Brief:
The Saucer Fleet is the latest release from Jack Hagerty and Jon Rogers of Spaceship Handbook fame. This 330 page hard-cover book features detailed information on famous flying saucers depicted on the big screen, television and print, including:

• The Day the Earth Stood Still
• War of the Worlds
• This Island Earth
• Forbidden Planet
• Earth vs. The Flying Saucers
• Lost in Space
• The Invaders
• plus some others.
  

Contents:
The book can be viewed as an adjunct to The Spaceship Handbook, which conspicuously omitted saucers. In his intro, Jack notes that these saucers don't exactly fit there, as they haven't contributed to the history of the spacecraft. But then, neither do items like the Josie’s Spaceship (from Josie and the Pussycats), which was featured in The Handbook. I for one think that they do have their place, even if only in my imagination, since the real world versions haven't panned out (for example, see my post on the Pye Wacket). Be that as it may, I think saucers are cool and am happy Jack and Jon gave us this book. (BTW, I liked Josie’s Spaceship.)

The presentation is similar to that in The Handbook, including: a background section that sets the historical context; a summary of the story; a description of the subject vehicle including a detailed, dimensioned drawings; background on where the authors got their data; and, finally, an epilogue with the author's comments. The whole thing is packed with photos. New to this work, many of the drawings also provide interior details. There are some modeler's notes, but these are pretty much limited to the kits that have been produced.

In his forward, Dr. Phil "Bad Astronomer" Plait says the book is a biography of these shows. It is that and more. To present that biography, the authors first delve into the history and sociology behind the UFO craze, which continues to this day. The saucers in the book were motivated by that phenomenon and undoubtedly did their part to fuel it on. I actually found this to be one of the more interesting aspects of the book. Note that this book is about flying saucers (known entities created by our imaginations) and not UFO's (unknown entities that may really exist, but whose origin is in dispute).

The historical and story summaries were also interesting. One of the cool things was to see how these classics influenced later sci-fi works. There is even an occasional discussion about the real science behind the fictitious technology. I now know what a Hertzsprung-Russell diagram is. And how much energy would be released if the strong force holding your atoms together was abruptly released. Cool, huh? It was also really neat to get a recap of features like I love like The Day the Earth Stood Still and Lost is Space. I'd like to see them again now that I have read the book.

While the saucer descriptions and diagrams were the main thing I originally wanted from the book, they actually were a small part of the whole. There is not much material available on the saucers and what there is is usually inconsistent. The authors performed a lot of photogrammetry and often had to resort to supposition, and extrapolation. It's clear they really did their homework to dig out details about these ships. The results are the most detailed plans available on these saucers. (Actually, that statement may have some supposition on my part too.)

The 'archeological' reports and and epilogues were of mixed interest to me. In general, the detailed analysis of the the interiors of these spacecraft were a bit much. The main benefit of this detail is twofold. First, detailed sci-fi modelers will understand what they are modeling second, scale modelers in general will understand how develop plans from photographic sources. The epilogues also went into more detail on the movies influence, both in terms of the story lines as well as the physical props.

Summary:
I found the book interesting, but mainly not in ways I had expected. I think that it will appeal mostly to sci-fi buffs and fans of the subject shows. The drawings will be useful to sci-fi modelers but many can be used for flying models as well. However, since ours fly upward instead of sideways, the non-symmetrical ones would be problematic. But if you want scale points for your saucer, the book will be very useful.

While I really liked the read, this will have less influence on my building the The Spaceship Handbook and the latter is a better buy for the sport rocketeer. Thus, I'm having a hard time assigning a numeric rating to this book. If you are interested in the subject material, it's a '4'. If the criteria is a direct comparison to The Handbook or Rockets of the World, then the score would be lower. I'm tending not to mix apples and oranges and go with the higher rating.

I hope it says enough to allow prospective readers to determine if this this book is for them. I want to extend my sincere thanks to Jack for sponsoring the "Rocket Family" photo contest, Nick for honchoing it and of course those who thought my Fireball XL5 family was worthy.

Overall Rating: 4 out of 5