<a href="http://strangeattractor.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/mod-a9.jpg" title="mod-a9.jpg"><img src="http://strangeattractor.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/mod-a9.jpg" alt="mod-a9.jpg" align="left" border="0" hspace="8" vspace="8" /></a>

Exciting news from Greg Taylor of <a href="http://www.dailygrail.com/" target="_blank">The Daily Grail</a> – a new edition of Jacques Vallee's 1979 classic of paranoid ufology, <a href="http://www.dailygrail.com/news/messengers-of-deception" target="_blank"><em>Messengers of Deception</em></a>. This re-issue has been lightly revised by the good Dr Vallee and is part of a series of classic fortean reprints planned by Greg.

The picture shows 'John Shepherd, who has established this UFO-detecting station in his grandparent's home... His equipment includes radar, sonar, scanners, and homing devices which attempt to track the "Aliens" he believes are studying the earth.'

<em>MOD</em> is a fascinating examination of the UFO subculture's sinister underbelly. Vallee considers the ways that the UFO mystery can be manipulated by those seeking to exert psychological and psychosocial control over marginal elements of society, and falls prey himself to the kind of controlled paranoia experienced by Robert Anton Wilson in his own<em> Cosmic Trigger</em>. Thirty years down the line we can see that Vallee was absolutely spot on with some of the concerns he expressed in <em>MOD</em>: amongst the groups he investigated were Bo and Peep, the 'Mysterious Two' who went on to lead the Heaven's Gate suicides two decades later.

<em>Messengers of Deception</em> and the work of Dr Vallee have had a profound influence on my own ufological explorations, and I'm sure this will be evident in the forthcoming <em>Mirage Men</em>. I'm also very happy to announce that late 2009 should see the publication of <em>Prodigies</em>, a new book by Dr Vallee and Chris Aubeck from Strange Attractor Press.

More on that in due course, but for the time being you can buy <em>Messengers of Deception</em> <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/097572004X/thedailygrail0c" target="_blank">here</a>.