Official UFO Rides Again

 

Back in the mid-1970s, there were a half dozen magazines devoted to UFOs and at their peak some had a publishing schedule of nine times a year, and others, six times but that was eventually reduced to quarterly. If you had contacts in the UFO community and could put a complete sentence together, you could supplement your income by writing for them. That many magazines publishing that frequently required a great deal of material.

I started writing my first UFO related article while still in the Army. It had to do with physical evidence. What I didn’t know was that several men’s magazines, those that told stories of interest to men but not those that featured scantily clad women, were developing these UFO magazines. I hit the trend at the right time. I sent off that article, was discharged from the Army and headed to college. Turned out that I was making enough money to pay my tuition and supplement the GI bill which picked up other expenses by writing about UFOs.

I bring all this up now because Bernie O’Connor, who was the original editor for Official UFO, has put together a book, The Official History of Official UFO Magazine, that draws from the first six issues of the magazine. Not only do you get to read the best of those stories, but there is commentary and inside information spread through the book. It’s printed on high quality paper and filled with color photographs and even some of the ads there were published in the magazine in the mid-1970s.

Yes, several of my stories are included in the book. Most people don’t know that I sometimes used the pen name James Butler Bonham, which was the name of one of the defenders of the Alamo. Anyway, some of my earlier writings appeared in the magazine.

At the time, I was also writing science fiction of Robert Charles Cornett, know as RC squared and I’ll let you figure that out. We developed a good relationship with Bernie O’Connor. Once Bob got a check for a dollar more than the agreed-on fee. That extra dollar was for Bob to buy a beer.

When Bernie was the editor, he looked for articles that reflected the reality of the situation rather than sensational stories that might pull in the fringe readers. Later, as Bernie explains in the book, the owner wanted to exploit fictional events because they sold magazines. As Bernie put it in one of the commentaries included, it proved the skeptical theory that we all were only in it for the money. While that wasn’t true for Bernie or those of us who wrote for the magazine, turned out the owner was just in it for the money. As I say, this is one of those side commentaries that provides insight to times.

Bernie O'Connor

The magazine appealed to those of us with an interest in UFOs, but didn’t cater to one point of view. If the writer, who was often an investigator who got out and talked to the witnesses, could provide the source and documentation, then Bernie was interested in it. That doesn’t mean that the skeptics were left out. Included is an article by James Oberg who interviewed Philip Klass about the Walton abduction. Both Oberg and Klass are or were hardcore skeptics. And there was another story written by George Earley about why Klass didn’t believe in UFOs.

There were also articles covering the history of UFO investigation, such as articles on “The History of APRO” by Dick Ruhl, “The Center for UFO Studies” by Don Berliner, and “UFOs and the CIA” by Jim and Coral Lorenzen. There were also articles such as “UFOs Behind the Iron Curtain” by Dr. Felix Y Zigel and Joseph Brill. And I haven’t even mentioned Dick Hall’s “The CIA Robertson Panel Report Declassified.”

That’s just a quick sample of some of the early research written by those who would become well known in the UFO field. The book is a history of what was of interest in the mid-1970s, along with was happening in the world outside the walls the magazine offices.

I must admit that it is somewhat pricey, but if you have an interest in the world of the UFO as it existed in the mid-1970s, this is a must have. You get a good feel about who was doing what and what was happening at the time. It ranks up there with Jerome Clark’s massive The UFO Encyclopedia and the work of Michael Swords and Robert Powell in there UFOs and the Government. If you are serious about UFOs, then this is a must have in your library.