Immagine dell'autore.
11+ opere 225 membri 4 recensioni

Sull'Autore

Comprende il nome: Pope Nick

Fonte dell'immagine: nickpope.net

Opere di Nick Pope

Opere correlate

Intruders in the Night (2000) — Prefazione — 1 copia

Etichette

Informazioni generali

Nome canonico
Pope, Nick
Data di nascita
1965-09-19
Sesso
male
Nazionalità
UK
Attività lavorative
UFO investigator
journalist
civil servant

Utenti

Recensioni

Comprehensive, but does not seem to flow very well. Parts of it are written very well, but in others the narrative falters.
 
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tarsel | 2 altre recensioni | Sep 4, 2022 |
There are two ways to read this book and your evaluation of how many stars out of five it deserves might change with the path you take. Nick Pope has attempted to explain a process (the decision points and responses that would really unfold), couched in a sensational drama (the make believe scenario of alien contact). As a reader, you’ll need a level of acceptance about mixing these threads together and patience to pick the real process out of the fable. This is quite a hard trick to pull off because no one likes a long information dump, yet superficial fantasy seems a waste of ink too, so blending input to a point where they are both acceptable and can be appreciated separately is not easy.

Approaching it purely as written entertainment, the story-telling style is perhaps a little stilted and memo-like early on, where I think I spotted a two word sentence beginning with ‘and’, suggesting the author got signed by the publisher as a prominent subject-specialist, with forgiveness that not everyone is born to write delicious prose and atmospheric description. The writing style does improve and dissolve into the background as the book moves into its stride, allowing us to enjoy the story. Any person who can write like a poet probably doesn’t have hard grounding in rare subjects to make their book realistic, so these things are always a trade-off. Generally, I suggest readers will have bought this because it is by Nick Pope (subject knowledge and insight, standing in the community) not because they were looking for a stonking thriller and don’t mind who the author is. There are better silver-tongued wordsmiths and writers of entertainment out there, but they can’t teach you anything new about reality, so here we are reading Nick Pope.

Approaching it as a fictional scenario designed to demonstrate the realistic stages of recognition, assessment and defence a country would go through if the remarkable were ever to happen, it does make headway through a rollercoaster of radar-screen decisions, military and ministerial meetings, civilian investigator and abductees trying to get in on the act and, of course, intrusive action initiated by the visiting species. Although the author was actually a civilian contractor when he worked for the Ministry of Defence (UK), the story was written very much from the point of view of a military-conditioned thinker. In other words, if you see something that you do not understand, would you perceive it as a potential threat until proven otherwise and let your mind turn to weapons? Perhaps that’s normal but it isn’t the only way to see the Universe.

History tells us that when two dominant species collide, one usually conquers and removes the other. The lion does not lie down with the lamb, unless the lamb is dead already. When humans move into a new territory (think undiscovered continent), the first thing they do is identify all the large predators that pose a threat and then hunt those to extinction. Well then, imagine an extra-terrestrial species arriving invasively into our ecosystem, where the obvious large predatory species to remove first is us. The small, harmless species would probably be left in peace but we can’t pretend to be that now because they’ve received our television signals. Should we be scared? That’s probably sensible. Voices in the scientific community have said we should not be broadcasting our existence to the Galaxy for precisely this reason, that the town ain’t big enough for the both of us.

Who knows how aliens think though? Maybe, as in the Douglas Adams novel, they would scream across the cosmos toward the target planet with a ferment of chaos and destruction on their minds but then be amazed, impressed and make peace after seeing all the cool discoveries we’ve made; Shakespeare and skateboards, the internet and philosophy, Bach or windows that open all by themselves when little trapped flies need to be let out. Weapons though – Safety first, right? The dictionary definition of safety doesn’t seem to mention it can only be achieved through superior firepower but I guess there are consequences for getting a handshake wrong even once. It could be sticky.

What about alien design in this? We are conditioned to think all species must have a head, eyes, central spinal access, four limbs, phalanges and a rib cage because that’s the shared all-Earth-animals design (all these species have the same common ancestor). Land mammals are also all within a limited size range due to local gravity. However, an alien species would not share that Earth common ancestor (unless they came from here and left, then diverged) and they would have evolved under different conditions and with different genetic building blocks. Therefore, the humanoid aliens in this book have a highly improbable design (evolutionary biological assessment) which flags as something that’s come out of the human experience/imagination. What’s happened here is that Nick has decided not to invent a new species but instead to take a casting call of the aliens people have reported seeing before, the most common type of which are the Greys. So, this story uses the convenient narrative shorthand of the Greys, slender and stretched human shapes with large eyes and no hair or melanin, rather than unveil any new proposal. It may now be commonly accepted that this is what aliens look like, so I shouldn’t contest it. I should drop that as a criticism because the purpose of this book is to show the stages of what would happen in response to any (generic) alien, so any design would be interchangeable to fulfil that role in the play.

I heard an interesting story about Typhoons, the operational front line for the Royal Air Force in this story. They were originally called Eurofighters during production because they were developed as a collaboration between several countries, but British focus groups understood the term ‘Euro’ to mean that they were an enemy aircraft that would be used against the British, hence the name being changed to Typhoon. Re-using old, renown and trustworthy names is an ancient tradition of the armed forces, with three separate aircraft called Typhoon, many ships called Ark Royal and the original Spitfire being a battleship at the Siege of Sebastopol in the Crimean War of the 1850s (see Our Sailors, by W.H.G. Kingston); and a US ship in 1814.

In summary then, this story assumes that radar early warning detection and air force responders would register overt alien visitors before anyone else (ok, more likely than most other options), although it also acknowledges incognito attempts by aliens to understand us, including abduction. It assumes that their actions would be unfriendly (quite possible) and their technology would be ahead of our own (fair enough – they got to us before we were capable of getting to them). The story acknowledges the H.G. Wells-style viral threat when any two groups converge, although not that this might be voided because only one side would have ACTG DNA and that’s an immunity block. It explains satisfactorily why the visitors would come back to the same geographical location (I’ve never understood why they would return to the same places on such a large planet).

There’s a nod at the disinformation of the Cold War in the implausible US explanation to the UK’s Prime Minister, just enough to make them hesitate, then it goes through the stages of comprehending the reason why the false explanation was given, the intention behind it. I also liked the question mark left hanging over this about whether supposed allies were genuine friends, collaborators or acting under duress. In other words the mystery was extended beyond what the aliens wanted, to include suspicion of human intentions at the governing level too.

The story has a snowballing sense of excitement to it, but you’ll probably enjoy that more if you like reading about The Battle of Britain or Midway, dogfights and tactics. Passive civilians might not form a strong attachment to these fighting characters, just as you can watch sports people and not care if one falls over. There is a good balance of male and female characters, so it does attempt to represent our species and not just the male half of the species plus love interest, which I’ve seen a lot of elsewhere.

I’ve written more of a list than a review, so should add that this story is enjoyable and it is a good exploration of the scenario, which keeps you guessing. It started slowly but then became harder to put down, certainly worth reading if you are interested to see one version of how events would unfold. There are no magical cloaking devices here, just normal physical reality stealth design, although someone seems to pass through a solid wall when described from their perspective (possibly as a result of their altered state of mind). Sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, so understanding their ‘magic’ stealth suggests our development isn’t too far behind theirs in some areas. There’s also an explanation relating to an energy consumption bar whereby only small vessels have FTL travel, although that’s left vague enough to prevent people like me asking pedantic questions around shape and mass in outer space encountering almost no difference in air-resistance. The visiting alien ships obviously have to operate in our atmosphere as well as in outer space, plus have a narrow radar profile, so that excuses their aerodynamic shape and the suggestion of wings. The mother ship though doesn’t enter the atmosphere, so could be a brick and more mass might need more energy to get up to speed and more energy to counter the momentum and stop. It depends on an unknown technology, so there’s no right or wrong.

I’ve changed my mind: There are three ways to view this book. The first is entertainment. The second is that Nick Pope wants to show what he predicts would happen, given his knowledge of systems, so has chosen to show that through a fictional scenario. The additional way is to see it in the context of the psychology of the individual. Nick’s reputation depends on him only saying what he knows professionally (not inventing anything or making far-fetched claims). He only discusses material which is no longer classified, respecting his promise not to divulge. He follows the sensible definition that unidentified flying objects are simply objects that have not yet been identified, so could turn out to be something every day like a dustbin lid. He has built a career (since leaving the MOD) on staying strictly between these lines of reality and objective assessment, acknowledging doubt instead of leaping to fanciful conclusions, e.g. if there is something unknown in our airways, we need to find out what it is for safety reasons. What I’m saying is that it is very tempting for someone confined to these rules of credibility for decades to speculate, to imagine, to have license to do the same thing everyone else does in the community of people interested in the possibility of extra-terrestrial life. So, I think this book is also a release valve for the author in which he can safely explore an act of imagination because it has ‘Work of Fiction!’ clearly signposted across it. Arthur C Clarke was a sensible engineer who chose to portray workable design and psychology ideas in fiction, although you’d still trust him as a practical engineer. This work achieves the same thing. It is one version of how alien contact could unfold, not lowering the author’s credibility, although with too many variables it is only one of many ways that contact might happen. We’ll never know until the clouds part.
… (altro)
 
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HavingFaith | Apr 1, 2019 |
Not a lot of folks take UFO's or UFO books seriously, but if you buy into it you can get what you want out of it. The Bentwaters Rendelsham Forest incident of course along with Rozwell is the UFO touchstone. If what happened here was in fact real and not some distant "lighthouse" it probably is the closest encounter we have on record, or not on record as the case may be. If you are a true believer this book will fill your fantasies I suppose. If you are on the fence it will keep you there. Despite a lot of pages many are fillers. Boring recounting of conjectured cover up and blase intrigue. I found the recapping of some other encounters more interesting than what it had to say about Rendlesham. So one is left with what one started with, maybe this was real, maybe not. It is doubtful at this we will ever know the truth, the book does not offer much more.… (altro)
 
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knightlight777 | 2 altre recensioni | Sep 12, 2015 |
One part of this book made me say a bad word. It blew my mind. I expected a standard UFO story (We've all heard hundreds, I have some of my own) but that was NOT what I got. Whoa.
 
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DanielleMD | 2 altre recensioni | Jun 20, 2015 |

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Statistiche

Opere
11
Opere correlate
2
Utenti
225
Popolarità
#99,815
Voto
3.1
Recensioni
4
ISBN
30
Lingue
1

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