The UFO phenomenon is innately slippery, forcing researchers to adopt various paradigms in order to explain it. I’m personally satisfied that we’re dealing with a form of nonhuman intelligence … but how sure are we that this intelligence is from space, as commonly assumed? The following in an excerpt from a manuscript I’m working on. In it, I attempt to set the tone for a speculative re-examination of the UFO evidence:

Looking down from a sufficient distance, human habitation recedes to the merest glimmer. As night devours the continents, our seeming dominion vanishes, replaced by scattered constellations, the haughty gleam of our cities suddenly as substantial as a skein of campfires. As the dark deepens, we realize with mounting unease just how tenuous our presence is; the mountains, prairies and lakes, denuded of daylight, taunt us with their enormity.

Read more: Aliens from Earth?