is this where battlestar galactica got started
- February 11th, 2016
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Okay, so Battlestar Galactica, right? The excellent reboot which was a remake of the Glen Larson 1970s better-than-first-impression demi-classic. Mormonism plus Ancient Astronauts = Space Apocalypse and/or Space Adventures, depending.
I’ve never really studied how far back that whole Ancient Astronauts bullshit goes, because I have better things to do with my life, but I stumbled across something today. Could this bit of I-can-see-how-you-get-there-but-wow nuttiness from the March 1961 issue of Analog Science Fiction and Fact be the starting point?
The article is called “The Four-Faced Visitors of Ezekiel,” and its thesis is that they were not so much angels as space travellers, misinterpreted. Only it’s not really billed as fiction, it’s more of a “what if?” kind of piece.
Searching around for more about the “Ezekiel” author, I found this blog post from a “UFO Investigator” which talks about how you can draw a straight line from Jack Kirby’s comic book character, “Metron,” to this very article in Analog. Halperin asserts Metron is Metatron – which I think we all have to agree is the most Kirby name ever invented for an angel, but that’s beside the point – with the serial numbers filed off, and points at the similarities in drawings between the article and the comics.
So – Analog Science Fiction and Fact (1961) to Jack Kirby’s Metron (1971) to Däniken’s Chariots of the Gods (who even cares get out of here you hack) to Glen A. Larson’s Battlestar Galactica (1978) and BSG (2007)? Is this a thing?
And if so, does Neon Genesis Evangelion belong in here too?

I don’t even know.
4 comments on Dreamwidth.
Actually, I thought Arthur Orton’s “Four-Faced Visitors of Ezekiel” was a really good article–very well and soberly argued, even though I don’t agree with his conclusions. He’s intuited what Bible scholars often prefer to ignore, that there’s something uncanny about the vision in the first chapter of Ezekiel, transcending the conventional categories of Ezekiel’s time and also our own (Orton’s spacemen).
He’s not only the earliest but also the best of the “ancient astronaut” theorists, all of whom may have something to teach us, wrong as I believe they are.
Thanks for linking back to my blog.
Best,
David