Book Reviews Perceptions Magazine, February 2026
The Official History of Official UFO Magazine:
Volume Number One
By Bernard O’Connor
Forward by Kevin D. Randle
2025, 302 pages, 8 ½ x 11” Paperback, U.S. $45.86
ISBN: 9798277020395
Review by Brent Raynes
The author of this book, Bernard O’Connor, the original founding editor of Official UFO Magazine, covers articles from six issues of this premier newsstand magazine back during a significant time period following the massive UFO wave of 1973, and I recall in correspondence with UFO author and journalist John Keel back during the day that 1975 itself was a very active, though under reported period of UFO activity. However, 1975 did get Official UFO coverage as in George D. Fawcett’s article The 1975 UFO Wave in North Carolina. This book contains numerous articles from the first six issues of Official UFO, from May 1975 to November 1976, with major contributions from leading figures in the UFO field like Coral and Jim Lorenzen, who founded and directed one of the earliest and most significant UFO organizations going back to 1952 called the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization (APRO), Richard H. Hall of the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP), founded in 1956, Hayden C. Hewes who initially founded and directed the International UFO Bureau (IUFOB) in 1957, and many other authors in the field who contributed thought-provoking features like George Earley, Kevin D. Randle, Robert A. Goerman, Raymond Fowler, Vincent Gaddis, Walter N. Webb, to name but a few.
I’ve had several very pleasant email exchanges recently with Bernard who likes to refer to the 1970s as “the Golden Age of Ufology.” I certainly have very fond memories myself from that period of time, where I traveled through over a dozen states and up into Canada meeting with many UFO researchers and experiencers. Like, for example, meeting Don Worley of Indiana, who wrote Rachel Baker and Her Little “Friends,” which is in this book, and both of whom I met back in the mid-1970s. Bernard and I shared some great memories between us, and it’s been especially fun when we find people to talk about that we’ve both had some personal contact with. Until receiving this newly published book we had never had any direct contact, though I still have many copies of these original Official UFO Magazine editions from 1975 and 1976, and I still remember he was the editor, and I was impressed then as I am now with the quality of this magazine’s many contributions. “When I was working on the book, I experienced so many mixed emotions over the material,” Bernard wrote me. “First it was nostalgia, revisiting and rediscovering all those many forgotten cases. Then, the excitement of rediscovering all those cases. I thought maybe, after 50 years, some new information would come to light either proving or disproving some of them. Finally, sadness, when reality sets in, and I realized a good number of all those great people who literally created Ufology are no longer with us. I’m thankful that I was able to be a part of the adventure. I’m hoping the book drives the newbie coming into the field a sense of historical perspective into Ufology.”
I certainly feel honored to have been a part of this adventure myself and can understand the mixture of emotions expressed in Bernard’s remarks. Revisiting those early cases investigated and documented by those many early pioneering Ufologists makes for fascinating and relevant review, while indeed the realization does hit you how so many of them have since passed on to the great beyond, and are sadly no longer here to further contribute to this field and for us to still connect with and pick their brains on the intriguing cases they looked into and what potential insights and understandings they may have derived from their work back then.
At present, Bernard is busy working on a second book of Official UFO Magazine, that will cover issues 7 through 12. In one of my recent emails to him I mentioned a UFO healing case up in Avon Lake, Ohio, that I looked into back in 1975, which he informed me would be in this second book, which was written by Allen Benz. Sometimes it feels like a small world. In addition, I’ve been invited to make a special contribution to this same upcoming edition. For now though I’ll leave you all hanging. I don’t want to spoil the surprise. LOL!
