JOKING OVER UFO REPORT
New York Times, Thursday, October 12, 1989
__________________________________________
TASS'S THRILL: JOKING OVER UFO REPORT
By Eleanor Blau
The report by the Soviet press agency Tass that lanky, three-eyed
creatures took a stroll through a Soviet park last month has caused
such reverberations in the United States that they have bounced back to
Tass itself.
The agency reported Tuesday that major American television networks and
newspapers, which it said typically avoid stories about unidentified
flying objects, "played up the space adventure, frequently poking fun
and suggesting that the beings from outer space might be a result of
overzealous glasnost."
The Tass report, written by an American working for the agency, did not
sound resentful. It quoted Edwin Diamond a New York Magazine media
critic who criticized what he called the story's shallowness, saying,
"What did the Academy of Science think? Where are the pictures?"
Ant it quoted Yervant Turzian of the Cornell University Astronomy
Department, who said fellow academics regarded the story as a joke.
DRAWING OF CREATURE IS BROADCAST
"Given the physical parameters of the universe, the possibility of life
on other planets is high," he told Tass. "But the vast majority of
these reports can be explained by such logical phenomena as unconven-
tional aircraft in the sky or artificial satellites."
On the other hand, Tass found that "A Current Affair," the syndicated
news and entertainment show, was taking the report seriously enough to
plan on sending a film crew to Voronezh. That is where Tass originally
reported that three children had said they saw aliens emerge from a
ball, wearing silvery overalls.
Last night, Soviet television viewers saw a picture of one of the
creatures on the main nightly news program, "Vremya," in the form of a
scribbled drawing by one of the children. It showed a smiling stick
figure inside a glowing two-legged sphere.
Vremya sounded more skeptical than the original Tass report, but it
offered without comment an interview with Vasya Surin, one of the pur-
ported witnesses.
"HE DIDN'T HAVE A HEAD"
"We were scared," says Vasya, who appeared to be about 11. "It hovered
over this tree. Then the door opened and a tall person of about three
meters looked out. He didn't have a head, or shoulders either. He just
had a kind of hump. There he had three eyes, two on each side and one
in the middle."
Vasya said the alien had two holes instead of a nose, and could not
turn its head, so it had to swivel its middle eye.
But "Vremya" cast some doubt on the reports of the sighting, noting for
instance, that there were no adult witnesses, even though a large
apartment house overlooked the site.
Since the first UFO sightings in the 1940's, spaceships have been
described as sausages, cigars, balls, bananas, crescents, round straw
hats, eggs, mushrooms, disks and, especially, saucers. But in the
1980's "Saucers are out; boomerangs are in," said Jim Speiser, a com-
puter expert in Scottsdale, Ariz. He founded a national UFO computer
network in 1986 because he thought there should be an exchange of in-
formation instead of disputes among people who reacted variously to UFO
stories, "from skeptics to wild-eyed gee-whiz believers."
In a telephone interview, Mr. Speiser said of the reported Soviet
sighting: "I think Tass is exploring its new freedom and is not used to
self-censorship. I don't disbelieve, but we have much better stories in
this country."
Also surprised - but only because he thinks the media ignores UFO re-
ports - is Tim Beckley of Inner Light Publications. He edits UFO Uni-
verse, a glossy magazine that prints 100,000 copies six times a year
and distributes them internationally.
Mr. Beckley said that he is a journalist, not a scientist, and that he
is almost as puzzled about UFOs now as he was when he saw his first in
1957, as a 10-year-old in New Brunswick, NJ. "Its kind of a cosmic game
those entities seem to be playing with us," he said.
__________________________________________
TASS'S THRILL: JOKING OVER UFO REPORT
By Eleanor Blau
The report by the Soviet press agency Tass that lanky, three-eyed
creatures took a stroll through a Soviet park last month has caused
such reverberations in the United States that they have bounced back to
Tass itself.
The agency reported Tuesday that major American television networks and
newspapers, which it said typically avoid stories about unidentified
flying objects, "played up the space adventure, frequently poking fun
and suggesting that the beings from outer space might be a result of
overzealous glasnost."
The Tass report, written by an American working for the agency, did not
sound resentful. It quoted Edwin Diamond a New York Magazine media
critic who criticized what he called the story's shallowness, saying,
"What did the Academy of Science think? Where are the pictures?"
Ant it quoted Yervant Turzian of the Cornell University Astronomy
Department, who said fellow academics regarded the story as a joke.
DRAWING OF CREATURE IS BROADCAST
"Given the physical parameters of the universe, the possibility of life
on other planets is high," he told Tass. "But the vast majority of
these reports can be explained by such logical phenomena as unconven-
tional aircraft in the sky or artificial satellites."
On the other hand, Tass found that "A Current Affair," the syndicated
news and entertainment show, was taking the report seriously enough to
plan on sending a film crew to Voronezh. That is where Tass originally
reported that three children had said they saw aliens emerge from a
ball, wearing silvery overalls.
Last night, Soviet television viewers saw a picture of one of the
creatures on the main nightly news program, "Vremya," in the form of a
scribbled drawing by one of the children. It showed a smiling stick
figure inside a glowing two-legged sphere.
Vremya sounded more skeptical than the original Tass report, but it
offered without comment an interview with Vasya Surin, one of the pur-
ported witnesses.
"HE DIDN'T HAVE A HEAD"
"We were scared," says Vasya, who appeared to be about 11. "It hovered
over this tree. Then the door opened and a tall person of about three
meters looked out. He didn't have a head, or shoulders either. He just
had a kind of hump. There he had three eyes, two on each side and one
in the middle."
Vasya said the alien had two holes instead of a nose, and could not
turn its head, so it had to swivel its middle eye.
But "Vremya" cast some doubt on the reports of the sighting, noting for
instance, that there were no adult witnesses, even though a large
apartment house overlooked the site.
Since the first UFO sightings in the 1940's, spaceships have been
described as sausages, cigars, balls, bananas, crescents, round straw
hats, eggs, mushrooms, disks and, especially, saucers. But in the
1980's "Saucers are out; boomerangs are in," said Jim Speiser, a com-
puter expert in Scottsdale, Ariz. He founded a national UFO computer
network in 1986 because he thought there should be an exchange of in-
formation instead of disputes among people who reacted variously to UFO
stories, "from skeptics to wild-eyed gee-whiz believers."
In a telephone interview, Mr. Speiser said of the reported Soviet
sighting: "I think Tass is exploring its new freedom and is not used to
self-censorship. I don't disbelieve, but we have much better stories in
this country."
Also surprised - but only because he thinks the media ignores UFO re-
ports - is Tim Beckley of Inner Light Publications. He edits UFO Uni-
verse, a glossy magazine that prints 100,000 copies six times a year
and distributes them internationally.
Mr. Beckley said that he is a journalist, not a scientist, and that he
is almost as puzzled about UFOs now as he was when he saw his first in
1957, as a 10-year-old in New Brunswick, NJ. "Its kind of a cosmic game
those entities seem to be playing with us," he said.
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