Revelations: Alien Contact and Human Deception

Astrophysicist Vallee's venture into parapsychology is less likely to lure or convert skeptics than did the two previous volumes ( Dimension and Confrontations ) in his trilogy. Many readers will find a strain of paranoia in the author's argument that a lot of so-called sightings of unidentified flying objects in the past 40 years are the result of ``complex hoaxes . . . carefully engineered for our benefit,'' with witnesses the victims. These incidents, Vallee believes, have been arranged by private groups with fantastic delusions which they want to spread, or by government agencies engaged in psychological warfare. He cites instances of willing dupes taken in by bizarre tales--one contended that aliens now working here had been captured by the U.S. military; another that a subterranean community of humanoids toiled beneath the New Mexico desert. Illustrations not seen by PW. (Oct.)