Vallee's Books: a Qu.

[Bobb999]

Jacques Vallee's my fave UFOlogist. It was searching for interviews with him today that happily introduced me to "the paracast".

I have a question re. his books. I've read 4.5 of them: I own The alien contact trilogy comprised of "Dimensions', "Confrontations", and "Revelations", and the novel "Fastwalker", plus I'm part way through a library copy of "Passport to Magonia".

I notice some of Vallee's out of print books are selling at fairly steep prices on the 2nd hand mail order market.
It looks like "...Magonia", "The Invisible College", and "Messengers of Deception" command the most, with $50 or $60 being at the low end, up to $100s per book. Not cheap.

But I discovered that "...Magonia", aside from its massive appendix, a catalog of 900+ UFO cases, 1868 - 1968, Vallee's "Magonia" arguments, data, and chapter sections are pretty much all faithfully reproduced in "Dimensions", the 1st book of the Trilogy. Chapter sections are reproduced verbatim in many cases, plus much new material is added, reflecting 18 additional years of study. So, I don't feel the need to own a copy of Magonia at steep prices, as "Dimensions" seems to cover the same ground, and then some.

I wonder, is it possible Vallee has also reproduced "The Invisible College", and/or "Messengers of Deception" in large part, in the Trilogy too? If so, I won't feel the need to track down exorbitantly priced used copies! Otherwise, I'd want to have them.

Some of his early books, "A Challenge to Science", "Anatomy of a Phenomenon", and also "the Edge of Reality" (with Hynek), aren't expensive 2nd hand, and neither is "UFO Chronicles of the Soviet Union". I don't own any of these, but again, I wonder, am I missing much info. without them?
Or, does the Trilogy pretty much fill the gap by reproducing much of the material of the earlier books?

So, I just wondered if any folks here more familiar with
Vallee's works, might be able to offer some advice about which Vallee books are best owned, and which might not need to be so much , 'cause their info's available in later books.
Thanks,
-Bob

[dorkbot]

Here is my abbreviated take on Vallee's books:

There is the pre-Passport to Magonia period and the post-Passport period. Pre-Passport books are excellent nuts and bolts type books. Passport to Magonia is sort of the first formally published sign that his thinking is starting to go in a different direction.

His next book, The Invisible College, is a fairly short book and I would say this is where he kind of formally lays out his new line of thought that UFOs represent a control system. Most of the material in The Invisible College is included and expanded upon in Dimensions so I would give it a pass unless you intend to collect his works. I would say the same goes for Messengers of Deception as much of the material in it is also re-presented and expanded upon in his Dimensions/Confrontations/Revelations trilogy.

With The Invisible College and Messengers of Deception I kinda got the impression that he was feeling like he had a bunch of new ideas to get out there and the books weren't as refined and detailed as he would have liked so he basically stops, doesn't publish for a decade and puts all of his energy into properly presenting his worldview in the trilogy.

I would say the first step in approaching Vallee is reading his trilogy. If you want to take it deeper then start from the very beginning and read his nuts and bolts books so you can get a fuller appreciation for where he was coming from and how his thinking shifted over time. Finish up with reading Forbidden Science which gives you something of a more private view of the events occurring throughout his career.

[Bobb999]

Excellent. Thanks dorkbot for your input.

I wonder how many of those people willing to pay big bucks for Vallee's out-of-print "...Magonia", "The Invisible College", and "Messengers..." , realize
that he's since reprised most of the arguments and info. of those books in his later trilogy?
If only this fact was more widely known, I imagine the steep 2nd hand prices might come down some, as it would be more the collectors after collectibles willing to pay up, and not so much those readers more info-oriented, once they knew the info. was available elsewhere, in the in-print trilogy.

Since I have the trilogy, which I plan on re-reading, as it's been maybe 8 to 10 years since I last read them, I won't so much feel the need to track down those particular earlier books commanding the big bucks! So, thanks for sharing your knowledge about the books.

By luck, I just stumbled upon and snapped up a copy of "Messengers..." at a local bookstore for a mere $6, an '80 Bantam mass market paperback ed.,which may be 1/10 the price of copies currently offered in the online market!

"Forbidden Science" I'm looking forward to receiving by mail order, having found it online at a reasonable 2nd hand price. I also ended up ordering
his early books, the "nuts and bolts" ones you mention, 'cause they're quite inexpensive online. Same with the one about Soviet/Russian UFO cases.

I'm so glad to see Vallee emerging back into the public eye again, and doing
some interviews such as at theparacast, as there have been long periods of years when he pretty much made himself unavailable. Coast to Coast radio's had him on twice as a guest since last fall. Host George Noory told Jacques he'd been pursuing him, unsuccessfully, for 15 years!
-Bob

[dorkbot]

Originally Posted by Bobb999

I wonder how many of those people willing to pay big bucks for Vallee's out-of-print "...Magonia", "The Invisible College", and "Messengers..." , realize that he's since reprised most of the arguments and info. of those books in his later trilogy?

If only this fact was more widely known, I imagine the steep 2nd hand prices might come down some, as it would be more the collectors after collectibles willing to pay up, and not so much those readers more info-oriented, once they knew the info. was available elsewhere, in the in-print trilogy.

I would say the steep prices are already focused on the collectors, of which I am one, and they aren't likely to decline appreciably in the future. I have near fine/fine hardcover firsts of all of his books except for Messengers of Deception. I started buying his firsts a few years ago when I noticed ALL of his books had gone out of print. Republishing his trilogy just pushed the value of the originals up higher as is pretty typical w/ any author. Judging by current prices, the street value of Vallee firsts has almost doubled since I started picking them up. I strongly suspect they will appreciate again considerably upon his death.

Love him or hate him, the used book market seems to think Vallee is in the top tier of serious thinkers on the subjects and I think the prices on his first editions are reflecting this. I'd say that right now UFO books are in a position that sci-fi books were in a while ago in that they are considered disposable, woo-woo fringe stuff but I'd say there is a fair chance that, for some titles, this will change markedly in the coming decades. After all, at one time this was disposable trash from a crackpot.

[Bobb999]

That's interesting.I wonder how much price appreciation in Vallee books occurred before he started doing new interviews last year, and how much occurred after-?

Although I was already an admirer, I admit it was hearing Jacques on the radio last fall that rekindled interest. Coast to Coast, with a something like 20 mill. listeners, surely must have brought lots of others to his books too. And I've never heard Noory heap more praise on a guest than he did with Dr. Vallee!

Maybe you're right that prices on collectible Vallee books will continue up,
although, if collectible books in general have been caught up in the general asset inflation we've seen in recent years, along with just about every other
"tangible", from real estate to metals to collectible art, oil, gold, food commodities,stocks, you name it -
they may be due for a correction downward, at least for a while, as is already occurring with houses - especially if we see the extended recession some expect, and people will have less $ to spend on first edition books.
That $7,500 Philip K. Dick book, at least, may have room to fall!
Longer term, I think we're in a long term bull market for tangibles, probably including books, which means any correction in prices is likely to be but temporary.

I can appreciate a nice hard cover first edition of a book, but
I'm not collector enough to pursue those.
When I was deciding on which editions I should buy of "Challenge to Science" and "Anatomy of a Phenomenon" yesterday, I only considered inexpensive paperbacks, and I preferred the later editions to early ones, if the later ones were revised with new forwards the earlier ones lacked.

btw, I came across this intriguing aspect to Vallee's "Fastwalker" novel:
The idea that much (or some) of the book's depiction of a long time secret organization within the US gov't that specializes in the UFO field, the novel calls "Alintel" - may possibly be based on real facts about US gov't black ops. programs!

There are some interesting detailed comments by Dr. Jack Sarfatti about Fastwalker.
http://www.zpenergy.com/downloads/ValleeFastwalker.pdf
Sarfatti, a physicist, knew Vallee and many of his circle in the San Francisco area over the years. Sarfatti says Fastwalker "is an essentially factual report thinly disguised as sci-fi"...[and]..."Vallee's book is not really sci-fi. It is what Tim Leary called 'science fact-ion', allegedly thinly disguised top secret black ops."

-Reading Fastwalker with the above in mind certainly adds something to the reading experience!
I'd love to hear an interviewer probe Jacques on these points, and try to find out how much of that novel is fiction and how much is fact, or suspected by him to be fact!
-Bob

[dorkbot]

No doubt that if collectible books tank in general, ufo books will as well. I'm just saying that at some point in the future it is inevitable that the genre will stop being regarded as a cousin of comic books and there will be recognition that they are historical documents about mankind's first faint contact or something along those lines. It might not happen for a long time but it is definitely an interesting genre to specialize in as there are many thousands of titles, often from small presses in limited runs, dealing with extremely obscure esoterica. It's sort of like collecting individual pieces of a jigsaw puzzle without any clear idea of what the completed puzzle looks like. I also kind of view it as a branch of occult literature that places like Weiser deal in but it's a lot more affordable than collecting antique grimoires. Or I could be completely wrong and just wasting money.

I don't have a source handy but I do recall a quote from Vallee stating something similar in that he was presenting stuff in his fiction that he couldn't document and publicly stand behind.

[Bobb999]

dorkbot:
I agree with you the general environment is increasingly friendly toward the UFO field, which will no doubt make UFO related books more and more collectible, especially those by top authors like Vallee. I think your theory's sound.

Having mass audience shows like Coast to Coast and Larry King repeatedly cover the topic in a serious, non-ridiculing fashion, can't help but affect public perceptions positively. I believe opinion polls show that only a minority of people now believe the phenomenon is nonsense, and a large majority believe the US gov't knows more than it's admitting about UFOs.

I dislike the term "new age", but in my lifetime, a lot of what were once ideas from the fringe: alternative religious ideas, occultism, parapsychology, etc.
are a lot more mainstream today.
One specific example is spirit mediums and their beliefs which never used to get anything close to the degree of mainstream coverage they've been receiving in recent years.
I'm sure the UFO field benefits from this broad trend too.

If there is any drop in book prices, it will be probably be recession-related, and temporary. You could be right that UFO books will follow a pattern similar to what's occurred to other branches of the occult, where collectible books' prices have risen a lot over the years.

Your mention of Weiser brings back a few bad memories of when I ran a mail order occult book business for a few years, 30 years ago, and Weiser was a publisher/supplier. They had some excellent titles, but their accounting was terrible, and their records re. my account became a shambles. I had months of frustrating wrangling over money they claimed I owed but which I'd paid in full! Finally, a new Weiser accountant restored some accuracy.

The most collectible books I own are all in the occult genre. I have 19th century editions of: A.E. Waite and Hargrave Jennings on Rosicrucians, a Waite digest of Eliphas Levi's writings, Cornelius Agrippa's Occult Philosophy;
plus early 20th century eds. of The Comte de Gabilis, Mather's The Kabbalah Unveiled, some old occult novels, etc.

A Weiser book from the '70s I own , The Secret Rituals of the OTO, went way up in price 'cause the current OTO won a court case banning publication of their rituals. I saw a $500 price on it in a local Vancouver, BC bookstore once 10 or 12 years ago. I also have all the Golden Dawn books , Crowley reprints , and old Grimoires reprints such as S.L.M. Mathers' translations that were available new in the late '70s-early '80s, plus some limited edition reprints of occultist/artist A.O. Spare, a nice '70s facsimile ed.of a book of Dr. John Dee's experiences with spirits/Enochian language originally written by Casaubon in the 17th cent., etc.I haven't actually bothered to check what prices some of these books might go for today.

I imagine Vallee's one of the more valued UFOlogists among those interested in occultism, as one of Vallee's big contributions, as you know, is to draw parallels between modern UFO/UFOnaut encounters and his dimensional hypothesis, and past claims about encounters with supernatural beings, elementals, fairies, angels, non-physical dimensions (e.g. "astral plane"), etc. that occult lit. has frequently referred to.

Coincidentally, speaking of "Fastwalker", Coast to Coast had as a first time guest last night, Tracy Torme, the TV and movie screenwriter who co-authored Vallee's novel, and who's had along standing interest in UFOs! Although they touched on Vallee briefly (he and Jacques remain friends), and did mention the book, too bad they didn't ask him the questions I would have liked to ask!

Like you, I recall Vallee saying he liked the novel form, 'cause he felt freer to express opinions and material he didn't feel so free to write about as non-fiction!

The notion that Vallee was privy to some inside knowledge about secret gov't programs doesn't seem far fetched at all. He has revealed he was involved early on with the CIA sponsored "remote viewing" program which ran 20 years, along with people like Russell Targ, Hal Puthoff and Ingo Swan.
And a UFO research organization NIDS, privately financed by a real estate tycoon named Bigelow, had Vallee on its scientific advisory panel. And "NIDS was staffed by former CIA, Army Special Forces, and FBI", says Sarfatti.

And I think of what Jacques said his reaction was when he happened upon the "Pentacle Letter", a gov't memo on UFOs stamped "secret", that by an error ended up in the Bluebook files that Dr. Hynek had apparently overlooked.
He realized that he wasn't entitled to have seen it and agonized about whether to even bring it to the attention of his then colleague Hynek, which he ended up doing,'cause he thought it was so important.
But Vallee "as a loyal citizen", didn't feel free to make his knowledge of the letter or its contents public until it became declassified years later.

That incident revealed he won't betray gov't secrets he's not entitled to make public. So, it's plausible that he may have been privy to some details of secret gov't operations that he wouldn't feel free to reveal as being facts - but might be willing to put out there disguised as fiction!

I'm not saying I believe the whole Fastwalker plot is factual, and I'm pretty doubtful about the captured fastwalker craft that leads to the novel's climax, being factual. But some of the workings of the novel's secret gov't organization, "Alintel", may be based on facts Vallee's learned.
According to a Vallee interview
http://www.21stcenturyradio.com/ForbiddenScience.htm
when Vallee was with Bluebook, a growing suspicion of his, Hynek's, Maj. Kehoe and others was the gov't was trying to use Bluebook as a coverup, a public relations exercise, while a suspected secret gov't arm, which Kehoe caled a "Silent Group", was the one seriously studying UFO phenomena, and keeping a lot of data away from the public eye and from Bluebook even, though Bluebook supposedly was responsible for investigating UFO cases!
It's apparent Vallee believes an Alintel-like group has existed secretly within the US gov't, and has a huge collection of secret UFO files warehoused in some building in the DC area. But just how much of this group's workings are revealed in Fastwalker remains unclear!
-Bob

[Bobb999]

Demand for Vallee's out-of-print classics in the 2nd hand market has driven prices on some books like Passport to Magonia sky high.
But I notice there is not a similar demand for library copies.
I live in centrally in a fairly large city, 600K+ in City proper, 2.2 million in metro area.The library system has but one copy of Vallee's Passport to Magonia, yet there's no demand to borrow it, despite all those potential readers! Unless it's hot in the burbs' library systems, which I doubt, if they even have the book at all.

I just renewed the book for a 2nd time, for the max. allowed 3 borrowing periods, meaning it's had no reservation requests in the weeks I've had it out. And it was on the shelf with no reservation requests on it when I first borrowed it last month! Nobody around here but me wants to read it at the moment!

Big demand to own it (or at least big prices are demanded) apparently, but low demand to borrow and read it! A contradiction/enigma? Price fixing?

[Rocketsauce]

I just got "Revelations" via amazon and am halfway through. It's my first Vallee book and I'm very impressed, great read.

Should I buy the other 2 books in the trilogy if I dig this book?

Here's what I've got out of it so far. He's looking at the broad trends of credible people having strange experiences which seem to be orchestrated for a particular reaction. I think he's really smart in both identifying some of the more staged UFO events and then looking at the socialogical consequences of these events and viewing those consequences as the intended result by some organized group of some kind.

I think this is a good approach because when looking deeply into much of this UFO stuff, it seems to dissolve in your hand so I think it's somewhat logical to assume that it's not necessarily about the actual event in many cases, it's about how people react to the event which might be the main intention.

My only knock is that he brings his own logic sometimes to why an actual ET would do something, which can be hard to do since who knows if we can even mildly comprehend what would go on inside the head of a being that is not us. But to create theories/scenarios other than 'I just don't know', I think it's okay to speculate based on your own logic.

[Bobb999]

Of the 3 "Trilogy" books, Vallee's said he thinks the 2nd, "Confrontations" is the most important. Personally I found it and the 1st one, "Dimensions" the most riveting to read. "Revelations" wasn't my fave. I notice in "Revelations" he covers some of the themes of his earlier, '79 book, "Messengers of Deception", along with some new material.

His theories about manipulators - either after the fact ones (i.e. unconnected to the original UFO events themselves), or else manipulators as actual producers of UFO events - who intentionally use UFO phenomena to provoke reactions in the public, to create and direct new movements and cults, and to push society in new directions they desire, is certainly original and interesting. I haven't yet decided how much I think there might be to these theories, but I suspect he may be overstating the sociological threat aspect.

My impression is Vallee's actually less dogmatic than many with regard to his theories and speculations about what UFOnauts and UFOs may or may not be and what the intent behind the phenomena could be.
I don't think he's a convinced believer yet in any particular theories, though he seems to have his favourites: he prefers the interdimensional hypothesis to the ET one, for instance.

But I gather his bottom line remains: The subject has not yet received the serious scientific study it needs and deserves, and that we just don't have enough hard facts sufficient to solve the mystery of UFOs. We don't know enough yet to understand it!