REVIEW OF "LIGHT YEARS"

               SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE - JUNE 21, 1987


     During and  after a 1947 wave  of UFO sightings, an  unofficial collusion
between the U.S.   Air Force and the  press resulted in tainting  the study of
UFO phenomena.

     At best, studies  of UFOs were considered pseudo-scientific  and at worst
in the  realm of occultists and  kooks.  Respected scientists became  leery of
having  their  names  associated  with UFO  investigations,  and  accounts  of
human-alien  contact ("The  Interrupted Journey";  "Intruders: The  Incredible
Visitations at  Copley Woods"), while credible,  have not stood up  under hard
scientific analysis.  So far,  because of lack of solid evidence,  it has been
easy for "experts" to dismiss most UFO cases as the result of suggestion, mass
hallucination, misidentification or hoax.

     Now  here is  "Light Years:  An Investigation  into the  Extraterrestrial
Experiences of Eduard Meier,"  by Gary Kinder, the account of  a UFO case that
has yielded analyzable artifacts.  It is  the story of a Swiss farmer-laborer,
Eduard  Meier,  who   claims  to  have  had  over  a   hundred  contacts  with
extraterrestrials from  the Pleiades star  system.  According to  Meier, these
contacts  would occur  after  he'd been  signaled telepathically  to  go to  a
meeting place, and they occurred voluntarily, as  he'd been chosen as a "truth
offerer."

     Meier  took hundreds  of photos  of  the spaceships,  some 8-  millimeter
films, made sound  recordings of the "beamships" and  gave investigators metal
samples he claimed  were given to him  by his primary contact,  the human-like
female, Semjase.

     What happened to  all of this "hard" evidence comprises  the greater part
of this account.  Meier's case is something like  a dog that emits a meow, but
no one can prove it  isn't a dog, and no one can prove  it's a cat.  According
to Kinder,  Meier's photos have  not been proven  fakes (although he  has been
known to fake at  least one), his sound recordings have  not proven capable of
being duplicated  by experts in  the field and  his metal sample,  analyzed by
Marcel  Vogel, then  a research  chemist with  IBM, proved  to be  a rare  and
unearthly compound in  initial tests but mysteriously  disappeared before more
thorough testing could be done.

     But  Meier's credentials  as an  interplanetary conduit  - a  man with  a
prison record, little  education and a sense  of "mission" - are  not the only
thing about Kinder's account  that seem shaky.  While Meier kept  a journal of
all his  contacts, Kinder relays  little of the  information in it,  giving us
some  quotes from  Semjase's  Edgar Cayce-  like warnings  about  the lack  of
spiritual development among the human species.

     Even  the most  casual reader  can't help  but  think: To  tell us  this,
someone has  traveled millions of  light years?  What does this  Semjase, more
specifically, look like? What does she eat? If her mission, and Meier's, is to
inform us of the  existence of extraterrestrial life, then why  not a photo of
the visitors themselves?  Why didn't Kinder ask these questions  of Meier? Why
didn't Meier  make sound  recordings of his  conversations with  Semjase (who,
according to  Kinder, although she  can communicate telepathically,  speaks to
Meier in German so  he can understand), and why couldn't  Meier obtain another
metal sample?

     The questions  are many, and that's  if you ignore the  curious situation
that in Chapter Four  we find Meier in India back in  1964 giving an interview
to a newspaper reporter in which he claims he's already visited another planet
in a spaceship, while in a later  chapter we're given the account from Meier's
journals of his "first"  visit in 1975 with a Pleiadian as it  took place in a
Swiss meadow.

     Yet the fact remains,  as the jacket cover of "Light  Years" claims, that
Meier's photos have not  yet been proven fakes, nor were  the sound recordings
or the  one metal  sample.  And while  the author could  have spent  twice the
amount of time  on the investigation and  in the interest of  objectivity have
presented more of Meier's journal writings,  regardless of how incredible they
may  be,  this account  serves  an  important  purpose.  It  demonstrates  how
completely inadequate our scientific and  military institutions are in dealing
with UFO phenomena even when they do yield solid, analyzable evidence.

     As in  the '50s and  '60s, government  officials still often  insist that
sightings of  UFOs by  experienced pilots -  an example is  the sighting  by a
Japan Airlines pilot last November of three UFOs that followed his plane - are
cases  of  mistaken  identification  of planets  for  UFOs.   Meanwhile,  some
reputable scientists like Carl Sagan are  saying that the probability of there
being other sentient beings in the universe is great.

     Then  there  are some  ufologists  like  George  C.  Andrews  (author  of
"Extra-Terrestrials  Among Us"),  who  claim that  the  Pentagon  has come  to
believe that  indeed there is  something "out  there" and, fearing  a possible
invasion by extraterrestrials, has pushed for the Star Wars defense system for
that reason.   Myself, I  like to  remember that  just because  Eduard Meier's
story isn't believable, that doesn't mean it isn't true.