🧵 Erich von Däniken is dead, aged 90.
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@Richard_Littler Just noting that there's a very skeevy racist subtext running just below the surface of Von Daniken's thesis—that ancient people *couldn't* have built the monumental structures they left behind, so they must have been "helped" by aliens (clearly white savior-coded).
@cstross @Richard_Littler Back when colonialist white supremacist racism sold well. The whole racist "ancient aliens" thing has stuck around in the decades since, but not in such profitable form I think.
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When I moved to Switzerland, I discovered he was a local. He built an 'ancient mysteries' theme park, which soon failed, but the buildings still stand. I took some photos a couple of years ago.
@Richard_Littler We had raves there.
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@cstross Just one example among a great litany of things wrong with his books/theories.
@Richard_Littler @cstross also as a treat "Erich von Däniken weg" means "Erich von Däniken gone"
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@Richard_Littler For a while he was going to open another theme park, in Blackpool. (It dead-ended around 2014. I used it in one of my novels …)
I am now imagining the consequences if he'd commissioned H. R. Giger to design the interiors.
@cstross @Richard_Littler I'm imagining something like the Shandor building in the original Ghostbusters film, where the architecture makes it part of a summoning gateway.
It's a real building, too, though somewhat altered via film magic for the movie.
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@cstross Now, that concept worked out *much* better.
My photos of the Giger-designed bar in Gruyères...@Richard_Littler @cstross It's quite a place, isn't it? We went with one person who was not at all into the Alien movies who found it 'difficult'!
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When I moved to Switzerland, I discovered he was a local. He built an 'ancient mysteries' theme park, which soon failed, but the buildings still stand. I took some photos a couple of years ago.
@Richard_Littler oooooh, that's interesting. Any contact between that guy and Claude Vorilhon (also known as Raël)?
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@Richard_Littler Just noting that there's a very skeevy racist subtext running just below the surface of Von Daniken's thesis—that ancient people *couldn't* have built the monumental structures they left behind, so they must have been "helped" by aliens (clearly white savior-coded).
@cstross @Richard_Littler There's the implied subtext. And then there's the explicit, in-your-face JAQing off, like: "Was the black race a failure and did the extraterrestrials change the genetic code by gene surgery and then programme a white or a yellow race?" (von Däniken, /Signs of the Gods/, 1980, in the chapter “Man Outsmarts Nature” – loads more where that came from)
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@Richard_Littler @cstross It's quite a place, isn't it? We went with one person who was not at all into the Alien movies who found it 'difficult'!
@jschwa1 @Richard_Littler @cstross
I don't mind Alien movies, but I still find it difficult even to look at the pictures, and I did have a Giger poster calendar once upon a time.
The mental image of imagining me sitting on one of those chairs, and imagining such scenes exist somewhere in the galaxy, way way far away is quite different in outcome.
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@Richard_Littler Just noting that there's a very skeevy racist subtext running just below the surface of Von Daniken's thesis—that ancient people *couldn't* have built the monumental structures they left behind, so they must have been "helped" by aliens (clearly white savior-coded).
@cstross @Richard_Littler Ugh, my old man was well into this stuff, to the extent that he'd nod-and-wink that anyone who knew what they were talking about (eg. contemporary scientists like Hawking) must be an alien. Which isn't really helpful when your own son is doing a physics degree, is it?
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🧵 Erich von Däniken is dead, aged 90. Many of my generation will remember him as a proponent of the pseudoscientific 'ancient aliens' theory, just one of the many sensationalist supernatural topics that flooded culture in the 1970s.
I've had this book since I was a little kid.RE: https://mastodon.social/@Richard_Littler/115882082456309865
@Richard_Littler my favorite way to approach him, sitchin etc is as a separate and wonderful form of sci-fi
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When I moved to Switzerland, I discovered he was a local. He built an 'ancient mysteries' theme park, which soon failed, but the buildings still stand. I took some photos a couple of years ago.
@Richard_Littler I actually went there when it was operational. Not intentionally mind you, someone else had organised the trip and I only learned what it was when I entered.
Mostly standard themepark rides all garnished with the odd "ancient aliens" stick. You could tell they poured a lot of money into it though. -
🧵 Erich von Däniken is dead, aged 90. Many of my generation will remember him as a proponent of the pseudoscientific 'ancient aliens' theory, just one of the many sensationalist supernatural topics that flooded culture in the 1970s.
I've had this book since I was a little kid.@Richard_Littler A total fraud but a rich, successful fraud As an ex-archaeologist I found him but annoying but fair play to him, I suppose. He certainly tapped into the zeitgeist and there are people making bank today with much less entertaining and fun theories than he opined. And he had a cool name too which helps.
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🧵 Erich von Däniken is dead, aged 90. Many of my generation will remember him as a proponent of the pseudoscientific 'ancient aliens' theory, just one of the many sensationalist supernatural topics that flooded culture in the 1970s.
I've had this book since I was a little kid.@Richard_Littler Same, and that's also just what my copy looks like. Tough to believe someone that well written is cray cray when you are 12 ya know?
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@Richard_Littler For a while he was going to open another theme park, in Blackpool. (It dead-ended around 2014. I used it in one of my novels …)
I am now imagining the consequences if he'd commissioned H. R. Giger to design the interiors.
@cstross @Richard_Littler There’s a Giger museum and café in Gruyères:
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@datarama @Richard_Littler Exactly this.
@cstross @datarama @Richard_Littler See also Great Zimbabwe (not mentioned in the article but aliens were also postulated as the origin at one point as well; anything and anyone so long as it wasn't black people):
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@cstross @Richard_Littler Back when colonialist white supremacist racism sold well. The whole racist "ancient aliens" thing has stuck around in the decades since, but not in such profitable form I think.
@isaackuo @cstross @Richard_Littler Maybe not quite so profitable but Graham Hancock has still made a lot of money and been given a highish profile perpetuating the same racist pseudoscience in the past few decades: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham_Hancock
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🧵 Erich von Däniken is dead, aged 90. Many of my generation will remember him as a proponent of the pseudoscientific 'ancient aliens' theory, just one of the many sensationalist supernatural topics that flooded culture in the 1970s.
I've had this book since I was a little kid.@Richard_Littler
Co-writer & editor was a literal NAZI. I didn't know that till yesterday.
It all makes more sense now, the "Indigenous peoples can't do the clever stuff" A White Supremacist Ideology makes more sense of it,I read "Chariot of the Gods" in 1972 approx.
Very plausible if you are ignorant.
I read a good debunking maybe the next year.
Debunked over 50 years ago and yet was on a Digital Pay TV "factual" channel in UK & Ireland.It was also dishonest in the presentation of facts!
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🧵 Erich von Däniken is dead, aged 90. Many of my generation will remember him as a proponent of the pseudoscientific 'ancient aliens' theory, just one of the many sensationalist supernatural topics that flooded culture in the 1970s.
I've had this book since I was a little kid.@Richard_Littler
He was the greatest con-artist of the 1970s! Everyone knew his name and the title of his book. His loony ideas prompted many discussions amongst my school chums and first awakened me to the question of why so many people just 'believe' all sorts of irrational badly argued nonsense.
And on a positive note, let's remember all the great cinematic and televisual art he inspired, not least of which #Stargate #StargateSG1 #SG1I shall definitely miss him!
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@Richard_Littler
He was the greatest con-artist of the 1970s! Everyone knew his name and the title of his book. His loony ideas prompted many discussions amongst my school chums and first awakened me to the question of why so many people just 'believe' all sorts of irrational badly argued nonsense.
And on a positive note, let's remember all the great cinematic and televisual art he inspired, not least of which #Stargate #StargateSG1 #SG1I shall definitely miss him!
@Richard_Littler
That link is to the 25th November 1977 edition of the (once) prestigious Horizon BBC scientific documentary series which brought much greater attention (in Britain) to von Däniken's 'ideas'.
Sadly, the version on archive.org has, rather irritatingly, been dubbed into American.#RIP #ErichVonDäniken
#AIP (ascend in peace)
#woowoo #AncientAstronauts
#BBC #Horizon #documentary -
@cstross @Richard_Littler There's the implied subtext. And then there's the explicit, in-your-face JAQing off, like: "Was the black race a failure and did the extraterrestrials change the genetic code by gene surgery and then programme a white or a yellow race?" (von Däniken, /Signs of the Gods/, 1980, in the chapter “Man Outsmarts Nature” – loads more where that came from)
@noctuaminervae @cstross @Richard_Littler
'Was the black race...'
Yow! Is that an exact quote? Jesus.
