In Alternative Three, a classic popular paperback and Anglia television documentary, scientists envision three future possibilities for mankind. The last involved a secret plan to move a representative sample of humans to Mars via the moon. Debate ensued about the authenticity of the book and TV show, and after their release reports began to circulate that many Alternative Three production people met with mysterious deaths. More recently, Jim Keith wrote a book examining the sociology and history of Alternative Three and adding to the speculation about its conspiratorial implications. Here, the original Alternative Three author, Leslie Watkins, responds to Jim Keith's response, and ruminates on the half-perceived, half-created nature of his work. (Click on the first highlighted title to order the original Alternative Three, on the second or cover image to order Jim Keith's title.)
Angry protests about my "irresponsible scaremongering" started torrenting in after the publication of my book Alternative 3. So did an even greater number of messages praising me for exposing a nightmare conspiracy involving the governments of America and Britain.
Both reactions astonished me. I'd written a work of fiction yet vast numbers of readers were insistent it was fact. "Insistent" is the right word. I was denounced as a coward and a liar when I explained that I'd dreamed up the controversial scenario. Many readers were terrified - now convinced, for instance, that missing friends had been snatched to be zombie slaves on Mars and their responses mirrored those of a man who phoned me from Manchester, England: "When you wrote A3, you told the truth but now you're terrified to admit that truth because you've been warned off by the CIA".
A3's basic premise is that our planet is doomed and America and Russia having secretly co-operated for decades, have colonized Mars with selected superior humans. That, I thought, was too way-out for anyone to believe. I was totally wrong.
Respected American researcher Mae Brussell told her weekly radio audience she'd "had the shakes for about a week" after reading A3 which she described as "the most important book I've read in many, many years." Renowned investigator Jim Keith suggested in his follow-up book, Mind Control and UFOs: Casebook on Alternative 3, that I might have written it on behalf of the government (presumably of the USA) as " 'grey' disinformation, calculated to confuse and defuse the issues of elitist control, mind control, genocide, and secret space programs, by revealing yet concealing these truths."
Could Keith be partly right? Was I, unwittingly, helping to blur the truth about some mind-boggling conspiracy? That, I now feel, is a distinct possibility. The deluge of seemingly confirmatory evidence from intelligent people convinced me I had accidentally trespassed into a range of top-secret truths. I planned to use this material in a book called Backlash to Alternative 3. However, a chest containing that material was mysteriously lost in transit some 14 years ago when I moved from London to join Reader's Digest as a senior editor in Sydney - before moving on to New Zealand.
Backlash needs to be written. Any readers with such confirmatory information, maybe including ones who initially contacted me, might care to get in touch - with a view to it being incorporated, with appropriate acknowledgements, in the new book. My address is PO Box 201, Orewa, Hibiscus Coast, New Zealand 1461.