"A.D. - After Disclosure: The People's Guide to Life After Contact" by Richard Dolan and Bryce Zabel. What happens after they finally tell us the truth about UFOs?
Friends and supporters have been contacting us, many with congratulations on how our “Dark Skies” has been made into a new film, starring Keri Russell, to be released by Dimension Films next February. While it sounds like a dream, we tell them, it’s actually a nightmare.
To set the record straight, we’re Bryce Zabel and Brent Friedman, the two writer/producers who created the NBC series called “Dark Skies.” It was produced by Columbia TV (now Sony) and aired in 1996 and 1997. We wrote the pilot, multiple episodes and produced all twenty hours that were aired in primetime on Saturday nights.
Our original “Dark Skies” introduced viewers to an alien invasion that featured a continuing focus on the mysterious and terrifying abduction phenomenon. So our well-intentioned friends can be forgiven if they hear about the Dimension Films version that focuses on an alien abduction and assume we had something to do with it. While that is decidedly not the case, our definitive version may have inspired it.
Our “Dark Skies” had been in the news even before Dimension decided to use our title for their film. Our series was given a world-wide release on DVD in 2011 from both Shout Factory (US) and Medium Rare Entertainment (UK). In dozens of reviews, the work received critical praise as a classic that has stood the test of time in the sci-fi and UFO media. It also spawned new interest in the reboot of our series, something that we were talking to Sony TV about when the news from Dimension Films broke.
Our "Dark Skies" has established itself in the minds of a significant number of science fiction fans as a gripping piece of conspiracy drama set in the world of UFOs and abductions. It anchored NBC's Saturday night "Thrillogy" concept in the 1996 season premiere and starred Eric Close ("Nashville") and the late film character actor J.T. Walsh (“Sling Blade”). Its main title design won the Emmy award and its pilot screenplay received a Writers Guild nomination. The Syfy Channel aired the entire series multiple times. Since 2010 there's been a Facebook page where thousands of fans from many different countries push Sony for a TV revival.
And yet here we are. A film in the same genre as our work is being promoted right now using the same exact title as our work. Most Hollywood businesses legitimately consider creative and artistic interests and rights in these cases. This one seems to have slipped through the cracks of acceptability.
Supporters of the creative rights of writers should ask Dimension Films to let their film stand on its own merits and call it by a different title. "Dark Skies" is taken.
Well, so much for Obama as the "Disclosure President." Don't hold your breath.
Last night at the White House Correspondent's Dinner, the President of the United States was having a lot of fun at Donald Trump's well-deserved expense. Yet when he cast the "birther" controversy as a nutty conspiracy theory, he also placed it in the company of whether we faked the moon landing, where are Biggie and Tupac, and what really happened at Roswell. Each played as big laugh lines.
These people ought to know better, of course, but they don't.
You can watch for yourself in this video, it's about ten minutes in:
So, there you have it. Another example that our nation's politicians do not understand the essential reality of the UFO/ET situation and neither do the reporters who hold those elite positions. To them, it's truly just a laughing matter.
“Now, I know that he’s taken some flak lately but no one is prouder to put this birth certificate matter to rest than The Donald. And that’s because he can finally get back to focusing on the issues that matter, like, did we fake the moon landing? What really happened in Roswell? And where are Biggie and Tupac?" ~ President Barack Obama, White House Correspondent's Dinner, April 2011
This would be funny in itself except that, as we know, it's not a laughing matter. Sigh...
Roger Ebert has been getting a lot of attention this week for his beautifully written essay titled, A Quintessence of Dust. In it, he features the graphic below -- created by NASA -- showing 1,235 planets we know to exist as well as the suns they orbit.
Here's the key concept to appreciate this: each planet is a black dot. Below the top row, you'll see our own sun over on the right side. The people who estimate such things are estimating that millions of such planets exist in our galaxy alone. Ebert's mind boggles at this and, of course, so does mine and probably yours, too.
I have a small bone to pick with Roger Ebert, however, even though I am a great admirer and have probably read several hundred of his film reviews. But, before I get to that, I want to invite you to feel some of the same wonder, mystery and curiosity that comes with this image. Take a few seconds now and look at it, and let it sink in. And, if you want to see it larger, just click on it and you'll see it on an even grander scale on your computer.
As I said, I love Roger Ebert and, as a fellow writer, I have to stand in awe of his skill and capacity. These traits have made him the most significant film reviewer of our time.
My bone to pick is that he appears to not understand the UFO situation and indirectly put down those of us who do. In the same week he wrote his essay about the worlds the Hubble is exposing us to, he also wrote this in his review of the new film, "Source Code."
"Source Code" is an ingenious thriller that comes billed as science fiction, although its science is preposterous. Does that matter, as long as everyone treats it with the greatest urgency? After all, space travel beyond the solar system is preposterous, and yet we couldn't do without "Star Trek."
Ebert is saying that if you believe that it is possible to travel the galaxy and the universe that you believe in something that is preposterous. I say that very statement is preposterous.
I think Ebert is a smart enough man with, as he speaks about in his article, the curiosity it takes to consider these big questions and be on the leading edge of things. He could do the world a tremendous service, now that he is thinking about such things, if he would bring his game up on this subject.
This weekend I attended my first UFO conference. It was also a first for the conference organizers in Lawrence, Kansas. Dubbed OZUFO Summit, it promised to be a high-level event by inviting some of the big names from UFO research and investigation.
The expressed goal of the conference was to bring together "variously experienced world-class authors, investigators, researchers, and speakers" to share a "sincere and urgent call for complete UFO Disclosure of the UFO-ET Reality."
For those interested in UFOs, the names were noteworthy. Physicist and researcher Stanton Friedman and dogged investigator Donald Schmitt both spoke about their parallel investigations into Roswell — the Watergate of UFO cover-ups. Jesse Marcel, Jr. recounted the historic event from his childhood when his father (Jesse Marcel, Sr.) showed his family debris from the Roswell crash. And former airmen, Capt. Robert Salas and Col. Charles Halt, discussed their separate experiences while in the Air Force.
On the other hand, there were those whose connection to the UFO phenomenon was more personal. Kim Carlsberg discussed her abductions and how she had been used as part of an extraterrestrial cross-breeding program. Rosemary Ellen Guiley drew parallels between alien abduction stories and the folklore of the djinn (a.k.a. genies). And Butch Witkowski shared the results of his investigations into cattle — and human — mutilations.
With all these different voices to discuss the UFO phenomenon, one thing was notably missing: a consensus. When one thinks of a summit, one imagines high-ranking officials coming together to reach an accord. While the goal of government disclosure was the predominant theme of the conference, it did not seem to be shared by all.
It's a question of balance. Again, today, the question was called, and fell short.
NASA should know better about non-human life, and may, but still pretends it doesn't. Or the working scientists, who are pursuing legitimate research in their own worlds, know not to ask big uncomfortable questions that will get their funding cut. Meanwhile, the ruling elite of the media buy the the scraps but miss the meal.
Today we heard about some microbes that can exist in the extremely salty, alkaline, arsenic-rich body of water in eastern California that's known as Mono Lake. This death-stew should kill most living things, crushing any primitive will to live completely. But not this new life form that uses arsenic in place of phosphorus to build DNA and proteins. Because Mono Lake is such an inhospitable environment for life, the scientists say, this means that maybe we can find life "in some places we might never have thought to look before."
That's low-hanging fruit. They could start by craning their necks up and opening their eyes.
The esteemed scientists gathered today say their discovery clears the path "for a whole new way of thinking about where to look for life" in the universe, and even in this Solar System. Well, now...
It isn't just that NASA should be scolded for looking down when they should have been looking up, it's the sense of importance they bring to their bacteria while ignoring so many other solid facts, witnesses and reports and that, by doing so, they allow the sense of derision the media heaps on anyone who dares believe that UFOs are sometimes physical craft from someplace that isn't here.
The Web has been percolating for a couple of days now about a hush-hush NASA press conference scheduled for Thursday afternoon about a major discovery in the field of astrobiology — the search for life on other planets. "Has NASA Found Life Near Saturn?" asked the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. "Has NASA Found Alien Life?" wondered PC Magazine. Well, no, and it's unfortunate that all of this nonsense has been out there, because the real story is important enough without the hype. What a team of scientists actually found, as described in a paper in Science, is what may be the oddest bacteria on Earth.
Let's start with the fact that reporter Michael Lemonick wrote his article from the point-of-view of knowing what was in the paper, but he wrote it before the news conference. This means that he had an early release copy. That's right. Lemonick, like all the other favored reporters, gets his back scratched and he probably likes his insider status. And, in return, he attacks other people for speculating while he acts like the sage and wise man of knowledge. That's just not right.
Remember, it was NASA's own press release that caused all the speculation in the first place, and not just in the blogosphere. So they gin it up by design, then guys like Lemonick get to deplore as "unfortunate" all the "nonsense." Then he assures us the story is important on its own because -- gasp -- scientists have found an unusual and hardy bacteria right here on Earth! On Earth! Amazing!
I'm sure Lemonick also thinks UFOs are deplorable nonsense. He's probably never looked into the area and, if he has, he clearly has not done so with an open mind. I wonder if he would read Leslie Kean's great new book, UFOs: Generals, Pilots and Government Officials Go On the Record. How exactly would he dismiss all that Kean reports so clearly? What about my co-author's excellent first two volumes of UFOs and the National Security State? There may be different interpretations for what's being reported in those works, but nonsense they are not.
But we can't single out for shame any one reporter on this story. They all contribute to the problem. NBC's Lee Cowan managed -- twice -- in his report to use the phrase "little green men." It's just so ignorant, and the fact that he can invoke this canard in his story, that a segment producer lets it go, that the show producer approves it, and that Brian Williams says, "Well, that settles it" after the piece, simply shows how deeply the media does not get it.
So it's probably no surprise that media poobahs don't fare too well in the new book that Rich Dolan and I have just published, A.D. After Disclosure. But, then again, neither do the scientists. So let's end with another great quote, this time from lead report author Felisa Wolfe-Simon of NASA's Astrobiology Institute and the U.S. Geological Survey. She actually said this at today's news conference:
"We've cracked open the door for what's possible for life in the universe, and that's profound. What else might we find?"
Well, Felisa, how much time do you have?
The problem here is that Felisa Wolfe-Simon is probably an incredibly bright woman, and a top notch scientist. But she is a product of the system that discourages such brainpower as hers from actively looking into the UFO phenomenon. She is doing good, if limited vision, work. Someday, and maybe soon, she is going to have her mind blown by the idea that she was looking at Earth microbes to learn more about non-human, possibly extraterrestrial, life at a time when advanced intelligent non-human creatures had traveled here from wherever "there" is.
Felisa might just answer her own question by looking up at the skies. If she did, with all the sophisticated technological equipment that her employer could bring to bear on that endeavor, we would wager she would find evidence for something like this:
Some Unidentified Flying Objects appear to be physical, structural craft with performance characteristics that defy current public knowledge, things that aren't supposed to exist. But they do, and they don't appear to be from here, and they act with intelligence, either remote or on-board.
That is what else we might find.
If you want to know a bit more about the book itself, here is the link to read the Introduction to A.D. After Disclosure. It is easily available through Amazon.com. Or you can order it through your local bookstore.
As always, we thank you for considering a purchase of the book through the button below at Keyhole Publishing. It will be shipped directly from the publisher signed by co-author Richard Dolan, and you will receive a free MP3 of "Need-to-Know: The UFO Disclosure Song," currently available on iTunes.
UPDATE: When we first wrote about the Thursday NASA news conference, we ended with the advice to "Lower your expectations."
On that much, at least, we were right. Arsenic-laced life may be a big biological moment, but it's not life on Europa or copping to the truth about ET/UFO reality.
In any case, here is the original post...
NASA has called a news conference for this Thursday "to discuss an astrobiology finding that will impact the search for evidence of extraterrestrial life." Their words, not ours.
Of course this causes people to speculate about what those carefully chosen words might mean. Life on another planet? A new way to look for life? Evidence of previous life?
And, if you read the coverage from the establishment media types, many of them use the blog chatter the NASA announcement has stirred up to then imply "there go those crazy UFO guys again." It's a maddening game, to be sure. This graphic to the left is what CBS used to illustrate its coverage. They get to have their cake (invoking real ET contact) and eat it, too (making people who know something about the subject seem goofy). There's another excellent example of this shell game on CNN where they have goofy aliens in the photo and use the story as a springboard to smackdown people who take the bait and discuss this on the Internet. Sigh...
Back to NASA. We don't know what they've discovered, and they're not talking until they're good and ready, so we'll just have to wait. We tend to think that this will not be a blockbuster type of event, just something that moves the ball a little further down the field. A few yards gained, no score.
Clearly whoever's writing press releases for NASA has put something in writing that makes it seem that they may have found evidence to support the existence of ET life. Of course, Walter Haut wrote a pretty famous press release from Roswell back in 1947 and then had to pull that one back... you never know...
It's been a busy year, looking for life. The Kepler Mission has already found almost a thousand possible alien worlds while scanning a small section of space holding less than 200,000 stars. In September, NASA found Gliese 581g, a planet they think could hold liquid water on its surface. Two months later, NASA said they'd catalogued the 500th planet beyond our solar system.
But that's not what they're going to announce.
From a basic reading of the press release (you can read it at the end of this post), this has all the earmarks of the space agency finding the right chemical signatures -- possibly relating to the Moon or Mars or (our own pony to bet on) one of Saturn's moons. Rhea has been found to have some oxygen and CO2. Titan, Saturn's largest moon, is also the subject of speculation given that two of the panelists named have written about the place in relation to the search for off-Earth life.
Then there is Europa, of course, with (we believe) more liquid water than Earth!
Reason to consider the Microbes-on-Moons theories: the group of scientists in attendance includes an oceanographer who has used photosynthesis, arsenic and life in the same sentence; a geologist who's used knowledge of rocks to look for life on Mars; and a biologist who has speculated that Titan strikes him as resembling an adolescent Earth. There's also an ecological astrobiologist who specializes in the chemistry that has to happen in an environment to create life.
The bottom line is that these are not SETI-type disciplines. They are, however, relevant to planetary issues, or findings from our own solar system as opposed to Hubble-like discoveries of planets out there that might be suitable for life.
As for the huge revelation, don't look for NASA to make a disclosure with a capital "D." They haven't found a whale on Europa or even an insect on Mars. And even if they had, recall that these people are historically very closed minded on the subject of there actually being intelligent life visiting us here on Earth. For NASA, the action is all "out there."
As evidence that we should temper our sense of anticipation about Big-D "Disclosure," we offer this statement from NASA's own website, lifted from their "Ask an Astrobiologist" page, which goes to the mind-set of the astrobiologists who'll be sitting at the conference table:
Question: Has NASA any had UFO problems? (I'm doing a school project on them.)
Answer: No, I can't imagine that NASA would have any problems with something that doesn't exist. The sad thing about UFO reports is that they distract so many people from understanding and enjoying real science. (There is a lot of nonsense on the Internet about UFOs, but I do recommend the website http://skepdic.com/ufos_ets.html). David Morrison NAI Senior Scientist
Thank you for your open mind, Mr. David Morrison. After Disclosure, you will have to sit in the corner and wear a special dunce cap. We hope you won't be too distracted. We digress...
We're not saying the news conference has anything at all to do with UFOs -- it doesn't. What we're saying here is that the way they think is to get excited about the discovery of an organism that can thrive on a cold moon but maintain a completely closed mind to the actual evidence for advanced, complex life-forms coming to visit us right here on Earth.
The smart money is on Microbes-on-Moons. This is a far bigger deal than who Kim Kardashian is dating but it is not as big a deal as it probably should be, given that NASA -- or at least a few people there -- must actively know that Others are running around in our skies in vehicles that aren't supposed to exist from places that aren't here and that the life-forms operating these vehicles are definitely not just microbes.
Because of this head-in-the-sand mentality, we have one piece of advice for the rest of us about Thursday:
Lower your expectations.
Just so you can see for yourself, however, here is the word-for-word release that NASA has up on its official site as we speak.
This cover to your left, from August 2009, is the only cover story Newsweek has ever done about aliens that wasn't really about a movie version (they did a Close Encounters cover in back in 1977 when the film was released). But the article inside this issue barely mentions UFOs, and the whole thing is only a page or so long. You see, Newsweek doesn't cover UFOs, except to ridicule the idea, and they certainly aren't going to give their precious cover real estate to a subject their editors and reporters treat with such contempt.
So we did it for them.
Here is a faux tricked-up version of a Newsweek magazine as it might look the week that Disclosure arrives. We originally thought we might be able to use it in the book as one of our between-chapters "vignettes" but eventually the decision was made not to use heavy graphic design elements like this. But we present it here, well, just because we like it, and it's fun to imagine this artistically interpreted version of how the establishment media (like Newsweek) which has ignored this important story for so many decades will pivot instantly to riding it to big newstand sales.
The alien and the flag concept was originally done by Alicia Fernandez and Michael Kaplan of Blue Sky Creative for NBC's Dark Skies promotional campaign. Our graphic designer Nancy Tokos re-interpreted it for us for After Disclosure and, at one time, we were going to use it on our book cover but the more we wrote on the book, the more we felt it would say "science fiction" to buyers when we wanted them to think "science faction." We still have affection for the design, however, and it's nice to bring it back for a stage bow here on the website.
Maybe someday, and even someday soon, a cover like this one will grace the cover of an establishment media giant like Newsweek (especially with Tina Brown taking over as editor!).
If you want to know a bit more about the book itself, here is the link to read the Introduction to A.D. After Disclosure. It is easily available through Amazon.com. Or you can order it through your local bookstore.
As always, we thank you for considering a purchase of the book through the button below at Keyhole Publishing. It will be shipped directly from the publisher signed by co-author Richard Dolan, and you will receive a free MP3 of "Need-to-Know: The UFO Disclosure Song," currently available on iTunes.
While Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert had the media focused on their Rally to Restore Sanity,we conducted a poll of our readers to decide which of the two comedian commentators shows should be approached first about an author interview for the A.D. After Disclosure project.
Last night, as the polls closed on the nation's mid-term elections, we counted your own ballots.
It was no contest. Our readers overwhelmingly favor The Daily Show with Jon Stewart as a better environment to discuss the issue of the Disclosure of UFO/ET reality.
Stewart got 75.6% of the vote.
Colbert got 24.4%.
There were numerous reasons expressed for this but it seemed to come down to Jon Stewart's likeability, his perception of open mindedness and the opinion of those who had seen Leslie Kean's appearance on The Colbert Report that going on with Colbert playing his conservative persona, rather than himself, makes talking sense about UFOs even more difficult than it usually is.
So, the people have spoken (or at least our slice of people) and we'll be reaching out to The Daily Show with Jon Stewart to see if he'll have us.
If Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert truly want to restore some sanity (The Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear, October 30), they could start with the topic of UFOs after the election is over. Acknowledging the reality of UFO/ET presence is a subversive act to many mainstream voices, and that's why Stewart or Colbert (who see themselves as subversives) need to start getting into this topic.
Based on the competitive way these kinds of shows are scheduled, books authors don't appear on both. So -- during the weekend of the Stewart/Colbert rally -- we're offering up this poll to get your opinion about which show you think would be the best forum, and we'll have our publicist contact the winner after the election. Our poll is in the sidebar to the right.
Critical Thinking About UFOs in the Social Media Age
Among the “UFO crowd” these days, it's the trend to disparage the collection and investigation of UFO reports themselves. We live in the age of Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, smart phones, and instant information. Why, then, bother to interview witness after witness to ask the same old tired questions just to prove they saw something unusual: “if you held out your fingers at arm’s length, how large would the object have been?”
Besides, we already know UFOs are real, right? So why bother meticulously going over old news? Let’s move on to more interesting issues, like the ET agenda, figuring out the cover-up, or the coming New World Order.
In fact, I do spend a good portion of my time on those very issues. But there is a danger in forgetting the importance of the nuts and bolts, so to speak, of the field.
The recent spate of interest in Project Blue Beam has got me thinking about this. The Blue Beam meme, which had percolated at a low level for over a decade, morphed in the last week into a viral campaign that basically scared the living shit out of quite a few people.
Spreading fear has become so easy. After all, we have Facebook, that addictive purveyor of friendships, online games, and rumors of all stripes. Any and all claims can be copied and pasted and posted and commented and liked to our collective heart’s content. If it's not a fast enough blast, there's always Tweeting.
In the ramp-up to Blue Beam’s supposed arrival, we were treated to a barrage of YouTube links (mostly via Facebook), which featured one particular person warning us to be prepared for the Great Event. No need to go into details and bring more unwarranted attention to these people. They are always around, always willing and able to invent all manner of claims – and there are always people willing to believe what they say.
Say anything you want, don’t worry about supporting your statements with facts or actual research, and then spew out your message. It’s curious and a bit disturbing, that these people believe they actually are doing real research. In truth, most of them have no idea what real research is. Research is hard, it is specific, it takes time.
Research is not “I heard this from a friend of mine who heard this from a scientist in Russia.” Research is not “it’s obvious -- look it up, I’ve given you all the facts.” Research is not “it’s on the sites of Alex Jones and David Icke.”
