The Seventh-day Adventist Church's UFO Investigation

An unlikely source for UFO history that time forgot... a six-part series from 1961 in a religious magazine, the Seventh-day Adventist Church's Review and Herald. It was written by the editor, Francis David Nichol, in his attempt to find answers for his readers. 

In addition to the motley array of saucer club enthusiasts, mystics, and spiritists, there are other people, genuinely good people, sincere, hard-working citizens, some of them religious folks—a few even in the circle of our church—who are greatly impressed by the reports of UFO's and who think that they may be manifestations of evil spiritistic power, a proof of the nearness of the end of the world. For such people we have a sympathetic concern, and wish to make explicit that we consider them in an entirely different category from the run-of-the-mill flying saucer enthusiast. In fact, it is because of the letters of inquiry from some of our subscribers that I have made this investigation and here publish the report of my findings. 

Nichol's quest to get to the bottom of the flying saucer mystery caused him to to travel to interesting places and meet memorable people from UFO history. Nichol examined the Contactee tales, travelled to NICAP headquarters, the Pentagon, and in Ohio, dug through the filing cabinets of Project Blue Book. 

Bellow is a listing of the articles and links to PDFs of the Review and Herald issues where they are found. 

March 23, 1961 Part 1 
"What About Flying Saucers?"

March 30, 1961 Part 2 
"An Interview With a Flying Saucer 'Traveler'" 
Nichol interviewed Contactee, Dan Fry, and also discussed the "weird claims" of George Adamski. 

April 6, 1961 Part 3
"The National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena"
Nichol traveled to the NICAP HQ and met Richard Hall. "I can frankly say, after visiting them in their office, that they seem like very normal people who are honestly seeking to do a job they think needs to be done. Unfortunately... very fine people can honestly proceed on mistaken premises, and this I think is the case with NICAP. "

April 13, 1961 Part 4 
"Air Force Intelligence and Flying Saucers"
Nichol visited the Pentagon, then Wright-Patterson AFB to meet with Major Robert Friend and examine Project Blue Book case files.

April 20, 1961 Part 5
"Air Force Explanations of Flying Saucers"

April 27, 1961 Part 6
"Some Flying Saucer Cases Examined" 
In the final installment, Nichol discusses some cases and end with his The present series of articles has sought to answer the one prime question:
"Are the UFO's supernatural, interplanetary entities? The answer I must give, in the light of present
knowledge, is that..." For the rest of that thought, you'll have to read the article.

Epilogue: 1966

May 26, 1966 
"From the Editor's Mailbag" 
Nichol returned to the UFO topic in reply to a reader's question about recent sightings.

Francis D. Nichol died in June 1966. 

There were no further Review and Herald articles on UFOs until 1969.

Epilogue: 1969

February 27, 1969
"UFO's - P.S." 
In an editorial following the conclusion of the UFO study led by Dr. Edward Condon, Review and Herald returned to Nichol's UFO study. Editor Kenneth H. Wood examined what relation UFOs have to Bible and the Spirit of Prophecy writings, but left us wondering saying, 

"Soon enough the mysteries that here perplex us shall be made plain." 

GE's UFO Lectures: Flying Saucers - Fact or Fancy?

The Post-Standard from Syracuse, New York Nov. 21, 1966, featured news of an upcoming UFO lecture by Edward J. Patrick, "Flying Saucers - Fact or Fancy?" A special thanks to Robert Barrow for sending us his clippings on this event he attended in Syracuse so long ago.

After the event, an article in the same newspaper summarized Patrick's lecture.

Syracuse Post-Standard, Dec. 1, 1966

Engineer Says Self-Styled Experts Cause UFO Mystery

Syracuse Post-Standard, Dec. 1, 1966

The fact that a GE engineer was speaking about UFOs added some respectability to things, and while he was skeptical, he did consider the topic worthy of discussion. One of Patrick's lectures was mentioned in NICAP's The UFO Investigator from Jan-Feb 1966, in the article, "Millions Learn of NICAP UFO Evidence." It was cited among their discussion of positive  attention towards the UFO topic.

Missiles, Space and Flying Saucers

General Electric was a big contractor for the US government, and their Missile and Space Division was working on military and aerospace projects such as guided missile technology, NASA's space re-entry vehicles and classified strategic programs. It's puzzling why they were involved in lectures on flying saucers. While researching the background on the original clippings, we found that Patrick's UFO lectures continued into 1968, but curiously, there were other lectures by the same name.

IEEE Almanack, April 1967,
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Philadelphia Section

Who was that unnamed GE scientist? This clip from Standard-Speaker, April 28, 1966 gives us a clue:

UFO Speaker's Name Listed Incorrectly
The speaker at Tuesday's Kiwanis Club... was Roland Swank, not Richard Socky, as previously published. Both men are employees of the General Electric Missile and Space Division, Mr. Socky was announced as the speaker and was unable to attend. Mr. Swank substituted for him and the Standard-Speaker reporter was not informed of the change. Mr. Swank's topic was "Unidentified Flying Objects."

GE's Missile and Space Division in Philadelphia had at least five people giving the "Fact or Fancy" lecture. Besides Edward J. Patrick and Roland Swank, the same talk was being given by Robert Hersch, Paul Usavage, and Eugene Rygwalski. Some of those guys formed their own UFO organization.

Swank's Systems Management Associates, Inc. 

The Philadelphia Inquirer, Nov. 20, 1966, had an article, "Flying Saucer Evidence Compiled by Engineers" by Stephen J. Sansweet that told how GE engineers Roland P. Swank, Gene E. Rygwalski and Robert L. Ewing got started. “They work for a large firm they prefer not to identified – because it has government contracts – and they fear of being pressured to stop their investigation."

Three engineers and about 30 other men, mostly scientist or engineers, have incorporated a group – Systems Management Associates, to gather data on what they call “Unidentified Observations."

Swank, the SMA spokesman, said his interest in UFOs was aroused in November 1961, when he and some co-workers or asked to speak on the subject. “If we were going to talk about UFOs, we felt we owed it to the public to find out what we were talking about," Swank said. Over the years the interest grew. Last February, 30 men formed the Organization for Scientific Analysis and Research. This was incorporated into the SMA two weeks ago.

The Philadelphia Inquirer, Nov. 20, 1966

Unfortunately the article does not name any participants beyond the three principals, so we can't know just who else from GE was involved in the SMA. We found that the group had been corresponding with Richard Hall, who wrote in NICAP’s Affiliate/Subcommittee Newsletter, March 9, 1966, “A Subcommittee consisting of General Electric scientists, engineers and technicians in Philadelphia is about to be approved. Co-chairman will be Eugene Rygwalski, (mathematician)..." However, we found nothing to show the group ever was formally connected to NICAP. An article in The Philadelphia Inquirer, Nov. 12, 1966, shows that SMA was not always backing winners:

Systems Management Associates co-sponsored in Philadelphia on Friday night the appearance of one of the world’s foremost trackers of flying saucers and assorted other  UFOs, Dr. Daniel Fry.

Roland P. Swank and other engineers from General Electric continued to lecture on UFOs all under the same title, "Fact or Fancy," at clubs, schools, churches - anywhere- through 1968.

Standard-Speaker, Hazleton, Pennsylvania April 23, 1966

The Pittsburgh Press, December 8, 1966

Delaware County Daily Times, November 11, 1967

Flying Saucer Company Policy

An article in Delaware County Daily Times,  October 8, 1968 stated,  "A series of lectures will be given by personnel of the General Electric Company's Missile and Space Division at the Rose Tree Media Adult School." The topics generally looked to what the future of technology would bring:  space exploration, computer use in industry, geology, weather satellite technology, and once again, Edwin J. Patrick lectured on "Flying Saucers - Fact or Fancy?," and it was noted that, "He has given more than 200 talks to technical and civic groups and is the author of an article on UFO's."

How far back did these GE flying saucer lectures go? A calendar of events in the Nov. 11, 1957 Aviation Week magazine showed a listing for one in Feb. 1958.

Feb. 19— "Are Flying Saucers Fact or Fancy?", Dr. Hugh Winn, Missile and Ordnance Systems Department, GE, Engineers Club, 1317 Spruce St„ Philadelphia, Pa. 

The Pennsylvania Villanova University newspaper documents a slightly earlier one, Dec. 3, 1957:

The Villanovan, Dec. 11, 1957

 The American Engineer from Nov. 1956 is the earliest version of the lecture we found.

“Flying Saucers—Fact or Fancy?” Asks GE Speaker 

At a recent meeting of the Valley Forge Chapter of the Pennsylvania SPE, Dr. Hugh Winn, General Electric Company, Philadelphia, Pa., gave an interesting talk to about seventy members and guests on the subject— “Flying Saucers—Fact or Fancy?” Dr. Winn, who works in the Special Defense Projects Department, opened his talk with a reminder that we have five normal senses, illustrating each with an example. From this he brought out the fact that some times our senses lead us to illusions— or thinking that something is—that isn't. He gave examples of instances where a person had reported seeing objects flying through space, but which could not be authenticated by other individuals. Dr. Winn told of flying objects that have been seen with the aid of scientific instruments, such as radar and the camera. The saucer-type objects which were seen for about five hours over Washington, D.C., in 1952 were judged by radar to be flying from 250 to 7,500 miles per hour, he said. On other occasions cigar-shaped objects with estimated speeds up to 21,000 miles per hour were reported. The saucer objects appeared to give off a bluish glow, Dr. Winn stated. There have been numerous written accounts of objects seen in the sky during the past 2,000 years, he said, and maybe flying objects are not new.

It's clear that GE's UFO lecture program inspired Swank's independent SMA group, but there was some significant overlap between them, at least up until 1968. After that, it seems the SMA was on their own and eventually fell on hard times. Delaware County Daily Times, May 14, 1976, reported on the end of Swank's UFO group:

The Unidentified Observation Reporting Center in Berwyn, after nine years of reporting sightings and the frustration of where to go and what to do next with them as forced it to close active operations. According to a spokesman at the Center, the work was begun in 1967 by a group of 45 scientists and engineers who found who soon found themselves faced with the riddle of how to prove the existence of something with no evidence. “We could determine the 'are nots,'" said the spokesman. "They are not helicopters, they are not spotlights, they are not planes, etc. But how can you say what they actually were. Where do you go from there?"

Despite the end of the Centers operations, Swank lectured on: The Daily Intelligencer from Doylestown, Pennsylvania on October 27, 1976, contained the last talk we located.

The program will be "Unidentified Observations--Fact or Fantasy" presented by Roland Swank. The subject of the UFO phenomena is one of increasing interest. Swank is a member of Systems Management Associates, Inc., whose prime function is the performance of scientific UFO investigations. Swank has been a systems evaluation engineer with the General Electric Company since 1950.

Beyond that, Roland Swank also continued to correspond with UFO colleagues at least as late as 1979, but his SMA group left few tracks and is now mostly forgotten.

GE: "Progress is our most important product."

We were unable to find much more about the origins of the General Electric lecture program, but have to wonder why it was promoted by GE's Missile and Space Division for fourteen years or so. The most curious thing is that the program seems to have thrown both some water and gasoline on the fiery UFO topic.

If any of our readers have more information on the GE UFO lectures or Swank's, Systems Management Associates, Inc., please send an update to us here at The Saucers That Time Forgot.

The UFO Anniversary and the Giant New York Convention of 1967

John Keel, Gray Barker and Jim Moseley

On the 20th anniversary of the historic Kenneth Arnold UFO sighting of June 22, 1947, there was an epic event to mark the occasion, the 1967 New York UFO Convention presented by Saucer News,
James W. Moseley and the Congress of Scientific Ufologists.

Some changes to the final programming were made by the time of the event. Kenneth Arnold himself decided not to attend, as did Ray Palmer. Other guests were added to the roster, most notably actor Roy Thinnes, star of the hit ABC television series, The Invaders, a show about a crusading flying saucer witness.

Donald Keyhoe and his National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomenon, disapproved of the convention including Contactees, and NICAP published an article in their journal, The UFO Investigator, before the event, condemning it.

The UFO Investigator, May-June 1967 (PDF)

Despite the condemnation from NICAP, the convention went on to be a hit, reportedly the largest indoor UFO convention at the time.

John Keel, lecturing to a packed house.

NICAP did get in a word after the show, though in the forma of a newspaper article by the director of their Connecticut faction.

George W. Earley (circa 2007)

George W. Earley at the time was president of NICAP-CONN, the Connecticut Affiliate of the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomenon, and employed as Aerospace Administrative Engineer at United Aircraft. He wrote an unfavorable review of the NYC saucer convention for the Hartford Courant, July 9, 1967:

"Hippies, Old Ladies, Over 30 Types Orbit in Flying Saucer Circles."

Hartford Courant, July 9, 1967

When James Moseley, congress chairman and publisher of "Saucer News," opened the Saturday session, a surprise guest was discovered in the audience Dr. Edward U. Condon.

A hard-nosed approach to saucer spotting was taken by James Randi, a radio - television personality who has been a UFO buff for many years. The amateur astronomer snapped: "I'm getting damned tired of sitting on a cold car bumper at 4 a.m. waiting for Venus to rise so some fool can tell me it is a flying saucer."

"You people," he said "have got to stop believing everything you are told. There are liars and frauds among us right now, but in among all the trash and nonsense perpetrated in the name of ufology, I think there is a small grain of truth."

The Fall 1967 issue of Moseley's Saucer News carried photographs from the convention, may of them contributed by George W. Earley himself.

For more on the historic 1967 convention, see the article by Rick Hilberg,
"Jim Moseley's Giant UFO Show" at
https://www.jimmoseley.com/jims-greatest-hits/

and

Saucer News NYC Convention Memories a photo essay by Karl Machtanz

The Ufologists That Time Forgot: Wade Wellman

Manly Wade Wellman, Jr. was born November 13, 1939, the son of a giant, the noted fantasy and science fiction author Manly Wade Wellman. His father's work included contributing to magazines such as the legendary Weird Tales alongside H.P. Lovecraft,  C.L. Moore and Robert E. Howard. The son, instead of using his full name,  he went by Wade Wellman, perhaps to try to create his own identity and step out of his father's shadow.

Weird Tales, Nov. 1943

A Rising Star

1958, from his senior year at Chapel Hill High School

In the early 1960s as a college student, Wade Wellman had a serious interest in UFOs, and was an active member of the National Investigations Committee On Aerial Phenomena, (NICAP). He was passionate about the topic and corresponded as an advocate to promote Congressional hearings into the study of UFOs, writing to people and institutions such as US Congressmen and Time magazine.

NICAP's UFO Investigator, Oct. 1961

The Daily Tar Heel, the student newspaper for the University of North Carolina carried Wellman's series of articles on UFOs which included key case information and a discussion of the credible- and incredible literature on the topic- which he was very critical of. 

The Daily Tar Heel, Sept. 21, 1960

A Cyclopean amount has been written on flying saucers since the first modern reports in 1947. The balance of this is crackpot writing which gets most of the attention and deserves none of it. There is, for instance, George Adamski, who claims to have flown with people from Saturn. Or Frank Scully, who says the saucers are ships from Venus. Or Gerald Heard, who, in an undeservedly famous book entitled Is Another World Watching, credits the saucers to super bees from Mars. And, of course, there are always the perennial claims of personal contact with people or semihuman monsters from other worlds — and, perhaps worst of all, the ridiculous term "flying saucers," a hindrance to any real study. 

Yet, despite the flood of nonsense which seems deliberately calculated to rob the subject of thoughtful attention, there are innumerable people who have seen real UFO's (Unidentified Flying Objects) and who won't be duped by the crackpot writers, or by the hollow USAF denials, or by the sneer: "He says he saw a flying saucer." 

Archive of The Daily Tar Heel, with Wade Wellman's UFO columns.

Wellman took the topic seriously, and also wrote about the effort by NICAP and others to petition the US government to investigate the UFO matter more thoroughly. In a postscript to the series,  he wrote an article about his first visit to NICAP's office and his meeting with the director, Donald Keyhoe and assistant, Richard Hall.

NICAP was the conservative end of the saucer spectrum, but Wellman also wrote for the UK's Flying Saucer Review, which was far more tolerant of the kind of Contactee "crackpots" that he and NICAP thought were keeping the UFO topic on the marginal fringes. Wellman's articles were much more grounded, and despite his youth, his work was appearing alongside writers like John Keel and Jacques Vallée. His FSR articles included:

Extra-Solar UFOs, March-April 1962
The UFO Sledgehammer, Jan-Feb, 1963
Phobos and Deimos, May-June 1963
The Psychology of Scepticism, Sept-Oct. 1963
Two Types of Scepticism, May-June 1965 
Sense and Speculation, Sept-Oct. 1965

Another thing that shows Wellman's earnestness about to the UFO topic was his contentious correspondence with the notorious UFO skeptic and debunker, Harvard Astronomer, Dr. Donald Menzel. Among the UFO correspondence in Menzel's files, Wellman's letters are there alongside names like Hynek, Sagan and Keyhoe.

American Philosophical Society, Menzel's UFO papers

According to Michael Swords, the exchange was a running debate by mail, one of "barely controlled civility." Swords says, "Wade Wellman and Donald Menzel resorted to introducing their letters to one another with 'Dear Duck' and 'Dear Weedy, referencing Wellman smoking pot, after a few exchanges---Menzel started this 'upmanship' by the way." Wellman thought Menzel was in denial of the extraterrestrial reality. In his article, on Menzel, "The UFO Sledgehammer" in the Jan-Feb, 1963, Flying Saucer Review, Wellman wrote, 

"It seems regrettable that so great an astronomer cannot leave the door open wide enough to back out gracefully when the full truth emerges. If our first landings on the moon run up against alien bases, Dr. Menzel may find his position slightly embarrassing."

Menzel and Wellman shared another interest besides UFOs; their love of fantastic fiction. Menzel contributed the cover for the issue of Galaxy magazine that also featured Wellman's poem, "The Martian Surface." It was a collaboration of sorts. When Menzel introduced it elsewhere, he wrote, "The following sonnet, written at my suggestion by Wade Wellman, interprets Martian life as we may expect to find it."

Galaxy, Sept. 1969

Graduating college seems to have cut into Wellman's UFO research time, but also he had other interests including, literature, writing poetry, space exploration, vampires, fantasy and science fiction. His 1963 thesis for the University of North Carolina, was titled '"Literary Treatments of the Vampire." Wellman graduated from UNC in 1964 with a Master of Arts degree, and in 1965 he was an instructor in English at the University of Wisconsin–Stevens Point. In 1967, he was an English instructor at Boise College in Idaho, and he published a 131-page collection of his poetry, November Wind, from Golden Quill Press.

An awkward visit to the UK

In late 1966, Wellman visited the UK, and part of his trip there was for the purpose of examining UFO files. At his site devoted to writer John Keel, Doug Skinner published some information on Wellman's visit to the UK home of Charles Bowen of the FSR:

Many readers of The Mothman Prophecies will remember a disturbing “Man In Black” named “Tiny,” who visited a family in New Jersey in 1967. (It’s in Chapter 8, if you want to look it up.) John sent a detailed report of this encounter to other researchers shortly after it happened... One of these researchers, Charles Bowen (the editor of Flying Saucer Review), wrote back to say that Tiny reminded him of an unpleasant UFO buff who had visited him the year before.

Bowen's letter to Keel about the visit states: "In November I received a letter from Wade Wellman who announced that he was flying over to England to do research in the British Museum (checking on a manuscript about vampires!)." Wellman arrived on Dec. 10, 1966, and Bowen found the large young man to be very strange, both in appearance and behavior. "He often broke into poetry... reciting it as though he had learnt it computer fashion. He drank the best part of a bottle of my Martini & got himself well sloshed — & ranted on about poor misunderstood Hitler etc. etc... I thought he was a schizo." The next day, when Wellman finally got around to asking to see FSR's UFO files, Bowmen lied, saying they were at his office in order to get rid of him.

Apparently Wellman had not been able to afford the trip himself and it was financed by his parents. Sadly, this episode seems to show that there were serious problems early in his adult life.

Flying Saucers Farewell

The end of the 1960s was a rough time for the UFO business. As Don Berliner explained, in 1967, NICAP had about 14,000 members, but trouble was coming. Assistant Director Richard Hall left NICAP, and the negative conclusions by Dr. Edward Condon's University of Colorado study on UFOs paved the way for the closure of Project Blue Book.

Regarding Wellman's warning about finding alien bases on the moon, we don't know how he reacted to this cartoon, but it appeared in the newspaper above an editorial that set him off.

Pat Oliphant cartoon as published in the Dubuque Telegraph Herald, Jan. 17, 1969

The Iowa newspaper, the Dubuque Telegraph Herald, Jan. 17, 1969, carried an opinion piece by William Hines, "UFO Buffs Launch A Paperback Barb." Hines' key points:

• If a person is absolutely certain that John F. Kennedy's assassination was the work of a conspiracy, or that the earth is flat, or that flying saucers come from outer space, no study however scientific and no report however official will ever persuade him to the contrary. 

•  The other day (Donald) Keyhoe called a news conference at Washington's National Press Club to trumpet his objections to the Condon report and –  ever so incidentally – to plug a paperback book just published by a colleague.

•  Keyhoe's dissent to the Condon report was the usual farrago of insinuation allusions and almost -truths that reporters have grown accustomed to at NICAP press conferences.

• Leave the Keyhoes to the boob tube, the paperback shelves and the barbershop reading racks, and keep them out of the science classroom. Then perhaps we will all muddle through somehow after all.

The article caught Wellman's eye. He saw it as a "furious attack on Donald Keyhoe," and his scathing reply was printed four days later.

Dubuque Telegraph Herald, Jan. 21, 1969

Things didn't go Wellman's way. Don Berliner on how the Condon report heralded the end of an era:

"...public interest dissolved. NICAP's membership rolls shrank, the bank balance dwindled and operations had to be cut back. In the summer of 1969, with the membership already down below 8,000, there was a 50 percent cut in staff... The closing of the Air Force investigation seemed to have killed public interest." 

Donald Keyhoe, under pressure from the board of directors, resigned from NICAP.

Fantasy and Science Fiction

Wellman's UFO writing had trailed off in the 1960s, but into the 1970s, he wrote poetry, essays and stories for fantasy and science fiction magazines, much of it in the dark spirit of Weird Tales, while other poems looked to the wonders of outer space. His best-known work is the collaboration with his father on a series of Sherlock Holmes science fiction stories that pit the detective against H.G. Wells' Martian invaders from The War of the Worlds. In the resulting 1975 book, Sherlock Holmes' War of the Worlds, Wellman explained how the project came to be:

I suddenly began to ask myself—wondering, indeed, why I had never thought of it before—how Holmes might have reacted to H. G. Wells's Martian invasion. I determined to write a story on this subject and, since I am primarily a poet, felt obliged to ask for assistance. My father agreed to collaborate, suggesting that another Doyle character, Professor Challenger, be included. Our collaboration, "The Adventure of the Martian Client," was published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction for December, 1969.

The magazine introduced Wellman as "a published poet who is presently professor of English at Clarke College (Iowa)." The first story was followed in March 1972, by "Venus, Mars, and Baker Street," and a third in May 1975, "Sherlock Holmes Versus Mars." With those three stories and some additions and revisions, it was published in September of 1975 by Warner Books.

Sherlock Holmes' War of the Worlds had mixed reviews, and the Wilson Library Bulletin called it a "collision of Baker Street and outer space," but the premise alone captured the imagination of many readers around the world. The book was translated and published abroad,  and more recently, reprinted as The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: War of the Worlds in 2009. The book made a lasting impression. It can be said that The War of the Worlds was the first UFO story, so it's fitting that Wellman called in the ultimate detective to investigate on the case.

His Last Bow

Wade Wellman seems to have dropped out of Ufology about the time NICAP withered, but he was heard from again about twenty years later, in a call to CUFOS. Jerome Clark, UFO historian, wrote, 

"I spoke with him on the phone once, probably in the early 1990s, when I was at the Center for UFO Studies office in Chicago researching my UFO Encyclopedia. Wellman called... He told me he was living in Milwaukee and working... I knew who he was — he wrote some essays for FSR, and I was aware he was Manly Wade’s son — and I recalled Charles Bowen’s story, which he’d related to me not long after the notorious encounter. So I was on my guard. Wellman seemed normal enough, however. I don’t recall much of the substance of the conversation, except that one point he expressed admiration for Donald Keyhoe’s prose."

There's more than a hint that Wellman suffered from some mental health and chemical dependency problems, but it's not clear just when it all began. The 1960s were a tumultuous time that included a lot of young people radically experimenting with drugs and sex, and it's worth noting that few stories about dark poets have happy endings. Wade had a troubled relationship with his parents, and reportedly, treated them horribly. Apparently, the Wellmans loved Wade and continued to support him financially, but disapproved of his personal life. 

Wade's father died in 1986, and his mother Frances died in 2000. In a tribute to Manly Wade Wellman, fantasy fiction scholar Steven R. Trout wrote that, "Manly’s own son Wade seems likely to have been a disappointment to him, as David Drake reports he was living in a 'charity hostel' because of substance abuse issues at the time of his mother’s death." 

A Postscript

When the first Holmes vs the Martians story appeared in the Dec. 1969 Fantasy and Science Fiction, it included an epilogue by Wade Wellman, "A Postscript by the Junior Collaborator." He described how he concieved the idea for the story, but his final two paragraphs touched on the UFO topic.

The depth and magnitude of Wells's idea is increasingly relevant as the years go by. It seems to me that the UFO's may well represent a technology as far above human civilization as we are above the communities of jungle animals. Their observations of the earth might be likened to a zoological team observing zebras in the jungle. Again, a human being watching a UFO hover in the air may be in the position of a baboon watching a hovering helicopter. I strongly suspect that this is the case. But, whatever the reality behind the UFO's may be, I feel that our emergence into space must inevitably, at some time, bring us into contact with "minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish," to quote again from Wells's own text. We must not refuse this challenge, but even so I am disturbed by the efforts now being made to signal other worlds. Years ago an unnamed space scientist was quoted as saying that, to certain alien races, we might be "the finest beef animals." He knew his H. G. Wells, and that his warning was unheeded is a reproach to the poor alertness of his colleagues.

In any case, the conquest of space and the UFO surveillance are the beginning of events which will broaden our horizons tremendously, whatever their final outcome. It is for this reason that every thinking person should study Wells's original idea and apply its significance and implications to our own time.

-WADE WELLMAN  

The later version published introducing the Holmes book dropped all references to UFOs.

Wellman had recommended the writing of Otto O. Binder (science fiction, comic book and UFO author) in his angry 1969 reply to the Dubuque Telegraph Herald, and Binder dedicated his 1972 historical fiction novel, The Forgotten Colony, "To Wade Wellman for the new light he shone on Benedict Arnold and his military genius."  Binder remembered him again in another book. Mankind: Child of the Stars was a 1974 non-fiction book exploiting the "Ancient Astronauts" fad. It carried an introduction by Erich Von Daniken, with his name appearing on the cover above that of the authors, Max H. Flindt and Otto O. Binder. A poem by Wellman opens the book, possibly his last published words on the UFO subject.

To the Authors 

We search with humbled thoughts and reeling brains 

For stellar footprints, cosmic legacy, 

For signs of visitors from distant lanes 

Who bred this race in dim prehistory, 

And wonder if these watchers of the earth, 

These strange observers from a stranger port, 

Evolved us from the brutes to foster mirth, 

Created us in fancy and in sport. 

The mighty structures of a dateless age 

That hold their stories thoughtfully concealed 

May still become an open lamplit page 

In which these riddles show themselves revealed; 

And we, who strive to open and to rob 

The secrets, face the laughter of the mob. 

                                                      – WADE WELLMAN