Review by: KEN KORCZAK

Just when you think that most UFO books today have grown monotone, repetitive and threadbare, along comes an author with a refreshing angle to explore an intriguing niche of ufology no one else has significantly covered.

In “How to Talk to an Alien,” NANCY DU TERTRE takes on the question of human-to-alien communication, but also, the overall nature of just what constitutes an “alien language,” including possible alien alphabets, writing styles and scripts, spoken languages and psychic or telepathic-enabled communications. But there’s even more, such as a gander down through history at ancient forms of writing that have been attributed to “angels,” long before we started framing our reality in terms of modern science.

What’s also fascinating is that du Tertre comes to this issue out of left field — her primary “day job” has nothing to do with flying saucers and extraterrestrial aliens. She’s a high-powered New York securities litigation attorney, and successful businesswoman who stumbled into the weird world of the paranormal more or less by accident.

The author says she had no interest in topics paranormal until age 35. It was then that she was invited to attend a workshop exploring the topic of intuition for psychologists by noted psychotherapist Dr. Ron DeAngelo – she was the only non-psychotherapist invited, but Dr. DeAngelo thought his lawyer friend would find it beneficial. (Du Tertre details this event in her book “Psychic Intuition.”)

To make a long story short, a bizarre experience at the workshop launched du Tertre into an entirely new phase of life – she began to explore her own psychic abilities, studied (and interned) with a famous psychic police detective, took training in REMOTE VIEWING – and about 10 years later emerged with her old paradigms shattered (or at least vastly expanded).

Somewhere along the way du Tertre’s psychic explorations cross-pollinated with the subject of extraterrestrials (or extradimensionals), UFOs and the like, and so now we have a fascinating book that begs the question: “What do the aliens have to say and how do they say it?”

The title is my only quibble with this outstanding book – this is not really a “how to” book and it won’t teach you “how to talk to an alien.” Rather, it’s an overview of cases involving close encounters where people engaged in two-way communications with other nonhuman beings of wide variety – and then seeks to form some theories and opinions about what it all means.

As I was reading, I was reminded of the great theoretical physicist RICHARD FEYNMAN. That’s because he had a knack for asking basic questions that no one else would even think of asking, questions that were quirky and weird, such as “Do numbers come in colors?”

Well, Ms. du Tertre is asking those basic, yet unusual kinds of questions, such as, “Do aliens have mouths with actual tongues in them, vocal cords and a larynx that they can use to make the sounds of speech?” Then she looks at specific cases, from the famous accounts, such as that of Brazilian farmer and lawyer Antônio Vilas-Boas, who was abducted in 1957 and forced to have sex with an alien.

The author is able to give this and many other well-known cases an intriguing new freshness because she is laser-focused on revisiting these events with the purpose of looking specifically at how communications were experienced by the subjects.

She also provides us with new perspectives on monumental historic events, such as the biblical story of the Tower of Babel, and the works of the famous English mathematician-genius and polymath JOHN DEE, adviser to Queen Elizabeth I. Dee is well-known for having “channeled” what is known today as the Enochian Alphabet, also called the “Angelic Alphabet,” the “Divine Language,” or “Language of the Gods.”

Dee reports that he received a visitation from a levitating angelic figure who gave him a kind of scrying stone through which he coaxed out and ratiocinated a symbolic form of transmundane, symbolic language. His description of the events sounds a lot like one of today’s alien visitation scenarios.

It’s all deliciously fascinating, and what’s better is du Tertre’s marvelously fluid and easy writing style which makes this a user-friendly read for any mainstream audience. She never talks down to us, yet provides even intellectuals with plenty of fodder to chew upon.

The only sad thing for me is that the 175 pages melted by for me as quickly as a pleasant dream from an afternoon nap – I was left profoundly wishing that du Tertre could have given us a couple hundred more pages.
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Ken Korczak is a former newspaper reporter, government information officer, served as an advocate for homeless people as a VISTA Volunteer, and taught journalism at the University of North Dakota for five years. He is the author of: BIRD BRAIN GENIUS

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