Customer Reviews

The Real Men In Black

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I'm kind of ambivalent about this book. First of all, Redfern does a great job introducing the topic. He tells the history of the MIB mythos, introduces the key players and personalities (Bender, Barker, and Keel), the most famous (and not-so-famous) case studies, and interviews some great researchers on their thoughts on what is behind the MIB phenomenon. He even includes what could be the only photographs snapped of these strange, darkly clad dudes. So if you want to immerse yourself into the history and research of the MIB, the book is pretty good.

My qualms about the book are twofold. First of all, I don't care for Redfern's style. It's half pulp-paranormal-mystery-expose, with just a hint of tabloid fluff. In other words, he's not a very "serious" writer, but that's just my taste. My real problems with the book come in part 2: "The Theories". I don't think Redfern shows very much imagination here. For example, his explanation for Bender's experiences is pretty lacklustre, and ignores possibly overlapping reasons (kind of like those who dismiss all abductions as "just" sleep paralysis, neglecting to propose that sleep paralysis may be an integral part of the abduction phenomenon, or somehow induced). My margin notes often read "not mutually exclusive!", especially next to the quotes from Greg Bishop, who I also think tends to use the "juvenile dictionary" a bit too much when doing his theorizing. The chapter on "Tulpas" was the worst for this type of wiseacring.

That said, there are some interesting ideas in Part 2, but none of them quite hit home. I think John Keel, about whom Redfern quotes some unsubstantiated criticism, got closer to truth about these phenomena than the majority of others in the field over the last 60 years. His book, The Eighth Tower, is a classic, and only surpassed I think, by Laura Knight-Jadczyk's High Strangeness: Hyperdimensions and the Process of Alien Abduction. She deals with pretty much all the features Redfern brings up, but ties them all together in a picture that actually makes sense. In other words, not the hodgepodge of pet theories Redfern collects.

All that said, it was a fun book, informative, and only at times overbearingly annoying. So if you can handle that, do check it out. Just round out your reading.