They Are Already Here: UFO Culture and Why We See Saucers

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An anthropological look at the UFO community, told through first-person experiences with researchers in their element as they pursue what they see as a solvable mysteryboth terrestrial and cosmic.

More than half a century since Roswell, UFOs have been making headlines once again. On December 17, 2017, theNew York Timesran 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 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.

InThey Are Already Herewe 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

Author Bio

Sarah Scolesis a science writer whose work has appeared inThe Atlantic,Slate,Smithsonian, theWashington Post,Scientific American,Popular Science,Discover,New Scientist,Aeon, andWired. A former editor atAstronomymagazine, Scoles worked at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, the location of the first-ever SETI project. She lives in Denver, Colorado.