Exploration of a fascinating mystery: How did Africa’s Dogon tribe (and others) get hold of star-system data thousands of years before Western man? (Insert weird music.) The book traces the enigma back 5,000 years to the Egyptian and Sumerian cultures. “These ancient civilizations possessed not only great wealth and learning, but also a knowledge dependent on physics and astrophysics, which they claimed was imported to them by visitors from Sirius,“ a rare double-star system. The Dogon could explain Sirius B, a White Dwarf orbiting Sirius A, but no one on Earth could see it. Is this proof the Pharaohs were visited by star creatures? (Hold weird note.) Could be. In contrast, modern astronomers only got their proof of the Sirius enigma in 1970. (Weird sustain and out.) GR

Publisher: Destiny
Paperback: 292 pages

Perfect complement to Charles Fort’s anti-scientific crusade and research, from within the scientific community. Looks at how, by its very nature, science is resistant to new ideas about the world, and how shaky the foundations of scientific “fact” actually are at all times. “No part of the aim of normal science is to call forth new sorts of phenomena; indeed those that will not fit the box are often not seen at all. Nor do scientists normally aim to invent new theories, and they are often intolerant of those invented by others… The transfer of allegiance from paradigm to paradigm is a conversion experience that cannot be forced. Lifelong resistance, particularly from those whose productive careers have committed them to an older tradition of normal science, is not a violation of scientific standards but an index to the nature of scientific research itself. The source of resistance is the assurance that the older paradigm will ultimately solve all its problems, that nature can be shoved into the box the paradigm provides.” SS

Publisher: University of Chicago
Paperback: 212 pages

Amazing! THESE subterranean worlds are actually INSIDE the Earth! While the title might be worth a smile, the frontispiece photo of the author/editor is nothing short of surefire hilarity. A full page shot of Beckley in his best Dr. Who-style getup, bursting from his corduroys, clutching a walking stick and affecting an aristocratic sneer. The style carries into the writing with constant use of the royal “we” as well as inflated references to “our files” and “our correspondent.” And what all this reportage comes down to is a collection of anachronistic sci-fi stories presented as “firsthand accounts” of underground cities, etc. Several chapters, however, stand out for their fascinating exposition on the famous “Shaver Mystery,” the serialized visions of welder-writer Richard Shaver, who one day heard coming out of his welding gun “voices of endless complexity,” which he perceived as emanations from an ancient underground civilization of extraterrestrial origin and malevolent intent. Stories of Shaver’s “Deros” became the lifeblood of the magazine Amazing Stories and set the tone for many of the pulps to follow. Also includes an interesting debate between Shaver and the editor who shaped his visions, as well as Shaver’s later speculation on what he perceived to be ancient “cyclopean books” visible in various geological formations. RA

Publisher: Inner Light
Paperback: 158 pages
Illustrated

Britain’s Society for Psychical Research provides archival material for a rethinking of precognition. If it does exist, asks the author, “can it be understood in terms of modern science? It directly contradicts the theories of classical physics—but the modern view of time and space as set out in Albert Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity may be able to accommodate it.” From waking impressions of the Titanic sinking to experimental studies with animals, the quantum level phenomenon of “Action at a Temporal Distance” is explored. GR

Publisher: Academy Chicago
Paperback: 178 pages
Illustrated

A bright and breezy travelogue on the theoretical wonders of the universe, this is science journalism given a Star Trek turn. Publishers Weekly says: “Something else again… Gribbon is having fun… A book that rejoices in paradoxes and delights in reporting that nothing bizarre—baby universes, bubble universes, universe-sized black holes, energy extraction and time travel through wormholes—is denied by the laws of physics.” Chapters on “Warping Space and Time,” “Hyperspace Connections,” “Two Ways To Build a Time Machine,” “Cosmic Connections” and “Dense Stars.” Fascinating, as Spock would say with a raised eyebrow. GR

Publisher: Crown
Paperback: 248 pages
Illustrated

Within the background of ever-escalating black budgets and big-dick politics, funding for intelligent machines of mayhem, and the developments of computational power and its worldwide sociological impact, the shift in the age-old relationship between people and machines is profound. There is a growth of a very real war machine, seeking its own paths of destruction and ultimately of survival. With the assistance of powerful personal computers, both individuals and the state can now study and effect the behavior of singularities, and in the process speed the evolution of this new machine phylum. It’s not unreasonable to consider the distinct possibility that our current human biological system of organization and deployment is but the onset of a more advanced and capable machine intelligence without sinew, soul or skin. BW

Publisher: Zone
Paperback: 272 pages
Illustrated

“For many people, assessment of wind energy is based largely on a fleeting observation from an automobile window.” This highly readable social history details the brief yet vital role of wind in American energy-generation: After World War I, mass-produced U.S. windmills (both water-pumpers and wind-chargers) signified individualism, self-sufficiency and decentralized technology, in direct opposition to government-regulated “hard” energy sources such as coal, petroleum, natural gas and nukes. The history of the Rural Electrification Administration, established in 1935, traces the high-wiring of the U.S. landscape, a transformation of both physical and economic topographies, which signaled the decline of independent farms and the growth of agribusiness. Righter concludes by examining closely the wind-generator boom of the past two decades in California, now totaling over 12,000 turbines and producing 96 percent of U.S. wind-generated electricity. HS

Publisher: University of Oklahoma
Hardback: 384 pages
Illustrated