Here in 2023 we have our share of well-known, successful technologists who also seem to have some, shall we say, ‘non-mainstream” ideas. But that’s nothing new. Jacques Vallée’s 83rd birthday is today, and he was that guy several decades ago. Vallée was born in France in 1939 and became a professional astronomer in 1961. That same year he won the Jules Verne prize for his first science-fiction novel, Le Sub-espace. At the time he still wanted to keep his imaginative and professional achievements separate, so he published his book under the name Jérôme Sériel.
The next year he moved to the US and worked as an astronomer at the University of Texas. While there he created the first detailed map of the surface of Mars. About that time he also began to study reports of UFOs. Possibly because of that interest, he moved to Chicago and worked at Northwestern University, where J. Allen Hynek chaired the astronomy department, and shared Vallée’s interest in UFOs. Vallée also branched out from astronomy and earned a PhD in computer science. His specialty was artificial intelligence research, and that prompted his move to the Stanford University Computer Center — where his UFO work got Peter Sturrock, a prominent physicist, interested in it as well.
His work at Stanford led him into computer networking, where he developed an instant messaging system that predated all the ones we have today by about 20 years. And THAT led him into the world of tech startups — he founded a company to market his networking tools, and when he sold the company, he became a venture capitalist. The tech startups he funded and advised did well — fourteen of them were able to make initial public offerings (IPOs) of stock on the basis of their inventions in nanotechnology, optical networking, pharmaceuticals, neurotransmitters, and more. Maybe those UFOs were slipping Vallée some hints here and there?
Speaking of UFOs, he’s said that his interest dates as far back as 1955, when he saw a UFO fly over his house in France. In the 1960s he was a leading proponent of the notion that UFOs were “visitors from another planet.” He wrote a couple of books about that. But by 1969 he’d changed his mind, and pointed out that all the stories about alien abductions made no sense as a way an advanced species would go about studying humans. Also, he said, if what they’re trying to do is survey the earth, they wouldn’t do it by visiting. After all, he’d surveyed Mars without needing to go anywhere near it.
Thus Vallée’s next book about UFOs argued that there was something else going on — maybe some kind of “multidimensional” visitations. His books were pretty popular, and he was a recognized figure in popular culture. So much so that there’s a character in Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind representing Vallée. It’s Lacombe, played by François Truffaut. There was also an episode of the X-Files with characters named Vallée, as well as his colleagues Sheaffer, and Hynek.
The one thing Vallée has never done is specialize in just one thing. His publications include technical articles and books about topics from astronomy to computers to finance; he has a long list of publications about UFOs, and remember that prize-winning novel he wrote? Well he kept that up too, publishing more novels and stories — all his fiction, though, is published under his pen name, Jérôme Sériel. Either that or there’s a UFO pilot by that name who also enjoys writing.
