Western Civilization

Since January 28, 1975, Eduard "Billy" Meier has been at the center of an intense international controversy both within the UFO community of supporters and between believers and skeptics. Meier contends that he is in direct personal contact with aliens from the star cluster Pleiades. He even claims to have flown aboard the Pleiadian spacecraft with his alien contact, "Semjase," visiting other worlds. To support these amazing claims, he has produced thousands of pages of "contact notes" along with photographs, film footage, and Pleiadian rock and metal samples. The aliens allegedly contact Meier at a commune in Switzerland called the Semjase Silver Star Center, which in many ways resembles a religious cult with Meier as its leader. . To help substantiate Meier's claims, his American supporters have subjected his photographs and samples to laboratory testing, touting the results as positive proof of Meier's honesty. Intrigued by this tantalizing story, renowned UFO researcher Kal K. Korff conducted his own in-depth investigation. Korff traveled to Switzerland, where he went undercover inside the Meier camp. The result is Spaceships of the Pleiades, a fascinating account of the most documented UFO case of all time, a work that includes many previously unpublished Meier photographs and evidence long suppressed by Meier and his supporters.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Nonfiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.