"What Would You Say to a Naked Space Alien?" - My New Book

A spaceship lands on a farm in Georgia and a female alien walks out towards the young man watching in a field. She soon removes her clothes to reveal a humanlike body and he is convinced to do the same and they make 50 human-alien babies. If a naked alien approached you, what would YOU do?

That is the story that inspired me to write my new book, “What Would You Say to a Naked Space Alien?” and one of the questions I ask myself and the readers as I explore some of the strangest and funniest alien encounter stories I collected in my years of writing for Mysterious Universe. Regular readers know that my motto is “the mysterious doesn’t have to be serious” but my job is always to first present the account of the witnesses claiming a UFO sighting or alien visit. However, my motto reflects my many years as a comedy writer and I knew that someday I would have a way to have fun with these stories. The solution was to imagine what I would say if the encounter happened to me, offer the opportunity for readers to do the same, and remind all of us that extraterrestrials may not be coming here to conquer us – they may be coming in peace, but not in clothes.

“They look out of this world – but do you have any that are gluten free?”

That’s what I might say if I were in the shoes of a farmer in Wisconsin who was visited by aliens requesting a bucket of water. They took the pail back to their ship and a short while later brought the farmer a plate of hot waffles.  Would you accept them if this happened to you? He did, and even tasted one. Would you offer some eggs and milk? That might be a mistake if the aliens don’t eat the embryos of other species or drink from their unusual appendages – you could end up turning breakfast into an intergalactic war!

“If you know something about inflation, you arrived just in time.”

If I met an extraterrestrial who looked like the Michelin Man mascot of the famous tire company, that thought would certainly cross my mind as a way to break the ice with a little humor. Aliens shaped like Michelin Men have been reported in France, Brazil, the U.S. and other countries, so we might want to be prepared for them. What will they think when they see what looks like their friends attached to our cars? Or locked in the trunk? Will they understand we’re just trying to make a joke when we ask if they’re having a ’good year’?

‘Scuse me, but I really can kiss the sky.”

The book has a number of stories about aliens and UFOs visiting rock stars, including John Lennon (who himself was naked at the time), most of the Rolling Stones, and Jimi Hendrix, who sometimes hinted at being an alien himself and told of a funny encounter early in his career of a spaceship appearing before him and his band while they were driving home in a blizzard and melted the snow in front of them so they could avoid an accident. Were they future fans of Jimi? Did they also influence the career of Elvis Presley, whose father claimed he saw UFOs over the house where Elvis was being born? If you’re not all shook up about aliens liking rock, there’s also an account of aliens whose favorite music was the polka. Did they roll a barrel out of their ship?

“I’ve ruled through 11 U.S. presidencies – are you SURE you want to talk to them instead of me?”

The leader of the free world is usually assumed to be the president of the United States and thus would be the obvious choice if real aliens acted like their movie counterparts and demanded to be taken to our leader. “What Would You Say to a Naked Alien” looks at some of the UFO encounters of U.S. presidents – including Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter - but it also tells of the encounter reported by Cuba’s future leader Fidel Castro, who was in office during 11 U.S. presidencies. It also looks at a leadership alternative – a First Lady of Japan who claimed to meet aliens and travel to Venus before marrying her prime minister husband. Is there a female alien behind every successful male ET too?

“That orb is going, going, gone!”

What would you say or do if you met a spaceship the size and shape of a baseball, as some young boys did in Japan? Or an alien that looked exactly like a garden gnome? A giant frog? We should be prepared for any and all kinds of extraterrestrials since it seems from accounts that they prefer to meet with the public and rock stars more than our leaders.

“You’ll put your eye out with that thing.”

We should also be prepared to greet them with something other than fear, hostility and weapons, since they may not be coming to conquer. Our movies and science fiction novels go to great lengths in depicting massive intergalactic warships crewed with terrifying aliens armed with artillery capable of destroying planets, vaporizing living beings, freezing time and rendering our puny guns and laser beams utterly useless. But what if they’re more like the aliens reported in Ohio who were waving what appeared to be Fourth of July Roman candles? Should we feel relieved? Superior? Happy to join in with our own? If they come in peace but not in clothing, perhaps our best response is humor and laughter – the best medicine and great stress reliever for humans just might be universal. That is my goal in writing “What Would You Say to a Space Alien?” – to reveal some fun alien encounters and get you prepared to have fun if you have one. There may be no one right thing to say to a space alien, but a smile just might be the best choice.

“What Would You Say to a Naked Space Alien?” is available at Amazon – a link can also be found on my website, www.paulseaburn.com.