Ardy Sixkiller Clarke

American Indians born during the Space Age relate their amazing and sometimes bizarre encounters with the Star People.

Their Encounters with the Blue Men, Reptilians, and Other Star People

Space Age Indians

Kelsey Lynn

I wanted to give this two stars,but I just couldn't, the only redeeming factor was some of the stories were really interesting. But the rest is such a hot mess, I just couldn't. 

 This was my book club's pick this month. My husband and his wife had read this prior and chose it as their couple's pick. We are a very open-minded family, myself and my brother are very interested in extra-terrestrials and paranormal encounters and I LOVE books like this that are interviews with people about their experiences.

 With that being said, this book was painful to get through, even for the ones who picked it. This isn't because I found the stories unbelievable, well sometimes I did, but because of Ardy's presence throughout the book and the complete lack of an editor.

 I'm thoroughly convinced that had Ardy removed herself from this completely, not inserted her role in every single story, this may have been really good. But she inserted herself constantly and obnoxiously. Coming off as a horrendous narcissist. Nearly every story featured how someone was in love with her, how giving she is, showering people with gifts, and how every one invites her to their weddings. In the very first story, she states that the speaker introduces her as "the love of his life" "The only woman he's proposed to and turned him down" he never married, he met her one night at a beach party and that was it! True love! This is followed up with a story from the woman who was in love with him but accepted that Ardy was his true love. A later story describes an aging bachelor who right away says "If I was a younger man" regarding how she's wooed him, he never had any desire to marry, but after the first five minutes with Ardy, wooh buddy. She describes how she showers people with gifts and one even cried because "it was the first gift he ever received". I kept finding myself shaking the book, being like "ARDY JUST TALK ABOUT THE ALIENS". She on multiple occasions described the men as having "bulging muscles" "so tall he spilled into the aisle", and focused on how to fit one of the girl interviewees was. Then another poor soul she described as "she could be pretty" "an obvious smoker" "hadn't brushed or cleaned her hair in months" "her clothes stained and in disrepair". These descriptions are completely not needed for the stories. This wouldn't be such an issue if it didn't undermine the anonymity of the interviewees. She on multiple occasions promises to omit identities but then gets so specific that it'd be hard not to find these people. A very attractive, bulging man nicknamed Rambo wired the electrical system for the entire reservation. So we have a man who is very buff, with a movie nickname, who did a very specific thing, it wouldn't be hard to find them if we really wanted to. So either she broke her promise, or she made that completely up, causing one to question what else she made up. It became a running gag in our group to count how often she talked about herself, or how many diet cokes she drank. The follow-up blurbs were the most self-indulgent, as they offered no information on the people beyond HER role in their lives, and how SHE made them better somehow. She also used multiple opportunities to hype her books up, how you can buy them on kindle, how for someone with a very short bibliography, somehow EVERYONE she meets has read her books. When we finished the book, the general consensus was we liked the stories, but boy were we DONE with Ardy. 

 With this being said, the big issue for me was the lack of editing. In one scene she'll refer to someone as being in the army, and then not two sentences later say the marines. She'll say that a year went by, then the next page it was actually 3 years. Or in a story about a man with many dogs, she asked how long he's been naming them after astronomy, "since my encounter" he states "tell me about that encounter" "well Calliope was in her Kennel", oh so he started BEFORE his first encounter. She had typos everywhere, and many other inconsistencies. My personal favorite is where she describes a man who loved to read books on his kindle, but then in her follow-up blurb claims he finally entered the modern age and got an email address. You can't have an amazon account and buy books without an email. So he already had one, my guess is he didn't want to give her his main one. OR once again she embellished, bringing all of it into question. 

 The stories themselves were interesting, if not repetitive, they had some really interesting crossovers, most agreeing on certain experiences, telepathy, healing, the small greys being more of a serving class or even synthetic. These were super interesting. She separated the stories by type, Blue men, Bug Men, and others. However, in the middle of the blue men section, she had a story with blue men and bug men, then moved on to only blue men again. A freelance editor would tell you immediately to have that story, that features both, be the last story of the first section, to set up the second section. This might sound nitpicky, but in fact, it messed up the flow of the book. She did this in nearly every section, losing any flow she may have had. With the last section losing the most direction, and could have easily been a section on healing had she edited properly. 
 
 This all culminated in the most frustrating finale chapter, where she FINALLY states her thesis, which is such an afterthought and not supported by ANY of the chosen stories, she makes it clear early on she has thousands of stories, so if she had a clear thesis, why didn't she choose stories that supported it? The opening story has Vietnam vets who nicknamed themselves "Space Age Indians". The term "space-age" was popular in the 60s. But she hijacks this term, applies it incorrectly throughout the book, and then uses it as her thesis to refer to more of a "technological age". She claims she wanted this book to explore how these encounters are affected by the technology of the modern age, yet only one story even touches on this, the one where a man finds another man who he saw on the ship via the internet. So it feels like such an afterthought. 

 Then the most baffling part, which even caused my brother, who is a true believer, to question things, was the inclusion of the bibliography. This was a book of "interviews" with her own thoughts put in, primarily describing how great she is, and how hot the men are. So, what is this multipage bibliography for? Where did you reference ANY of this? This caused my club to discuss were these even interviews, like real ones, or merely fictionalized ones based on her research of other books? Why else would you have a bibliography in a book that requires no research, only an accurate recording of people's accounts? We were left baffled by it. 

 This book could have been good, and many of the stories are very interesting. But Ardy's constant presence was so distracting that it became a joke and caused even the biggest believers in our book club to question the whole book. This was the first time that our final meeting for a book was author-focused, and was very short, we had to really dig deep to find something to discuss that wasn't Ardy. 

 I beg you Ardy, if these books are so successful that people are really recognizing you on the streets, please hire a freelance editor. Please. They could bring out the actual subject matter so well, but you have to be willing to talk about yourself less. 

 In the final meeting, my sister-in-law opened with "this was so much worse than I remember it being". I hope my partner's and my pick doesn't suffer the same fate.

Space Age Indians Their Encounters with the Blue Men, Reptilians, and Other Star People

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