The first publication I put out was called the INTERPLANETARY NEWS SERVICE REPORT.I was big into the ET nuts and bolt theory in those days while now I am more of a "UFOs probably come from other realms and dimensions" sort of guy. Jerry Clark typed the stencils to one or two of the original issues and Lucius Farish was our Assistant Director. Gene Steinberg of TheParaCast.com was a friend as were a lot of teen researchers who have either vanished from the scene or gone on to become somewhat "legendary" in UFOlogy.

There wasn't much to read in those days - Amazon.com hadn't been invented. I'm not even sure its founder Jeff Bezos was born yet. Barns and Noble didn't exist and most of the independent book store owners never heard of UFOs or flying saucers as they were called way back when.

Major Donald E Keyhoe was the champion of the "serious minded""flying saucers are from outer space" brand of UFOlogist, while Frank Edwards gave em hell on the radio. But it was the Polish born George Adamski who first spoke of meeting Venusians and Martians. He was the "wild card" in the cosmic deck with some of the most amazing stories and truly unique photographs -- even if the "vehicles" they showed might not have originated from outside earth's orbit. To me, they didn't seem like trash can lids (to obvious), nor were they Frisbees as I don't know if a patent had been established on this fun fad as of 1953 when FLYING SAUCERS HAVE LANDED was first released by a publisher in the UK. For added sales appeal the publisher who had tacked on a very lengthy introductory section by Desmond Leslie a British Lord who seemed to back GA all the way. Leslie bought in the historical aspects of the topic and helped with the books credibility factor.

It should be noted that I never meet Mr Adamski . We had some limited correspondence and after his passing I shared an office and an apartment with his unofficial publicist Mr Harold Salkin who worked with Claire John editor of the Washington DC based Little Listening Post. They both ran a sort of Flying Saucer clearing house and Hotel near the Capitol where, to cut expenses, all the contactees stayed when they were in town. It made it easier for Clair to ghost write some of Adamski's material, and besides the two UFO insiders always liked to keep their ear pressed to the wall for an inside scoop,and so this gave them a golden opportunity to keep a watchful eye on the master of outer space and ET communications.

Over the years there has always been talk of a "lost" work that Adamski supposed did several years before his first "official" book that tells of a remarkable true tale of interplanetary travel. Ray Palmer, who was one of my mentors, said several times in his Flying Saucers From Other Worlds magazine that he believed that Adamski was well meaning, but that his story could not be true, because Adamski had once submitted to Palmer a manuscript in which GA claimed to have voyaged into space much like he insisted he had done in his much later, frequently criticized, Inside The Space Ships in which Adamski speaks of traveling to the planet Saturn.

Skeptics like Marc Hallet are by no means impressed with Adamski's many exordinary claims. Hallet insists that as GA's legend grew he simply adapted his earliest writings to his later proclamations.

"In fact, Inside The Space Ships is nothing more than a science fiction book. The best proof we have of this is that it is a "remake" of a science-fiction book entitled Pioneers of Space which Adamski wrote in 1949. That book was ghost written by Lucy McGinnis and is now exceedingly rare.

"To your surprise you will discover that these two books give exactly the same descriptions of space (with the fireflies), the Moon (with snow on mountains, forests, lakes, artificial hangers and even small running animals), the scout ship (with the great lens in the middle of the cabin and the graphs on the walls), the mother ship (with its two "skins"), and even little details such as the portrait of the Great One in the mother ship, the famous Saturnian badge with the balance, etc... You will also be pleased also to see that the Masters' pompous statements are exactly the same, something that demonstrates that Adamski had a poor imagination and was unable to create new or original philosophical concepts. His lack of imagination was so great that his book Cosmic Philosophy published in 1961 was mainly based on texts he had written in the '30s and that Alice K. Wells was stupid enough to publish again in her Cosmic Bulletin after Adamski's death. So, thanks to Mrs Wells, it is proved that Cosmic Philosophy was definitely not inspired by space people!"

For years I had been interested in obtaining Adamski's "lost" book Pioneers of Space, but the cheapest copy I could find was $625 and what UFO researcher has that kind of money to toss around? But my curiosity remained intact for years, and I had numerous requests from readers of my UFO Universe and UFO Review to, as a publisher, provide them with copies of this rare manuscript. This of course would be impossible to do since to reprint the book even in a small run of 500 copies would cost me an arm and a leg and it is debatable if that sizeable of an audience existed for a work of such limited appeal (after all Adamski had been deceased for over 35 years). With the advent of "print on demand" and the ability to scan out of print books I decided to take a chance on bringing back to print that which many of GA's followers and cynics clamored for.

But I wanted to do more than just restore a musty tome that would be like a march through "ancient history" to many modern UFOlogists who might not even know Adamski's standing in flying saucerology. After all, the contactees of yesteryear have given away to the abductees whose friendship with Adamski's Space Brothers leave something to be desired.

Pioneers of Space is a hefty book. Your not going to read it in one sitting. Now, if you asked me in all sincerity if there are similarities between this book and GA's follow up works, I would have to say "yes" and I would have to say "no." I haven't gone over both of them with a fine tooth comb, someone else with more time on their hands can do the line by line, page by page, comparison and present it to the world.

The book is about outer space and traveling to other worlds. But the similarities between Pioneers and Flying Saucers Have Landed and Inside the Space Ships seems minimal at best. After all we know - and no one denies - that Adamski was into an form of new age and eastern philosophy. He had been paling around with theosophists and other metaphysical types in California for years. In fact, and here is a scoop, many years before his clandestine meeting with the benevolent man from space, Adamski had founded a mystical organization called the Royal Order of Tibet, claiming that he had actually studied as a youth in the mysterious east. We pull no punches nor are we interested in covering up any allegiances Adamski might have had with the "spiritual" community. It seems in all truthfulness, that Adamski was drawn to this type of work. The first reference to Adamski's involvement with what some might term the occult goes back to 1930s.

AND HERE IS AN EXCLUSIVE!

While doing research for this updated version of Pioneers, we got an e mail from researcher and author Tim Cridland who had discovered in the archives of the Los Angeles Times an article that appeared about Adamski far a in April of 1934. Cridland is a member of the Shaver Mystery Yahoo group and so as members we all share information on line almost every night. Some people might consider this very early reproduction of a newspaper clipping to be a shocking revelation. After all, as his UFO career progressed, GA did seemed anxious to distance himself from any metaphysical trappings, placing his contacts into a purely physical, nuts and bolts category, . . .which of course, he could not very easily accomplish because the truth remains the truth, and here is a verbatim copy of that article from the LA Times.

The ten-foot trumpets of far away Lhasa, perched among perpetual snows in the Himalayan Mountains in Tibet, will shortly have their echo on the sedate hills of Southern California's Laguna Beach. Already the Royal Order of Tibet has acquired acreage on the placid hills that bathe their Sunkist feet in the purling Pacific and before long, the walls, temples, turrets and dungeons of a Lama monastery will serrate the skyline. It will be the first Tibetan monastery in America and in course of time, the trained disciples of the cult will filter through its glittering gates to spread "the ancient truths" among all who care to listen.

Inside the front gates, securely sheltered from the madding throng, feminine neophytes in flowing purple will wander through Elysian gardens, seeking to attune the inner being to the practical purposes and demands of a motorized world; men in golden garments with purple collars will endeavor to achieve through logic and science the blissful "mastery of self" which is at least one of the multi-featured goals of the Order of Tibet.

Those familiar with Laguna will instantly recognize the monastery site, for it is the Claude D. Bronner estate on Manzamita Drive. The beautiful dwelling, familiarly known as El Castillo Mio will be occupied by the parent group of the Tibetan Order, while the amphitheater, stage, temple, lecture halls, cell or chamber units and other buildings take form. The estimated cost of the project is $1,500,000 and when completed it will become the international headquarters of the order.

Headquarters are now in London.

Central figure in the new movement is Prof. George Adamski, sturdy, middle-aged. He is as strange as the cult he sponsors. Now he is an American citizen and served in the Word War, but as a child he lived in the ancient monasteries in Tibet and learned the law of the lamas.

His father was Polish, his mother an Egyptian. George Adamski, as first son, was destined to walk in religious lines. He studied them all and very nearly landed in a Catholic monastery, but his youthful ideas leaned so strongly to reincarnation that the move was not made. "I learned great truths up there on the roof of the world," says Adamski, "or rather the trick of applying age old knowledge to daily life, to cure the body and the mind and to win mastery over self and soul. I do not bring to Laguna the weird rites and bestial superstition in which the old Lamaism is steeped, but the scientific portions of the religion.

"The Order of Tibet acknowledges God and Christ. We hold to the basic thought of Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, to which are added the ancient law of Tibet. But our main object is the application of knowledge, just as Christian Science, Mental Science and other crystallizations of thought are primarily intended to put Christianity into everyday use."

Robes and ritual, Adamski admits, help the novice to set his feet firmly in the path he elects to follow. All churches have found this to be so. A uniform makes the sailor or soldier a different man, and so in the Laguna monastery the robes will be provided.

The symbol of the order is the twenty-four-point star. To ancient Tibet it represents the mystics or counselors grouped around God. The women at Laguna will wear a twenty-four-point yellow star and the men a similar pendant of pure white crystal. The decoration will be awarded after a successful three month's novitiate.

Inmates of the monastery will not be cut off from the world forever. In this respect, the institution will function more like a school. Students can come and go as they choose, though some will undoubtedly make their permanent homes there during the two-year course of instruction that will fit them to go forth as teachers and lecturers. By that time they will have come to understand self-evolvement and the Infinite Will.

Explorers returned from Tibet tell of isolated monasteries in which priests seeking utter purity and Nirvana in this life, to ensure perfect reincarnation, or, better still, direct mingling with the Ultimate without the necessity of more earth-lives, go into cells which are walled up.

There will be no self-imposed tombs at Laguna, but in addition to the amphitheater, stage and lecture halls, there will be isolated cells or "dark chambers" to which the student can retire to meditate or materialize a dream or ambition. In other words, the dark chamber will help carry out the Bible principle, "As ye think, so shall it be." When the monastery is fully completed, it will accommodate over 200 permanent residents and many hundreds of "at home" students.

Retyped by Sean Casteel for clarity, this article was originally found by researcher and author Tim Cridland. Cridland who has a website at: www.mindandmatter.net

It can be theorized, and this is what I believe, that GA's mental attitude was the proper one for him to be drawn into an alien encounter. There is no denying the fact that there is a psychic element to UFOs and even though Adamski tried to convince his followers that all of his contacts were of a strict physical nature, we cannot turn against the weight of evidence that there might have been some grand master "cosmic plan" for him that eventually enabled him to communicate with a Nordic-type UFOnaut in the desert. Not only did he have a metaphysical background, but he was no doubt absorbed in the idea of space travel and life on other planets (so were millions of other Americans during this period). He often gathered with friends to look for UFOs and to attempt to photograph them. This he seems to have successfully done as testified to by an article reproduced in the book which is from an 1951 issue of Fate magazine. In some ways its easier to accept these initial photographs taken through a telescope as they fly past the moon, then it is to totally believe in GA's much later pictures of dome-shaped and cigar-shaped mother ships.

Especially the one where his face can be seen in a porthole of the Venusian scout craft which looks like fraudulent via way of a very crude paste up job.

Believers and skeptics alike have always held a fascination with GA and his accounts of interplanetary travel and face to face contact with our brethren from the stars. And now with the release of the updated version of Adamski's Pioneers of Space they will have something additional to ponder.

Timothy Green Beckley is author of over 30 books and publisher of 200 more through his Inner Light/Global Communications. His most popular works include MJ -12 and the Riddle of Hangar 18, Mysteries of Mt. Shasta, Subterranean Worlds Inside Earth, Strange Encounters. He was editor of UFO Universe for 11 years and has combined his UFO Review with the Conspiracy Journal, a widely read publication. At invitation he spoke before a closed door conference at the House of Lords on UFOs, and is a frequent guest on such programs as Coast to Coast AM, the Paracast, Darkness Radio and Capt Jack's Paranormal Radio show. His research efforts go back to the mid 1960s when he appeared on the original all night talk show hosted by Long John Nebel where he first heard George Adamsk speak of his experiences.

Pioneers of Space is available at Amazon.com