The Unidentified
Mythical Monsters, Alien Encounters and Our Obsession with the Unexplained
Colin Dickey
Viking 2021
Pb, 320pp, £18, ISBN 9780525557586
In , Colin Dickey presents a compulsively readable yet deeply problematic overview of cryptozoology, ufology, conspiracy and pseudoscience. Dickey’s overworn central conceit is that interest in fringe beliefs is the result of a rejection of scientific rationalism and the “disenchantment” of the world, an attempt to regain the wonderment of a premodern and therefore irrational era. Dickey relies upon the flawed view that science and enchantment cannot coexist or are at cross-purposes, and that the advent of Enlightenment rationalism represents an all-encompassing division between
