Despite years of research into the history of UFO studies, I’ve never seen a flying saucer. Neither has science journalist Sarah Scoles, author of They Are Already Here: UFO Culture and Why We See Saucers. But many people claim to have seen UFOs, and those witnesses stand by their experiences with a fervor that would make the Vatican envious. What motivates their devotion? What causes witnesses to attach such deep significance to the sightings and the places where they occur?
A view northwest along Nevada State Route 375, officially designated as the Extraterrestrial Highway due to its proximity to the US Air Force base commonly known as Area 51.
A view northwest along Nevada State Route 375, officially designated as the Extraterrestrial Highway due to its proximity to the US Air Force base commonly known as Area 51.
Scoles sets out to answer those questions in They Are Already Here. She is no stranger to subcultures exploring possible extraterrestrial life; her first book, Making Contact: Jill Tarter and the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (2017), examined a major figure in the scientific field devoted to that mission. In They Are Already Here, Scoles sets aside the perspectives of traditional scientists and focuses instead on the experiences of average Americans in and around some of the most well-known sites in modern UFO lore. Along the way, she explores the expectations, assumptions, politics, and cultures that lie beneath peoples’ UFO sightings.
The book begins by describing the 2017 New York Times exposé of the Pentagon’s “secret” UFO investigations, which were officially known as the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program. In the chapters that follow, Scoles introduces her audience to a wide array of places and people. We are taken to Area 51, Roswell, and the annual meeting of the International UFO Congress. We spend time with billionaire ranchers and with those barely making ends meet. We learn about studies of UFO phenomena by institutions like the US Air Force and outsiders like Tom DeLonge, the former Blink-182 front man turned UFO prophet. And we are introduced to organizations investigating UFO phenomena, like the Mutual UFO Network. The book ends where it began: with a sense of wonder at the strangeness of the universe.
They Are Already Here is more of a memoir than a study in history, sociology, or science. It tells the stories of people Scoles met on a pilgrimage through the American West to many of the hot spots of 20th- and 21st-century UFO lore. The author moves abruptly from theme to theme, place to place, and person to person. Although this stylistic choice sometimes makes for a disjointed reading experience, it accurately represents what it is like to work with such a colorful, diverse group of skeptics and believers. The result is a series of vignettes that offer a glimpse into the lives and beliefs of those in the UFO subculture.
For this reason, They Are Already Here doesn’t accomplish what it sets out to do. Scoles states in the introduction that the book is an effort to understand the nexus between UFOs and “the cultural, sociological, economic, political, and religious environments of whatever spot they inhabit in spacetime.” She wants to understand the socially and culturally contingent ways in which UFO sightings create meaning for witnesses, and why those experiences imbue UFOs themselves with such lasting power. Those of us who have engaged in serious academic study of 20th-century UFO phenomena will tell you what an ambitious project that is.
In the end, readers of Scoles’s book do not gain much insight into why people continue to believe that UFOs exist and are extraterrestrial in origin. Although we get a sense of the wide variety of beliefs held by witnesses, the book provides very little insight into how or why their positions and attitudes differ. Similarly, Scoles paints a rich picture of the spectrum of groups dedicated to studying UFO phenomena but doesn’t explain how these organizations were founded.
Despite those flaws, the book is a fun trip. They Are Already Here is a quick read, which is fortunate because it’s hard to put down. The text’s style and narrative benefit from Scoles’s journalistic training. She is generous and sincere with her subjects, who might otherwise be easily cast off as bizarre crackpots. The book is an immersive experience, and although it may not offer much in the way of analysis, it does more to humanize UFO witnesses than most other recent entries in the field.
Kate Dorsch is the acting associate director of undergraduate studies in the department of history and sociology of science at the University of Pennsylvania. She studies expertise in science and is currently working on a book about the history of scientific UFO investigations in 20th century America.
