborate presentation of a few sightings by a guy named Mike Reese (Chapter 4, Page 125 ff) wearying and banal. A sighting by Mr. Reese in 1973 is given more attention than it deserves, as I see it. But that’s just me. Mr. Hanks sees the sighting and subsequent sightings by Mr. Reese as significant, apparently. I don’t

That aside, the book is encyclopedic without being stuffily so. It contains references to physics, metaphysics, science generally, and fringe topics -- Mr. Hanks is a Fortean – and things that we discuss at our blogs, and you will find intriguing, enlightening.

The book drives towards mankind’s future, much as Lecomte du Nouy did in his 1947 tome, Human Destiny, and Teilhard de Chardin does in his writings, which I touched on recently.

But Mr. Hanks keeps the conceptualizing on a sensible understandable well-written path, as is his wont when he sallies forth with brilliant ruminations.

Now I’ve noted this book is only $15.99, a bargain for what you’ll derive from it. (It doesn’t have many pictures but the copy is descriptive in ways that make up for that shortcoming.)

And I impress upon you to buy books by people such as Hanks, Redfern, Bishop, and Kimball.

They represent the current crop of writers who deal with the fringe elements of our existence, including UFOs.

Their views are often innovative and imaginative, not stodgy or old-hat like that of the UFO geezers.

These writers revitalize UFOs with their new approaches to the mystery.

They should be supported by UFO aficionados, by you simply buying their books.

This is one I highly recommend.

RR