"A fascinating journey; the depth of [Scoles's] research is impressive and her curiosity is infectious."
- Booklist "Scoles marries a thoughtful objectivity with a warm subjectivity as she talks to serious-minded UFO report investigators, tour guides for ET sightseers, and movers and shakers in the UFOlogy community." - The Washington Post "Scoles remains an open-minded skeptic, and it’s this objectivity that makes her buoyant survey so delightful to read." - Publishers Weekly "While many authors in this realm rely on sensationalism and avoid fact-checking, Scoles has written the definitive investigation into the origins of UFO culture and its persistence." -Quartz "The subject matter is framed for skeptics just as much as believers. It also will appeal to those of us who may not care much about UFOs one way or another but enjoy spending time in nature and staring up at the sky. ...Scoles deftly gets to the heart of what we feel when we think we’ve connected with something sent from the greater universe." -Outside "This engrossing and well-sourced investigation will leave readers contemplating the human condition of 'universal uncertainty.'" -Shelf Awareness "[Scoles] has mastered that rarest of all journalistic talents: the ability to listen to flagrantly implausible stuff with sympathy without ever sacrificing her critical rigor. She has a fine-tuned BS detector, but she also has a heart. And in the course of this delightful book, she needs both, often." -Smoke Signals News Interviews: WAMC's 51%, Mad Scientist, Somewhere in the Skies, The Space Show, Global News Radio, The Black Vault Radio, Live Wire Radio, Stay Home and Read, Podcast UFO, Into the Impossible, NPR's 1A, Everyday Einstein, Colorado Matters, Coast to Coast AM, Paranormal Podcast, Constant Wonder, Science Salon, UFO Lore, MinnMax, Last Podcast on the Left, Wild Thing, What If Discussed, Library of Congress National Book Festival, We Get Real AF, Monster Talk Radio, Low Orbit, Cosmic Shambles Excerpts: Popular Science, Wired, Space.com, BBC Science Focus Other press: The AV Club, Colorado Springs Gazette, Hot Alien, Slate, Space.com, The UFO Trail, New Scientist, National Review, Popular Mechanics' Best Space Books of 2020, Discover's Science Books We're Reading in Summer 2020, BBC Science Focus's 15 of the best space and astronomy books 2020, New Scientist's The Cream of 2020, Open Letters Review's Best Science Books of 2020, 26 of the Best Books Wired Read in 2020 |
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 mystery―both terrestrial and cosmic.
In They Are Already Here, we meet the bigwigs, the scrappy upstarts, the field investigators, the rational people, and the 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? Funny and colorful, and told in a way that doesn’t require one to believe, Scoles brings humanity to an often derided and misunderstood community. After all, the truth is out there . . . |