Esther J. Hamori – God’s Monsters (2023)

Review by Justin Tate

Found this book on the short-list for a Bram Stoker award. The premise of closely reading the Bible’s monstrous sections, and specifically the numerous occasions where God acts like a monster, intrigued me.

Even as a child, I found the religious interpretation of God as “Holy, Holy, Holy” inconsistent with the same dude who murders all of Job’s family on a gamble with the devil. It’s also God who sends multitudes to Hell, not the devil. It’s God who “hardens” Pharaoh’s heart and then punishes him for it. King Herod is the one who kills a bunch of firstborn children, the vile beast! But oh wait, God did the same thing. What’s up with all the murder and manipulation? Is Christianity nothing but mass Stockholm syndrome?

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Raymond A. Palmer – The Real UFO Invasion (1967)

Review by Justin Tate

With alleged revelations that the US Government has, for decades, been secretly reverse-engineering actual alien spacecraft and is even in possession of non-Earthly “biologics,” it seemed worthwhile to revisit UFO conspiracies from yesteryear.

Few were more prominent in the field during the 1940s-1960s than Raymond A. Palmer. He was quick to ask tough questions on the front line of famous sightings. To be fair, however, many of these UFO encounters became famous only because of his effective sensationalism. As editor of the popular sci-fi magazine Amazing Stories and then Flying Saucers, a periodical devoted to the documenting, researching, and reporting of “factual” unexplainable encounters with flying objects, he had a megaphone (and conflict of interest) to assure public obsession with UFOs remained high.

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