Passport to Magonia: From Folklore to Flying Saucers

This is not science fiction but a turning point in the study of UFOs. Vallée, a French-born astronomer and computer scientist, set medieval accounts of fairy abductions, changelings and religious apparitions side by side with modern flying-saucer reports and found the plots eerily alike: small humanoid beings, distorted time, witnesses frozen in place. From there he questioned whether the popular idea of a metal craft from another planet was simply too narrow, proposing instead that the phenomenon recurs across history, dressed in whatever cultural costume its era supplies. The title nods to Magonia, a sky-realm from a ninth-century legend, and the subtitle — "From Folklore to Flying Saucers" — states the whole argument in five words. ^[1]