Whitley Strieber, author of the phenomenally successful first-person
accounts of his own abduction experiences, Communion and
its sequel Transformation, has reverted to more familiar
territory with his most recent work Majestic. (See review
in UFO, Vol.4, No.4) Strieber is quick to point out that although
the book is based on events alleged to have happened in 1947 at
Roswell, New Mexico, it is not history disguised as a novel, but
is in fact a work of fiction.
It is Strieber working in the medium
he is best at-the horror/suspense genre that won him his early
fame. He spent considerable time in Roswell researching Majestic,
and has come to some fact-based conclusions about the incident.
What follows is the author talking about his latest novel and
sounding genuinely angry about the willful cover-up of something
that affects us all.
Majestic is about the crash of a UFO in Roswell,
New Mexico, an event which I have established must have happened,
despite what the debunkers say. I don't go into this too directly
in the novel, but I believe I could establish that the effort
made to deny that this happened is a very conscious effort of
disinformation. I think there is very strong circumstantial evidence
that a cover-up was very intentionally put in place and has been
carried forward to this time.
Perhaps the visitors asked
for the crash to be kept secret-secrecy certainly is their policy.
If they didn't request this, then the event is secret because
the government doesn't understand what happened and doesn't want
to admit it. Someone from some other world or dimension appeared
here, seemed to more or less be in control of what happened, aside
from the fact that one of their UFOs crashed, then left as enigmatically
as they had arrived. I think that the government hides what happened
because it made perhaps the most historically devastating mistake
that mankind could make: it botched contact with-and understanding
of-the greatest and most important enigma mankind has ever known.
And I think that's exactly
what did happen. They screwed up. They failed in what would have
been the most important single event in history. ~
Strieber At Home In 'Majestic' Territory
By Sean Casteel
Majestic is 'informed' fiction," Strieber
explained in a recent interview. I think it's probably the
best informed fiction about this subject that's ever been written,
but it's fiction because there's no proof positive....The number
of facts are small, but they are very important. For example,
I can certainly prove that at least one of the professionals who
was involved in recovering the debris of the crash in 1947 in
Roswell thought it was an extremely strange thing that they had
found, but the fact that the debris was strange doesn't prove
anything more than that.
What Majestic represents
is part of a process of leading people into the understanding
that there is something very real happening that, at its core,
remains a mystery. Something strange happened out there in the
desert. I used that fact as a springboard for my story, and I
attached to it lots of my own speculations about what may have
happened and about the origins and nature of the intelligence
that caused these events to take place, but they remain speculations,
says Strieber.
Whitley Strieber interview excerpt from Majestic
presskit for paperback edition
© 1990 Berkley Publishing Group