Today is Flying Saucer Day, the anniversary day of the sighting of the first flying saucers over Mount Rainier in Washington State. Flying saucers are at first glance a science-fictional concept. (As I have written before, flying saucers come not from outer space but from science fiction.) But our ideas about them originate in the works of Charles Fort (1874-1932), who greatly influenced the writers and editors of Weird Tales. You can argue that their origins are far older than that, but as works of science and technology, spaceships from other planets coming to Earth are a nineteenth- and early twentieth-century idea.
There were tellers of weird tales who became caught up in the flying saucer mystery. Chief among them were Donald E. Keyhoe (1897-1988) and Wilma Dorothy Vermilyea (1915-1995). Also known as Millen Cook, Wilma helped her husband, Brinsley Le Poer Trench (1911-1995), in his work researching and writing about UFOs. Others included Vincent H. Gaddis (1913-1997), who coined the phrase "Bermuda Triangle" and helped get it into the popular imagination. Anyway . . .
Happy Flying Saucer Day from Tellers of Weird Tales!
Text copyright 2021, 2023 Terence E. Hanley
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