Thinking about unidentified flying objects can be a useful exercise, whatever we believe about extraterrestrial life and its presence among us. If nothing else, it forces us to deal seriously with those perennial questions that are as useful to scientists and philosophers as they are to lawyers and politicians on congressional investigating committees: What do we know? How do we know it?

David M. Jacobs, an historian at Temple University, has been thinking about UFOs since his graduate school days, and what he has published about the subject over the years is among the most respected work on it. Mr. Jacobs believes UFOs are real—that is, that they are the interstellar transportation vehicles of an intelligent species of beings from another planet—and that a good deal of what is reported about them and their occupants is also real.

His chief concern is with the phenomenon of “abductions”—that is, the claims by a wide variety of people that they have been kidnapped by UFOs and subjected to various sorts of examination and manipulation by the aliens. Though Mr. Jacobs believes the abduction phenomenon is as real as UFOs themselves, he does not, like many people, view interstellar travelers optimistically. In fact, he believes they represent an imminent catastrophe for the human race.

The bulk of Mr. Jacobs’ book is devoted to analyzing the nature of the aliens and their purposes, as inferred from accounts of abductions by the abductees under a form of hypnosis. His treatment of the obvious evidentiary problems — the possibility of fantasies and false memories—is sober, and the sheer volume of the reports he has collected and the clear patterns that he claims to discern from the stories have convinced him that the abductions are really taking place.

Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately), that is not enough. Jacobs’ statements to the contrary, there seems to be virtually no reliable physical evidence or documentation of either UFOs or abductions. Although some abductees, he reports, have been “taken” as many as eight times a year, there apparently have been no serious or concerted efforts to observe or record the abductions. If these really occur—and occur so frequently to the same people—why can’t a team of researchers arrange to witness or film the experience (let alone try to stop it), and why can’t neighbors or others in the vicinity confirm the abductees’ unexplained absences? Mr. Jacobs says the latter has happened, but the one instance of it he offers is not convincing.

One standard objection to the reality of UFOs is that interstellar distances and the time required to travel to Earth from another solar system are prohibitive, but that argument does not take into account an alien physiological and psychological nature that is presumably radically different from that of humans. If, perhaps, the aliens have life spans of several hundred years, they might not mind spending a few decades zipping across the stars. But the aliens in Mr. Jacobs’ book are, psychologically speaking, remarkably human: they exhibit anger, annoyance, humor, boredom, and even something like love. Their emotional resemblance to humans only makes their objective existence more problematic. But most of all, in Mr. Jacobs’ account, they show deceitfulness.

The aliens’ mission, he has concluded, is entirely self-serving, despite their pretenses to the contrary. The purpose of the abductions is to impregnate human females with alien hybrid embryos, which are then raised to adulthood and infiltrated among the terrestrial population. (The way this program supposedly works, however, also raises doubts about the veracity of the abduction reports. Given the advanced technologies at the aliens’ fingertips—assuming they have fingertips—it is rather remarkable that they can’t just synthesize humanoid creatures from scratch instead of having to rely on old-fashioned sex with human females to breed hybrids.) In any case, the alien program—”the threat” of Mr. Jacobs’ title—is ominous. The aliens are very concerned about the welfare and future of the planet, but Mr. Jacobs notes that it is strange they never express any concern for the welfare and future of mankind.

According to the author, the aliens see no future for mankind. What they want is the planet itself and perhaps those few humans lucky enough to have been used as breeders. The breeding program, he claims, has been going on for some decades and is now reaching its culmination. “The Change,” as he and his abductees call it, is coming very soon. Some say as soon as 1999, though Mr. Jacobs thinks it could be any time within the next five years to the next two generations. “The insect-like aliens will be in complete control. There will be no necessity to continue national governments. There will be ‘one system’ and ‘one goal.'” Of course, even without the aliens, insect-like or otherwise, that seems to be happening.

Mr. Jacobs’ pessimism is actually refreshing. For years, space aliens in fictional and even supposedly factual accounts have been used to push pet political agendas or debunk social and political institutions, the assumption being always that the aliens are not only smarter but far, far wiser and more benevolent than we are. Mr. Jacobs doesn’t doubt their smarts, but he is right—if we grant the factuality of the abductees’ accounts—to question their intentions toward mankind. A species that goes around kidnapping, raping and impregnating, and psychologically harming human beings against their will is not friendly. Oddly, Mr. Jacobs seems to be one of the few researchers who accepts the reality of abductions to have reached this conclusion, though it is a fairly obvious one.

Despite flaws in the logic that underlies his conviction, Mr. Jacobs is clearly a sober man and a serious student. But a phenomenon as bizarre and as threatening as he describes requires a good deal more material substantiation than what he offers; abduction, if it is real and as threatening as he claims, deserves more efforts at substantiation than either he or anyone else seems interested in providing.

 

[The Threat: The Secret Alien Agenda, by David M. Jacobs (New York: Simon and Schuster) 288 pp., $23.00]