Also: Michio Kaku, Stanton Friedman and Nick Pope. (via TDG)

Dear Henry,

Thank you very much for sending me your book. I have started to
read it and will continue next week when I fly out to Europe. Naturally I was thrilled
to see the matrix of anomalies on the cover of a novel!

I wish you the very best in the success of the book, and in your writing
career in the future.

Warm regards,
jacques

Jacques Vallee
www.jacquesvallee.com

Jacques Vallee.  A writer whose work I’ve idolized (wrote about him two posts back).  Say what you will about the stupidity or reality of the UFO phenomenon, his writing is about being open to new ideas more than being a fundamentalist about any one position.  That’s a good stance for anyone to have, about anything.

Recently I also sent my book to the Flaming Lips PO Box, having no idea what would happen with the book or how many things they receive in a given day.  I got an email last week from the FL’s manager saying he really liked the book, and could you send a couple more for other members of the band, and what free stuff do you want in return?  A holy shit moment.  The Flaming Lips have been hugely influential to me, not just musically, but because they work with pop while still willing to go into outer space – pretty much the same thing I wanted to do with The American Book of the Dead.

I put this novel out myself.  Story is I had an agent and I didn’t bother submitting the book because I thought they’d be puzzled.  The book is not necessarily science fictional enough for science fiction fanatics, and I’ve never written anything approaching sci-fi before.  And it’s not literary enough for literary fictionistas, as is the case with my first two novels, and exactly what I intended.  I also believe deeply in self-publishing and wanted to see what I could do with it.  So…one of my major arguments for putting out a book yourself is that things can happen if you release the book.  Don’t know if anything’s going to come of Jacques Vallee or members of the Flaming Lips reading my book – like mentioning it in public, or even if they’ll like it – but holy shit, they’re reading my book.  To me that’s a kind of currency like book sales. This wouldn’t happen if the book wasn’t out in the world. So go for it if you’ve got a book you like and are disappointed that it’s standing still.

It seems that what was “forbidden science” in academia is also forbidden in cyberspace. The specific hypothesis offered–that crop circles are the result of a U.K. defense electronics development project–only elicited 19 responses discussing the facts or arguing for or against the idea itself. Among the other 40 responses while the thread was open, 15 asserted their authors’ strongly-held pre-existing belief (the circles MUST be made by Aliens or by hoaxers), 14 simply expressed a flat rejection with no arguments, and fully 11 responses can only be described as cyber-bullying: personal insults, whose authors did not even bother to refer to the subject of the post. What does that say for the ability of new web-based media to support intelligent debate on controversial scientific issues, censored or strongly discouraged in the scientific environment?

This outlook is why I so love Vallee’s writing – especially his journals, Forbidden Science.  Snideness online is nothing new, and is in fact metastasizing. Commenting online seems to be the extension of a general malaise.  This call-out of commenters means more than unverifiable theories about the reality of crop circles.  Dismissive commenting is most definitely provable, and worth studying in itself.

His second post comes via the Daily Grail, where I left this comment:

There’s a missing element here. The two camps are not human vs. other. The “other” could potentially be working within human hoaxsters. If a truly advanced consciousness is at work, it could be inspiring these human-made works of art. That may be a convenient way to mystify hoaxing, but it can’t be totally discarded.

What’s so annoying about the cynicism on BoingBoing is the prevalent attitude of: they’re hoaxes, nothing to see here. Even if they’re all conclusively proven as human-made, crop circles are amazing and beautiful. That should be enough to give them a second look.