Monday, August 04, 2008

SME's Book of the Month




Actually two books, but they're closely related. Both are written by Richard C. Hoagland, formerly a science journalist specializing in the U.S. space program, currently a complete nutbar specializing in paranoid diatribes against NASA and everyone else who doesn't see a face on Mars. I'm looking forward to reading these.
From the jacket desciption of The Monuments of Mars: A City on the Edge of Forever (1992, 3rd edition, North Atlantic Books): "In 1976, NASA sent four Viking spacecraft to Mars to photograph the planet and test for the presence of life. As part of the mapping sequence, one of the orbiters photographed a mile-long mesa that uncannily resembles a human face. Richard C. Hoagland... discerned the presence of additional monuments and structures, including what is possibly an underground city, through careful analysis of NASA's photographs and consultation with scientists. The artifacts are the 1500-foot-high human-like 'face' and a surrounding complex of massive, hollow pyramids possibly containing a message encoded in their geometrical arrangement."
And Dark Mission (2008, Feral House): "For most Americans, the name NASA suggests a squeaky-clean image of technological infallibility. Yet the truth is that NASA was born in a lie, and has concealed the truths of its occult origins and its sensational discoveries on the Moon and Mars...
Few people are aware that NASA was formed as a national defense agency adjunct empowered to keep information classified and secret from the public at large. Even fewer people are aware of the hard evidence that secret brotherhoods quietly dominate NASA, with policies far more aligned with ancient religious and occult mystery schools than the façade of rational science the government agency has successfully promoted to the world for almost fifty years.
Why is the Bush administration intent on returning to the Moon as quickly as possible? What are the reasons for the current “space race” with China, Russia, even India? Remarkable images reproduced within this book provided to the authors by disaffected NASA employees give clues why, including spectacular information about lunar and Martian discoveries..."



4 comments:

Karen said...

Some interesting reading there. Amazon had recommended Dark Mission to me a little while ago and I was intrigued. Now, even more so - I'll be looking through the library for this one. Thanks!

S.M. Elliott said...

It's pretty wacky stuff. From what I understand, Hoagland has used NASA photos to identify stuff like an android head on the moon and a gigantic pyramid city on Mars...

ZC said...

The Mars Formations always did give me the creeps. It would be kinda weird if they WERE natural...

S.M. Elliott said...

The pyramids are kinda weird, I admit, but the face turned out to be just a bunch of hills that were originally photographed from just the right angle to suggest eyes and a mouth.