Solving the Communion Enigma Book Plate Giveaway

In 1987, Whitley Strieber changed the way we look at the universe with the publication of Communion, a bestselling account of his terrifying abductions and close encounters with extraterrestrials. Not only did his reports fascinate millions of readers worldwide, they popularized the picture that we now think of when we envison extraterrestrials – the bauble-headed stick figures with enormous oval eyes that Strieber refers to as The Grays.

In Solving the Communion Enigma: What is To Come (January 2012), Strieber revisits his own encounters with The Grays, and examines the myriad ways they fit into a larger story of unexplained phenomena around the world; crop circles, mutilated livestock, mysterious aerial objects, abductions, and more.

Strieber makes his strongest case yet against the ideas that these types of occurrences are imagined, misconstrued or fabricated. It is not those who’ve experienced the encounters who are delusional, he says—it’s those who deny them.

Solving the Communion Enigma is both a new look at some very personal, strange encounters, and a big-picture view of the perplexing world we’re living in today, and the world we’ll be inhabiting in the not-so-distant future. Intimate and wise, Solving The Communion Enigma is a must-read for anyone interested in the fate of mankind.

**Bookplate Promotion Instructions**

Tarcher/Penguin will be giving away  Solving the Communion Enigma bookplates (signed by Whitley Strieber) to anyone who pre-orders a copy of the book.  To  receive your free signed bookplate, please email a copy of the receipt for your pre-ordered copy of Solving the Communion Enigma to communionenigmagiveaway@gmail.com. (You may either forward an email receipt or send as an attachment).

Once you’ve submitted this, you will receive an autoresponse containing a link to a page where you will submit the address where you’d like the signed bookplate to be sent.  Any information provided will be kept confidential and will only be used for this contest.

From AOL, A UFO Is Still a UFO: From Antiquity to Today

AOL Weird News
Feb 4, 2011 – 6:04 PM
By Lee Speigel

Circular ships, vertical aerial cylinders, spheres, disks, wheels in the sky, hat-shaped things, flying pillars or columns and triangular-shaped objects.

At first glance, you might think those are common, almost daily, descriptions of UFOs reported by eyewitnesses. Well, yes … sort of. Those are the actual words, found in ancient texts, that characterize unidentified flying objects, spanning biblical accounts through the 1800s.

And that’s exactly what two leading researchers have done: trace the huge numbers of UFOs reported that couldn’t possibly be attributed to or misinterpreted as artificially constructed objects seen in the sky.

On the morning of April 14, 1561, over Nuremberg, Germany, many multi-colored spheres and disks were seen emerging from two vertical cylinders in the sky and appearing to engage in some sort of aerial fight against each other in this 16th century woodcut.

In their book “Wonders in the Sky,” (Tarcher/Penguin) renowned computer scientist and astronomer Jacques Vallee and scholar/historian Chris Aubeck tackle the question of how to interpret all of the unexplained aerial sightings that occurred before the age of industrialization.

Vallee, who was a featured panelist discussing UFOs at last month’s highly touted Global Competitiveness Forum in Saudi Arabia, served as the model for the French scientist portrayed by Francois Truffaut in Steven Spielberg’s classic 1977 UFO film “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.”

“My passion was always about when did this phenomenon start? That’s a question that any scientist should be asking when you’re confronted with a new phenomenon. When did it really begin? So we wanted to go as far back as we could, and to stop before there was anything human in the sky,” Vallee told AOL News.

Two enormous, glowing wheels are seen in the sky over Mecklenburg and Hamburg, Germany, on Nov. 4, 1697, as a crowd watches from below.

To that end, Vallee and Aubeck examined more than 500 unexplained aerial sightings, including one case from 1513 in Rome, Italy. The eyewitness: celebrated sculptor, painter and architect Michelangelo. What he saw: a flying triangle.

“He was so impressed, he made a painting of it, but the painting didn’t survive. We only know about it from art historians,” Vallee said. “For cases like this to have survived, they had to come from people who were not weirdos and cranks, because these cases come from the archives of historians, castles, dukes and kings and the church, and they had been investigated. The cases that have survived the test of time have been the ones that have credibility.”

Another case, from 1663, near Bieloziero, Russia, involved a crowd of people who saw a fiery object emitting “burning beams.” Vallee says a formal report was written by the St. Cyrille monastery. “There was a great sound and the people came out of the church to find out what it was, and they witnessed a large ball of fire that arrived from the cloudless heavens.”

According to the official monastery report, the object “moved along the lake, passing over the water surface. The ball of fire measured some 140 feet from one edge to the other, and over the same distance, ahead of it, two ardent rays extended … and the big fire and two smaller ones disappeared. Less than an hour later, the people again came out to the square and the same fire suddenly reappeared over the same lake.”

For as long as people have been leaving behind written records of their experiences, there have been depictions of strange objects seen in the sky, some even drawn by humans on cave walls. But Vallee didn’t want to go back that far, historically.

“We wanted to stay away from legends and vague interpretations or even religious things because we are not the ones to comment on that. I wanted cases that had a date and a place and the name of a witness, and the time of day, if we could.

“It turns out, in a surprising number of cases, we have all of that. We do have a lot of precision on who, what, where — the questions a good cop would ask.”

Vallee has spent nearly 50 years looking for answers about UFOs. He asserts that the notion that man is in contact with celestial spirits or beings, and that man can travel to the stars and through the stars to higher levels, is an idea that goes as far back as you can trace civilization.

Read the rest of this article on AOL Weird News

WONDERS IN THE SKY, now on earth….

Since NASA announced the discovery of a new life form, America has been buzzing about the possibility of extraterrestrial life.   While this evidence is new, our obsession with extraterrestrial life certainly is not.

Two of the most widely respected researchers of unexplained aerial phenomena, renowned computer scientist and astronomer Jacques Vallee (who advised Steven Spielberg on the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind) and scholar/historian Chris Aubeck, examine this fascination in their new book: Wonders in the Sky: Unexplained Aerial Objects from Antiquity to Modern Times. Vallee and Aubeck examine more than 500 historical accounts of aerial sightings through a scientific lens. Taking into account the religious and political context of each sighting, as well as how the incident can (or can’t) be explained by science, Vallee and Aubeck reveal the common threads woven throughout these strange experiences—forming a body of data that even skeptics will find hard to ignore.

From engaging case studies to examples of aerial sightings found both in the Bible and in classical art, Wonders in the Sky not only illuminates the mysteries that have gone largely unheard and ignored until now; it explores how these sightings have played a significant role in the development of our popular culture, history, religion, and science.

Curious to learn more about the history of our fascination with alien life? Read Wonders in the Sky.

WONDERS IN THE SKY
Unexplained Aerial Objects from Antiquity to Modern Times
by Jacques Vallee and Chris Aubeck
Tarcher/Penguin paperback • $22.95 • 978-1-58542-820-5
On-sale: October 28, 2010

New Release: WONDERS IN THE SKY

Stories of unexplained phenomena, UFOs, and extraordinary events have long captured our imaginations, but is there more to the thousands of reported UFO sightings and abductions than mere fantasy? How do we interpret the numerous aerial sightings that occurred before the age of Industrialization and as far back as Biblical times?

These questions lie at the heart of a groundbreaking new book by two of the most widely respected researchers of unexplained aerial phenomena: Renowned computer scientist and astronomer Jacques Vallee (who advised Steven Spielberg on the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind) and scholar/historian Chris Aubeck.

Fascinating and rigorously researched, their book, Wonders in the Sky: Unexplained Aerial Objects from Antiquity to Modern Times, examines more than 500 historical accounts of aerial sightings through a scientific lens. Taking into account the religious and political context of each sighting, as well as how the incident can (or can’t) be explained by science, Vallee and Aubeck reveal the common threads woven throughout these strange experiences—forming a body of data that even skeptics will find hard to ignore.

From engaging case studies to examples of aerial sightings found both in the Bible and in classical art, Wonders in the Sky not only illuminates the mysteries that have gone largely unheard and ignored until now; it explores how these sightings have played a significant role in the development of our popular culture, history, religion, and science.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Jacques Vallee is one of today’s most widely respected researchers of unexplained aerial phenomena. He earned a master’s degree in astrophysics while living in France and holds a Ph.D. in computer science from Northwestern University. Vallee is the author of several books about high technology and unidentified phenomena, including the seminal work Passport to Magonia, published in 1969. He lives in San Francisco.

Chris Aubeck has built the largest collection of pre-1947 unexplained aerial cases in the world. In 2003, he co-founded The Magonia Project, a remarkable network of librarians, students, and scholars of paranormal history on the Internet. The group has accumulated thousands of references, searched media archives in several languages, and collected hundreds of rare documents, scientific reports, and newspaper clippings. Aubeck lives in Madrid, Spain.

WONDERS IN THE SKY
Unexplained Aerial Objects from Antiquity to Modern Times
by Jacques Vallee and Chris Aubeck
Tarcher/Penguin paperback • $22.95 • 978-1-58542-820-5
On-sale: October 28, 2010