Coming to Grips with George
Why do I discuss George Adamski in this chapter, rather than in the chapter devoted to hoaxers? Nostalgia and affection play parts. Inside the Space Ships is the first UFO book I acquired. That happened in 1963, eight years after the book’s publication, when Adamski was still living, and still famous, and when I was a boy. I do not recall reading news stories about him, nor do I recall how I obtained the book. I know it did not come to me as a gift, so I probably bought it used, or traded for it. Inside the Space Ships has been part of my library, and my past, for quite a while.
As I re-read the book while preparing the one you are reading now, I was struck not just by the text’s astounding detail and scientific wonders (and anomalies), but by the benign tone. The prose is calm and positive. The aliens bring a hopeful message. They are patient with Adamski’s questions. They are “superior” in many ways, but make little note of it.
When Adamski absently reaches for his cigarettes, for instance, and discovers he has none, a female alien offers to provide him with some, as well as “a receptacle for your ashes.” Smiling, she adds, “You see, only Earth people indulge in that odd habit!” That’s the remark of a kind aunt, or a longtime friend who is as comfortable as old slippers. These are not the deadly aliens that routinely inform darker, more prevalent UFO narratives. These aliens may not be saviors, but they are surely our friends.
If Adamski profited monetarily from his students and books, he did not earn enough to fund an ostentatious lifestyle. His first book, Flying Saucers Have Landed, sold fifty thousand copies, possibly more, in the United States. Inside the Space Ships also sold well. Each of those retailed for $3.50, so assuming a sale of fifty thousand units for Flying Saucers Have Landed, Adamski came away with $17,500—an upper-middle-class annual salary for 1953, and a tidy sum, but hardly sufficient to maintain anyone in luxury for long, particularly because royalties are paid out over the life of a book (that is, for as long as the publisher deems it “in print”). Royalties inevitably diminish sharply before being suspended altogether.
Paperback sales and foreign editions brought more profit to Adamski, but because he was selling in a niche corner of publishing (in other words, he wasn’t James Michener, or another writer with similar mass appeal), Adamski wasn’t getting rich. One can surmise that his students paid him something, and then there were the modest stipends or other fees from speaking engagements.
My point in detailing all of this is to suggest that Adamski wasn’t “in it for the money.” Many people that purchased his books wanted them as entertainment, or as novelties. The greater portion of sales did not come from people who had no money to spare. Adamski wasn’t a shakedown artist.
And so what was he? I am unable to argue against claims that he was a hoaxer. Nor would I claim that his celebrity meant nothing to him. But because of the dollars-and-cents facts above, and my aforementioned sentiment, I regard “Professor” Adamski as a man who believed what he said. If his adventures are untrue, they came to his imagination guilelessly.