Browsing through the used book section at the neighborhood St. Vincent de Paul's the other day, I naturally went straight to where the UFO books are kept. I could count on finding some UFO books in the loosely defined New Age section. That day I didn't see any UFO books; not one. The New Age section is right next to the religious section. But no UFO books.

Then I remembered; they didn't usually keep the UFO books in the New Age section, they kept it in the science section! Which I think is pretty cool, but unusual. So I go looking for that section; couldn't find it. A clerk told me the science section is under the label "education," which I found a bit odd. Why not just a science section? Science is certainly educational, but it isn't education, if you get me. But I was rewarded; there, taking up two whole shelves and more, were UFO books! Right there with books on astronomy and astro physics, regular old physics, books about space travel and books about aviation and mechanics.

Fantastic!

Lots of paperback books on UFOs, Strieber's books of course, and sets, like the ones Readers Digest puts out. I found a hardcover of Jenny Randles The UFO Conspiracy, which was fine. But the "Very Cool Bookstore Find" however was the hardcover edition of My Contact with Flying Saucers, by Dino Kraspedon.

Kraspedon was a contactee. The book was written in 1952. Like most of the contactee books, the style is stilted. I haven't finished reading it yet, but the story seems to be the usual: an alien contacts Dino, imparts wisdom about the universe, humanity, earth history (the "real" history),and stuff about physics, then takes off. Dino's alien was from Jupiter, which I found interesting, as most of the contactees aliens come from Venus or Neptune. Another interesting thing about Dino's alien is that the alien remains nameless.

Dino seems to be a bit testy; for someone who's been blessed with having dialogues with an alien from Jupiter, Kraspedon seems to give the alien a hard time. On the other hand, that's probably a good thing; question the message as well as the messenger. I was a bit surprised at Dino's suspicions, though they're suspicions I have about the forces behind the Contactee experience. The book begins with the alien arriving at Kraspedon's home dressed as a preacher; Dino recognizes him from past contacts however:

Please excuse me for having presented myself as a parson, but you must realize that your wife would be very disturbed if she knew the truth."

"It was a harmless subterfuge," I reassured him, "and I am grateful to you for it; my wife would certainly be unhappy if she one day thought her husband was mixed up in some subversive activity in partnership with a foreign agent who passed himself off as a gentleman wandering about in space.

"In fact I had never believed that flying saucers were extraterrestrial. The whole thing appeared to me as a deception on the part of people of Earth, presenting themselves as beings from another world, and exploiting humanity's vague desire to know that there is other human life within the solar system, in order better to carry on some nefarious activity or other.'

My visitor merely smiled. "I assure you," he said, "that your suspicions are groundless, but there is no doubt that it your duty to be on your guard against possible deception. Or thing is certain however; if I were a foreign agent I show long since have conquered the Earth, and you would have pa dearly for your curiosity which led you into my craft."

Later, Dino asks his alien visitor "preacher" questions about the nature of Nature, or something. As I said earlier, he gets a bit of a 'tude with the entity:

I would like to make it clear that I shall not be satisfied with some simple academic definition, and shall require from you a more detailed explanation, which you are obviously in a position to give. Can you enlighten me?"

Dino was an atheist, as he tells the alien. He's not having any of it. Yet he expects the ET to have all the answers about who and what God is:

It is up to you to tell me what He is, what is His nature, what He is composed of, what are His attributes, how He acts and what influence He has on created things; and also to prove to me that He is not a mere decorative figure. I do not wish to be shown a God subject to mechanical laws, in whom I could never believe, but a supreme God who is above any law.

There are predictions of a second sun coming into the solar system:

It is a body of monstrous proportions which will shortly become visible in the direction of Cancer. It will not, however, emit any light as the light of a Sun only becomes intense when it enters into a secondary magnetic field such as our solar system.

It goes without saying this will "create difficult problems" seeing as how the planets will get all topsy turvy and the like at the "end of this century" which means, that waslast century, so I guess we're cool.

Dino Kraspedon is a pretty cool name, but it was not his real name, which was Aladino Félix, which is another pretty cool name. Kraspedon/Felix was Brazilian, born in Lorena. I don't know much more than what I've read from his book so far, but I'm always excited to find Contactees from that time in UFO history.