saucer people n.

A very intelligent theory by one of our own members [sc. of the ‘International Flying Saucer Bureau’] has possibilities. He claims that the saucer-people may have discovered the fourth dimension. Having discovered this, they found a way of traveling that surpasses anything conceived by earthmen.

‘I want to try something,’ Ward told the boy. ‘I think I know how we can get in touch with the Saucer people.’ ‘But they have tried.’ ‘Yes, I know—the radio and blinker lights and all that. But maybe that’s the wrong way. Bobby, you’re a telepath, aren’t you?’

Didn’t you see the truth in those Pentagon files, all those ‘fake’ communications, those ‘secrets’ the saucer people were supposed to be communicating to Earth’s military officials? These were only to provide the weapons with which man on Earth could accomplish his own destruction. They were baiting mankind.

Now the screen showed the interior of the flying saucer. Gadgetry everywhere, computers and clicking things and gauges. There were the saucer people: superb specimens of transhuman life, muscular, magnificent, with expressions of ineffable wisdom. Now the ship was landing on Earth, popping down as easily as a feather.

But surely you of all people, Mr. Hunter, ought to believe in flying saucers [...] Because for the last twenty-five years the saucer people have been telepathically giving all you science-fiction writers the ideas for all your stories, to prepare us humans for the day when they openly walk among us.

I’ve got his attention, Cohen thought, grasping for conspiracy theories. If I lay it on thick, maybe he’ll buy an article on it. ‘What if there really are spaceships visiting Earth and the government knows about it? [...] The hawks want to keep the whole thing secret until they can develop a weapon to knock down the saucers and then use it to drive a big increase in the Pentagon budget through Congress. The moderates want to inform the world and try to negotiate with the saucer people and thus strengthen detente.’

Quit yelling and listen to me. I’m letting you in on a trade secret: really bad media can exorcise your semiotic ghosts. If it keeps the saucer people off my back, it can keep these Art Deco futuroids off yours. Try it. What have you got to lose?

And if he couldn’t convince Claire, when she loved him or at least used to and she already knew he had been hired for a secret project by people who were willing to pay unreasonably huge amounts of money, then who could he convince? The people who read those supermarket tabloids that always ran stories about Elvis’s bimonthly reincarnations and women whose unborn children were stolen from their wombs by Satanic saucer people?

I can hardly review it, but I can certainly tell you it exists: My The Great Flying Saucer Conspiracy is now available from Wildside Press [...] It pretends to tell you what the saucer people are really up to and why. Mike Resnick accuses me of making science fiction fun again.

People are being very generous with their information. I just hope we’ll be able to figure out what’s useful. One nut actually claimed she saw a cat being stolen off the street. I figure by tomorrow, we’ll be hearing about the saucer people either dropping cats off or taking them away.