The strange, but true biography of the colorful founder of Saucerian Books, a central purveyor and promoter of flying saucer and conspiracist knowledge in the mid-twentieth century.
The Saucerian: UFOs, Men in Black, and the Unbelievable Life of Gray Barker
Link to book at MIT Press
Hardcover
ISBN: 9780262049542
Pub date: April 22, 2025
Publisher: The MIT Press
358 pp., 6 x 9 in, 21 b&w illus.
Gray Barker (1925–1984) was an eccentric literary outsider, filled with ideas that were out of step with the world. An author and unreliable narrator of implausible stories, Barker founded and operated Saucerian Books, an independent publisher of books about flying saucers and other ideas at the fringes of popular discourse. In The Saucerian, Gabriel Mckee tells the fascinating story of Barker’s West Virginia–based press, the unique corpus of materials it published, and how office-copying and self-publishing techniques influenced the spread of paranormal beliefs and conspiratorial worldviews over the last century. Following the development of UFO subculture, Mckee explores the life and career of a larger-than-life hoaxer and originator of pseudoscientific ideas.
Ever an entertainer, Barker established his reputation with one of the first flying saucer fanzines, The Saucerian, and with his first book, the conspiratorial and sensationalistic They Knew Too Much about Flying Saucers. By the close of the 1950s, he had established a publishing imprint that brought out some of the strangest UFO-related books of the era, with a particular emphasis on flying saucer contactees. Saucerian Books became a platform for those whose stories were too unusual, implausible, or crudely written for more mainstream publishers. Though Barker himself was a skeptic, he viewed the world of occult believers as a source of ongoing entertainment. He also may have used the perceived eccentricity of flying saucer research, or “ufology,” to obscure his homosexuality from his small-town neighbors. From his place on the fringes of midcentury American culture, Barker left an unmatched legacy in conspiratorial concepts that have become prominent pop-cultural folklore, including the Men in Black, the Mothman, and the Philadelphia Experiment. As a mastermind behind the fantastical, Barker’s promotional efforts were the precursor to contemporary conspiracism.
- “A welcome biography of one of the great American eccentrics that explores how the flying saucer craze transformed from fringe fad to key underlying beliefs and fears of contemporary US society. A marvelous work, as entertaining as it is enlightening.”
—Jack Womack, author of Ambient and Flying Saucers Are Real! - “Written with a folklorist’s attention to narrative power, a historian’s attention to subculture, and an archivist’s attention to media, The Saucerian is a sharp and illuminating jewel of ufology studies.”
—Erik Davis, author of High Weirdness: Drugs, Esoterica, and Visionary Experience in the Seventies - “An impeccably sourced, deeply affecting portrait of the man behind many of the “UFO” tropes that are deeply embedded in American popular culture—a man whose story and contributions have been overlooked for too long.”
—Aaron Gulyas, author of Extraterrestrials and the American Zeitgeist; host of the podcast The Saucer Life - “The Saucerian offers a crucial, funny, and engaging theoretical lens through which to understand the UFO phenomenon, making it essential reading for anyone seriously interested in this fascinating and mysterious topic.”
—Diana Walsh Pasulka, author of Encounters: Experiences with Nonhuman Intelligence and American Cosmic: UFOs, Religion, Technology