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I was idly leafing through an old book yclept "Flying Saucers---Here
and Now!" by Frank Edwards (Bantam Books, copyright 1967) and I came
across a rather tongue-in-cheek section on the late scamster,
"Professor" George Adamski that I thought most of you would get a bang
out of:
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"...Persons who tell such stories are known in the UFO business as
'contactees.'

The first and foremost among them was a fellow named George Adamski.
He was a man of meager scholastic attainments, but he made up for that
shortcoming by having an excellent imagination, a pleasing personality,
and an apparently endless supply of gall.

George established the ground rules for the contactees which they
have dutifully followed. He was the first--- and he showed that there
was considerable loot to be made by peddling tales of talking with
space people. George instinctively realized that everything had to be
pretty nebulous; he knew that details would be disastrous.

Prior to becoming associated with a hamburger stand on the road to
Mt. Palomar, George had worked in a hamburger stand as a grill cook.
With his scientific background he wrote, in his spare time, a document
which he called 'An Imaginary Trip to the Moon, Venus, and Mars.' He
voluntarily listed it with the Library of Congress for copyright
purposes as A WORK OF FICTION.

That was in 1949.

His effort did not attract many customers but it did attract the
attention of a lady writer who saw gold in them there space ships. She
made a deal with George to rewrite his epic; she was to furnish the
skilled writings and he was to furnish the photographs of the space
ships.

This lady brought the finished manuscript to me for appraisal and she
brought with it a clutch of the crudest UFO photographs I had seen in
years. I declined to have anything to do with the mess and she left my
office in a bit of a huff.

In its revised form it told a yarn of how George had ventured into
the desert of southern California, where he met a "scout ship" from
which stepped a gorgeous doll in golden coveralls. She spoke to him in
a bell-like voice in a language which he did not understand, so they
had to resort to telepathy, or something similar, to carry on their
conversation. And then, as she prepared to leave him, she tapped out a
message in the sand with her little boot. George realized that she
wanted him to preserve this message (it was terribly important) and,
having a pocket full of wet plaster of Paris (which he seemingly always
carried with him on desert trips), George quickly made a plaster cast
of the footprint with the message, which he eventually reproduced for
the educational advancement of his readers, who were legion.

Of the numerous photographs which embellished the book let it be said
that some of them could not have been taken as claimed. The others were
crudely 'simulated,' as the Air Force put it charitably.

But for me the payoff was the alleged photograph of Adamski's 'scout
ship' in which he allegedly took a trip to Venus and returned. The
picture as shown in his book was taken either on a day when three suns
were shining---or else it was a small object taken with three
floodlights for illumination. After eight years of patient search I
finally came to the conclusion that his space ship was in reality the
top of a canister-type vacuum cleaner, made in 1937. I doubt that many
persons are traveling through space in vacuum cleaner tops.

Adamski communicated with me frequently. When he was questioned about
the title of 'professor' which he used, he explained that it was just
an honorary title given to him by his 'students', and that he never
used it himself. George was evidently forgetful, for the letters he
sent me were always signed 'Professor George Adamski.'"

*** End of Quote ***

Well, there you have it---I hope it gives you as big a chuckle as it
did me when I read it.

T.R. Stone
University of Nebraska-Omaha
The home of Dr. Jack Kasher (the physicist who was on "Sightings"),
a damned nice man and excellent E&M instructor...

Billy,
telnet://ricksbbs.synchro.net:23
http://ricksbbs.synchro.net:8080
IRC www://irccloud.com/irc/ricksbbs/channel/ricksbbs
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