In May, 1978, at Stand 111 in a scientific exhibition in the Hannover Messe Hall, some gentlemen were giving away what at first sight appeared to be an orthodox scientific newspaper called Brisant. The paper contained two seemingly unrelated articles: one on the scientific and ecological value of the Antarctic, the other about a German World War II flying saucer construction project, named 'Projekt Saucer'.

The first article, written from a neo-Nazi standpoint, included an assertion that West Germany should claim back their right to Queen Maud Land in the Antarctic, which the Nazis stole from the Norwegians during World War II and renamed 'Neu Schwabenland'. The second article, which asserted that the German scientists were the first, but not the only ones, to construct highly advanced saucer-shaped aircraft, was accompanied by reproductions of technical drawings of a World War II flying saucer.

The unnamed author failed to name the designer of the flying saucer and claimed that the drawings had been altered by the West German government to render them 'safe' for publication. Adding weight to his claim, he also pointed out that during the Second World War, all such inventions, whether civilian or military, would have been submitted to the nearest patent office where, under paragraphs 30a and 99 of the Patent-und Strafgezetsbuch, they would have been routinely classified as 'secret', confiscated, and passed on to one of Himmler's many SS research establishments... and at the end of the war some of those patents disappeared into secret Soviet files, others disappeared into equally secret British and American files, and the remainder disappeared with 'missing' German scientists and SS troops.

The rest of the article was just as intriguing. What it was claiming is that throughout the course of the Second World War the Germans sent ships and planes to Queen Maud Land, or Neu Schwabenland, in the Antarctic with equipment for massive underground complexes, similar to those they had constructed in Thuringia and the Harz Mountains, in Germany; that at the end of the war, some of the scientists and engineers who had worked on Projekt Saucer escaped from Germany by submarine and ended up in an underground base in the Antarctic, where they continued to construct even more advanced flying saucers; and that the Americans and Soviets, upon learning about this, then used their captured German scientists and technical papers for the secret construction of their own flying saucers. Which according to Brisant explains why, even before glasnost, all the nations of the world, even the Soviets and the Americans, had cooperated with one-another only in the Antarctic. In short, the flying saucers seen by so many people since World War II, are not extraterrestrial spacecraft, but are, in fact, extraordinarily advanced, top-secret, man-made machines. They come from right here on Earth.

An unlikely scenario or a frightening truth? Intrigued by this material, but uncertain of its veracity, I decided to turn it into a work of fiction. During my two years of intensive research, I uncovered written and photographic material which proved beyond doubt that Nazi Germany had in fact initiated a research programme for the development of saucer-shaped aircraft; that at the close of the war seasoned Allied pilots were submitting official reports about harassment by 'balls of fire' that tailed them and made their aircraft and radar malfunction; that one of the leading members of Germany's Projekt Saucer development team disappeared into the Soviet Union and another went to work with German rocket expert, Werner von Braun, for NASA, in the United States; that most of the known post-war 'tailless' aircraft and 'flying wings' were constructed in the wilds of Canada; that the Canadian AVRO flying saucer, the existence of which was officially denied until it was photographed illicitly by an American journalist, was later handed over to the U.S., all too publicly proclaimed to have been a failure, then placed on display in the U.S. Air Force Museum in Fort Eustis, Virginia; and, finally, that articles about man-made flying saucers, including the German Kugelblitz and the Canadian AVRO-Car prototype, had been published not only by the 'lunatic' fringe but by highly respected aeronautical magazines such as Luftfahrt International, the Royal Air Force Flying Review, and the U.S. News & World Report. So flying saucers, whether primitive or highly advanced, were certainly constructed in Nazi Germany and post-war Canada, in the latter case with the aid of the United States.

In 1980, my 615-page novel, Genesis, based on a mass of research material, including that mentioned above, was published. It became a bestseller on both sides of the Atlantic, eventually dropped off the bestseller lists, but then became a 'cult' book, and now, ten years after its publication, it remains in print. Reviewing the novel on its publication in the United States, Publishers Weekly said: 'Harbinson has drawn so heavily on factual material and integrated it so well into the text that the book begins to read like non-fiction.' This conclusion was drawn by other reviewers and over the years I received many letters from readers who obviously thought the same and asked me to tell them which parts of the book were fact and which were fiction. Since responding individually to those many requests would have been an exhausting endeavour, I naturally avoided doing so. However, a continuing fascination with the subject, encouraged by the new, often startling data that continued to come my way via readers, UFO organisations and my own researches, eventually encouraged me to expand the original novel into a four-book series, Projekt Saucer, which would include much of this new material. It also convinced me that there was enough material for a non-fiction book on this unique, intriguing and often frightening subject.

The following pages are an attempt to separate fact from fiction regarding whether or not UFO or, more accurately, flying saucers, originate right here on Earth and have been designed and constructed, possibly in secret cooperation, by European, Soviet, Canadian and American scientists. If the facts contained herein point to man-made flying saucers, then what we are faced with is an unprecedented, international cover-up... and the most nightmarish official secret of our times.