num_pages: 228
description: More than half a century since Roswell UFOs have been making headlines once again. On December 17 2017 the New York Times ran a front-page story about an approximately five-year Pentagon program called the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program. The article hinted and its sources clearly said in subsequent television interviews that some of the ships in question couldnt be linked to any country. The implication of course was that they might be linked to other solar systems.The UFO communitythose who had been thinking about seeing and analyzing supposed flying saucers (or triangles or chevrons) for yearswas surprisingly skeptical of the revelation. Their incredulity and doubt rippled across the internet. Many of the people most invested in UFO reality werent really buying it. And as author Sarah Scoles did her own digging she ventured to dark conspiracy-filled corners of the internet to a former paranormal research center in Utah and to the hallways of the Pentagon.In They Are Already Here we meet the bigwigs the scrappy upstarts the field investigators the rational people and the unhinged kooks of this sprawling community. How do they interact with each other? How do they interact with anomalous phenomena? And how do they (as any group must) reflect the politics and culture of the larger world around them?We will travel along the Extraterrestrial Highway (next to Area 51) and visit the UFO Watchtower where seeking lights in the sky is more of a spiritual quest than a gotcha one. We meet someone who for a while believes they may have communicated with aliens. Where do these alleged encounters stem from? What are the emotional effects on the experiencers?By turns funny and compassionate colorful and thought-provoking-- and told in a way that doesnt require one to believe--Scoles brings humanity to an often derided and misunderstood community. After all the truth is out there...
language: English
title: They Are Already Here: UFO Culture and Why We See Saucers
publisher: Pegasus Books