IAN KIRKWOOD: Aliens near the fringe

Von Daniken’s first book, Chariots of the Gods?, was published in 1968. His chariots were spaceships and the gods were ancient astronauts. It became a runaway bestseller at a time when the world was firmly focused on modern astronauts, thanks to NASA’s Apollo missions.

The church was outraged. Scientists and most establishment archaeologists rubbished von Daniken’s theories about the pyramids and other ancient monuments being odes to visitors from space.

His books faded from mainstream view for a long time, but in 2010, the History pay-TV channel began a new series called Ancient Aliens, that delivered the theories of von Daniken and those who followed him to a whole new audience.

It’s still going in 2015, with series 7 having started in April.

Perhaps even more surprisingly, von Daniken himself is still around the traps, and will be in Sydney next month as part of a four-date Ancient Aliens tour.

Until I (belatedly) discovered the Ancient Aliens series I thought Daniken must have shuffled off this mortal coil, or at least retired from the UFO business.

But no. Age has wearied him a little – he turned 80 on April 14 – but he still tours the global UFO conference circuit. And yes, there is such a thing.

Von Daniken will be at the Wesley Conference Centre in Pitt Street, Sydney, on the night of Saturday, July 18, with his Ancient Aliens co-host, David Hatcher Childress.

I am tempted to go. As readers may have noticed, I’m quite interested in UFOs although I have to say the more I probe, the farther I find myself being pushed, against my will, into the sceptical camp.

But that’s another story for another day.

 Von Daniken’s Sydney presentation is one of four he will give on his Ancient Astronauts Australian Tour 2015. The artwork features the three Giza pyramids.

The tour is promoted through Nexus magazine – billed as the world’s “No.1 magazine for alternative news, health, future science and the unexplained”.

Editor of the Australian edition, Duncan Roads, is also running an online site called the Alternative News Project, dedicated to the subjects he says the mainstream media “ignores, suppresses or ridicules”.

 In explorations of “fringe sciences”, including subjects such as the expanding earth theory or the electric universe theory, we see the unexplained anomalies regarding energy, gravity, electricity and biology being ignored, suppressed or ridiculed, Roads says.

“I believe that it is in the open-minded exploration of such anomalies, that we actually further our scientific understanding of our universe.”

In general terms, Western academics are supremely confident in their ability to explain the world. Alternative paradigms are dismissed as “junk science’’ or ‘‘pseudo science’’.

They may be right. But it’s worth remembering that every age of humanity has thought exactly the same thing: that their new facts supplanted old superstitions. But much of what one era accepts as fact is later proved wrong, or at least incomplete.

 Another heretic destined for our shores is South African Michael Tellinger, whose discoveries of ancient stone circles and other oddities in his native country have built him quite a following.

Tellinger’s five-date tour includes a presentation at Sydney Town Hall on Sunday, August 16, titled The Greatest Story Never Told: Mankind’s Hidden History.

One of Tellinger’s more interesting finds is what looks like a giant human footprint about 1.5metres from heel to toe. Whatever it is, it looks convincing. Even the ‘‘giant foot debunked’’ site that comes up when you Google Tellinger’s YouTube clip doesn’t have an explanation beyond saying it can’t be real ... because there are no such things as giants.

No, but maybe there were? As a friend of mine says at the bottom of his emails, quoting Robert Green Ingersoll (1833-99), otherwise known as The Great Agnostic: ‘‘Heresy is a cradle, orthodoxy a coffin’’.