[Pulpmeister]

This doesn't seem to fit in reading recommendations, so I'll try here. Recently I came across a bunch of tatty books containing, among other things, several seminal "Flying Saucer" books from the very early days. Why not share them here?

The Flying Saucers Are Real: Donald Keyhoe, 1950

Written as a series of articles in TRUE magazine, in a racy first-person narrative full of crisp dialogue in the style of a private eye novel. Keyhoe sifts through the welter of sensational headlines and confusion in the wake of the Kenneth Arnold "sighting" in 1947.
A good survey of the Flying Saucer scene at the time, but he has a rather uncertain grip on what constitutes evidence, and a touching faith in the absolute accuracy and reliability of all the witesses in reporting what they thought they saw.

Behind the Flying Saucers, Frank Scully, 1950

Frank Scully's best-selling book which capitalised on the great Flying Saucer hysteria of time. It is largely based on the information supplied to Scully by two men later convicted of fraud, and it's full of incredibly wrong science (Pluto is the closest planet to the sun? I'm not kidding.)
It is the first "crashed alien space ship and dead aliens" conspiracy book. The tale the con-men told of the crashed saucer was intended to provide the two fraudsters with a "sucker list" of gullible people to sell their bogus "doodlebug" oil and gold detectors to. Whether newspaperman Scully was aware of this is still debated.

Is Another World Watching? Gerald Heard, 1953

Mystic Gerald Heard examines the evidence and concludes that the Flying Saucers are from Venus, and piloted by intelligent bees. (Gerald Heard wrote a number of detective novels, too, notably A Taste For Honey, featuring an elderly gentleman named Mycroft, who was raising bees on the South Downs.)

Flying Saucers have Landed: Desmond Leslie and George Adamski, 1953

In two parts, the first consisting of British Theosophist Desmond Leslie's long, rambling survey proving that the Flying Saucers are mystic "vimanas", as in the revealed sacred writings of the Theosophists.
The second part is brief: George Adamski's story of his encounter with a flying saucer and his conversation with its pilot, who was from Venus, but looked exactly like a human being. Has a selection of dubious photos of the "space ship".

Flying Saucers From Mars, Credic Allingham, 1954

A nifty riposte to the Leslie/Adamski book, in which Allingham demolishes the "vimana" theory, and then introduces his own conversation with another flying saucer pilot, this time from Mars, whom he met near Lossiemouth in Scotland. The fake saucer in Allingham's photos look just like the fake saucer in Adamski's. Unlike Adamski, Allingham includes an actual photo (taken in bad light) of the "Martian", walking away from the camera, who looks uncannily like an earthman.
Now known to be a hoax, perpetrated by TV astronomer Patrick Moore and his mate Peter Davies, perhaps to see just how gullible people could be. The answer? Very.
The photo of Allingham in the book is of Davies, wearing a false moustache and horn rim glasses, the same disguise he wore at Allingham's only public appearance.