If you're jonesing for an extraterrestrial, you should check out The Close Encounters Man by Mark O'Connell. O'Connell, a writer for Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and founder of the UFO blog High Strangeness, set out to write 'a UFO book people wouldn't need to hide from other people.' He found his ideal subject in J. Allen Hynek, the astronomer hired by the United States Air Force in 1948... In telling the life story of Hynek, the 'astro-beatnik,' O'Connell winds up with a stunning panorama of the UFO movement — from fringe conspiracy theorists to amateur astronomers to agnostic scientists — as well as its colossal impact on pop culture and modern science.
A new biography reveals how Hynek’s life and legend exemplify a lost era. UFO sightings still make the news, but Hynek was something different: a public intellectual who told us to watch the skies ... In The Close Encounters Man, Mark O’Connell notes that Spielberg’s friend suggested the title to the director after reading Hynek’s book The UFO Experience ... His [Hynek's] contributions were brief, but as McConnell demonstrates, cultural history is often the result of unlikely coincidence ... Hynek is a deserving subject, but O’Connell’s book also is notable as a methodical history of the UFO phenomena in America—a story so often overshadowed by the Roswell incident ... McConnell’s a great storyteller, and that’s what needed in a history of American ufology: someone to connect the dots into a narrative.
In The Close Encounters Man: How One Man Made the World Believe in UFOs, screenwriter Mark O’Connell recounts the gradual evolution of J. Allen Hynek, an Air Force astronomer, from UFO debunker to believer ... Methodical and undogmatic, Hynek could not have been further from the kooky, paranoid stereotype of a UFO enthusiast. He seemed to be exactly the man who could be counted on to dismiss the phenomenon. Instead, he became its biggest advocate ... It’s clear that O’Connell, who maintains a UFO blog of his own, wants readers to come away from his book agreeing with Hynek.
Close Encounters Man: How One Man Made the World Believe in UFOs, a new book by Mark O'Connell, serves as a biography for both the modern UFO phenomenon and for Hynek, an astronomer and professor at Northwestern University who died over 30 years ago, but whose ideas make him one of the most surprising scientific figures of the 20th century ...reveals an academic committed to rigorous, methodical study, but whose deep intellectual curiosity also harbored a mystical side... O'Connell, a screenwriter and UFO history expert who writes the blog High Strangeness, has already had some of Hynek's legacy rub off on his own reputation, which he takes as a sign that he is following in Hynek's footsteps as an unbiased, open-minded researcher, rather than writing for one camp or another ...O'Connell wants to reposition the conversation about UFOs, as well as an agreement to adhere to the scientific method itself.
J. Allen Hynek is a name that has been both cursed and celebrated in UFO investigation circles. As an astronomer recruited by the government to debunk and explain away UFO sightings, he was the enemy to many believers ... The Close Encounters Man chronicles the life of Hynek and his incredible influence both on the UFO community and on how popular culture views unexplained phenomena, government intervention, and other subjects that feel ripped right from an episode of The X-Files ... Seeing Hynek get his due in proper biographical fashion is a treat. Unfortunately, the man himself is sometimes lost in the author’s explorations of the stories around him ...it sometimes feels like Hynek is pushed to the background in order to tell the story of the UFO community’s emergence.
Hynek, whose many contributions to science extend well beyond the scope of UFOs, has, according to biographer Mark O’Connell, been unfairly relegated to the fringe, lumped alongside swaths of pseudo-scientists whose UFO claims lacked scientific backing. Upon wading through Hynek’s files in the Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS), O’Connell made it his mission to clarify the many misperceptions pertaining to the pioneering researcher ... O’Connell’s writing style and extensive research confirm he’s up for the task, and by book’s end, readers are treated to a complex retelling not only of a single man, but of the larger UFO phenomenon ...focuses more on the terrestrial, human story rather than veering toward the speculative, extraterrestrial tale ... In the end, readers are left with a book that smartly refuses to simplify anything. The mystery of UFOs persists, as does the mystery of J. Allen Hynek.
