extraordinary%20encounters

166 Martian bees
Once she translated a Russian manuscript in
the British Museum for Mark and Val, and at
other times she entertained them in her
home, finding them to be pleasant companions
with a good senses of humor and a love
of earthly food, wine, and music. She was
shown devices that projected holographic images
of their home planet, and once Val himself
showed up in holographic form.
The visitors told Joelle that they and their
associates had, indeed, contacted Adamski,
the best-known and most controversial of the
early contactees, but that he had proved untrustworthy,
revealing information he had
been given in confidence. After that they fed
him false information that they knew would
discredit him, and Adamski himself, frustrated
because the space people were drawing
away from him, began fabricating encounters.
See Also: Adamski, George; Contactees; Orthon
Further Reading
Adamski, George, 1955. Inside the Space Ships. New
York: Abelard-Schuman.
Good, Timothy, 1998. Alien Base: Earth’s Encounters
with Extraterrestrials. London: Century.
Martian bees
In one of the very first books on the then-new
phenomenon of UFOs, British writer Gerald
Heard offered a theory that even now, more
than half a century later, is a distinctive one.
Heard, who in 1950 was living in Los Angeles,
read an interview in the Los Angeles Times
with astronomer Gerard Kuiper. Though vehemently
anti-UFO, Kuiper thought it at
least possible that intelligent life existed on
Mars. He added, however, that conditions
there being what there were (or at least as they
were thought to be at the time), Martians
would likely be advanced insects of some sort.
Possibly, Kuiper was speaking humorously,
but Heard, a mystically inclined individual,
took him seriously. He proposed that just
such beings were piloting the flying saucers.
These superbees were “perhaps two inches
in length . . . as beautiful as the most beautiful
of any flower, any beetle, moth or butterfly. A
creature with eyes like brilliant cut-diamonds,
with a head of sapphire, a thorax of emerald,
an abdomen of ruby, wings like opal, legs like
topaz—such a body would be worthy of this
‘super-mind.’ . . . It is we who would feel
shabby and ashamed, and may be with our
clammy, putty-colored bodies, repulsive!”
The Martians had come to Earth, Heard
speculated, because they feared the effect humans’
aggressive ways and atomic bombs
could have on them. What if human beings
blew up the Earth and huge dust clouds cut
off the sun’s rays, turning Mars into an even
colder planet? It was also possible that Earth’s
“very powerful magnetic field” might generate
dangerous sunspots and send deadly radiation
into Mars’s atmosphere. Perhaps the superbees
were here in what amounted to a police action:
to stop us from causing further trouble
to them and to the rest of the solar system. So
far, however, Heard said, the Martians were
acting with remarkable patience, in the fashion
of “very circumspect, very intelligent gentlemen”
(Heard, 1950).
See Also: Allingham’s Martian; Aurora Martian;
Brown’s Martians; Hopkins’s Martians; Khauga;
Mince-Pie Martians; Monka; Muller’s Martians;
Shaw’s Martians; Smead’s Martians; Wilcox’s
Martians
Further Reading
Heard, Gerald, 1950. The Riddle of the Flying
Saucers: Is Another World Watching? London: Carroll
and Nicholson.
Mary
Mary is one of a number of extraterrestrials
who are alleged to have made appearances at
the annual Giant Rock, California, Interplanetary
Spacecraft Convention held between
1954 and 1977. In 1959, while attending the
convention, Harry Mayer observed mysterious
globes of light hovering over the runway
at Giant Rock’s tiny airport. As he was running
toward them, a pretty, young, blond
woman suddenly appeared in front of him,
put out her arm, and stopped him in his
tracks. Though she was barely more than five
feet tall, and Mayer was well over six feet, she