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Man in black (wiki) |
I found the book interesting not for the speculation on what the saucers might actually be, or why they are visiting at all. A lot of the ideas are old hat and not even relevant such as the saucers are from a secret American or Red moon base. (One theory I do not recall hearing was they were here to warn mankind that Antartica was becoming too heavy with ice and snow accumulation and the Earth was in danger of suddenly and violently flipping from the weight.) The intersection of the materialistic view of flying saucers as physical craft versus some manner of paranormal entity was noteworthy from a piece authored in the 1950s. However, what I found truly interesting was reading the book as a window into the culture of the 1950s.
One of the puzzling questions Barker raises is who are the men in black. Are they U.S. government agents, foreign agents, representatives of some non-governmental body, Martians or something paranormal. One recurring theme in the book is after the men in black visit, they tell the various investigators to keep and not divulge what they know on their honor as an American citizen. This is intertwined with the idea that if they are indeed government agents, the U.S. government probably has a good reason to want to keep things quiet so one really ought to comply. To the modern ear, this all comes across as quite quaint.
Further of interest to me is compared to today when people can video conference with each other separated by thousands of miles on their smartphone, all the communicating done between the various saucer investigators was mostly done via the mail. For matters that needed a quicker response, telegrams were exchanged and only in dire circumstances were long distance telephone calls used. Barker and some of the key investigators communicated via exchanged dictated audiotapes that they mailed to each other. I am not sure if this was a more common place than I was aware, but it was indeed cutting edge for the time.
The language of the time colors the entire work with Barker asking if a person was 'on the level' and therefore trustworthy. Women are generally referred to more formally, while men are referred to in a causal manner. Interesting literary ticks of the time.
I highly suspect Barker to some extent was having a go at the reader at least in part. To what degree, I cannot even hazard a guess. I also suspect some of his co-investigators might have been doing the same to Barker and their readership. Yet, I found it entertaining. Not exactly for the reason Barker intended, but entertaining nevertheless.
When you're a carpenter making a beautiful chest of drawers, you're not going to use a piece of plywood on the back, even though it faces the wall and nobody will ever see it. You'll know it's there, so you're going to use a beautiful piece of wood on the back.
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