Gary Kinder

Background

Gary Kinder is an American nonfiction writer based in Seattle. Outside ufology he is known as a narrative author of true-crime and maritime history, including Victim: The Other Side of Murder and Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea, a history of the discovery of a famously rich shipwreck. The publisher's author page does not give his birth year or early life, and I could not find those details in sources reviewed for this entry.

His UFO-related work is limited to a single book, but it is the most substantial mainstream treatment of its subject. That subject is the Swiss farmer Eduard "Billy" Meier, who has claimed contact with beings from the Pleiades since 1975.

Light Years (1987)

Atlantic Monthly Press published Light Years: An Investigation into the Extraterrestrial Experiences of Eduard Meier in 1987. According to Publishers Weekly, UFO enthusiasts hired Intercep, a Phoenix industrial counter-espionage firm, to run a three-year inquiry into Meier's claims. Meier said he had about 130 encounters, starting in 1975. Kinder conducted roughly 120 interviews and spent 13 weeks with Meier in Switzerland.

The material Kinder examined included daylight colour photographs, 8mm film, sound recordings, landing traces and metal samples. Publishers Weekly reports that IBM chemist Marcel Vogel examined one metal sample and said it could not be replicated with known terrestrial technology. The same review notes that no scientist or laboratory had publicly discredited Meier's evidence. Those evidentiary claims are the reviewer's summary of the book's content, not independent verification.

Reception

The Kirkus Reviews review called the book an absorbing study of what it described as one of the most thoroughly documented contact experiences on record. The reviewer said they believed the evidence but doubted Meier's interpretation of it, and noted that the photographs had never been proven fake. Kinder's own position, as described in reviews, is restrained: he presents the story dispassionately and concludes that the truth of Meier's claims will probably never be settled.

That restraint is the book's main strength and also a source of criticism. Readers who want a verdict will not find one. Skeptical reviewers have argued that a book underwritten or commissioned by UFO enthusiasts is not a neutral investigation, and I did not verify the specific funding claims made in some commentary.

Assessment

Gary Kinder is notable in ufology as the author of one of the few book-length accounts of the Meier case written by a professional journalist, rather than by a believer or a debunker. Its value is as a narrative reference for the case's documentary material and for the investigative methods used, which is why it is worth reading alongside the Billy Meier entry and the skeptical literature on the same photographs.

For readers, the book is best treated as a detailed record of what was examined and who examined it, not as proof of the events described. The Meier case itself remains contested, and this entry does not endorse the claims.