Whitley Strieber, author of the phenomenally successful first-person accounts of his own abduction experiences, Communion and its sequel Transformation, has reverted to more familiar territory with his most recent work Majestic. (See review in UFO, Vol.4, No.4) Strieber is quick to point out that although the book is based on events alleged to have happened in 1947 at Roswell, New Mexico, it is not history disguised as a novel, but is in fact a work of fiction.
     It is Strieber working in the medium he is best at-the horror/suspense genre that won him his early fame. He spent considerable time in Roswell researching Majestic, and has come to some fact-based conclusions about the incident. What follows is the author talking about his latest novel and sounding genuinely angry about the willful cover-up of something that affects us all.

“Majestic is about the crash of a UFO in Roswell, New Mexico, an event which I have established must have happened, despite what the debunkers say. I don't go into this too directly in the novel, but I believe I could establish that the effort made to deny that this happened is a very conscious effort of disinformation. I think there is very strong circumstantial evidence that a cover-up was very intentionally put in place and has been carried forward to this time.
     “Perhaps the visitors asked for the crash to be kept secret-secrecy certainly is their policy. If they didn't request this, then the event is secret because the government doesn't understand what happened and doesn't want to admit it. Someone from some other world or dimension appeared here, seemed to more or less be in control of what happened, aside from the fact that one of their UFOs crashed, then left as enigmatically as they had arrived. I think that the government hides what happened because it made perhaps the most historically devastating mistake that mankind could make: it botched contact with-and understanding of-the greatest and most important enigma mankind has ever known.
     “And I think that's exactly what did happen. They screwed up. They failed in what would have been the most important single event in history.” ~

Strieber At Home In 'Majestic' Territory
By Sean Casteel

“Majestic is 'informed' fiction," Strieber explained in a recent interview. “I think it's probably the best informed fiction about this subject that's ever been written, but it's fiction because there's no proof positive....The number of facts are small, but they are very important. For example, I can certainly prove that at least one of the professionals who was involved in recovering the debris of the crash in 1947 in Roswell thought it was an extremely strange thing that they had found, but the fact that the debris was strange doesn't prove anything more than that.
     “What Majestic represents is part of a process of leading people into the understanding that there is something very real happening that, at its core, remains a mystery. Something strange happened out there in the desert. I used that fact as a springboard for my story, and I attached to it lots of my own speculations about what may have happened and about the origins and nature of the intelligence that caused these events to take place, but they remain speculations,” says Strieber.

Whitley Strieber interview excerpt from Majestic presskit for paperback edition
© 1990 Berkley Publishing Group