How to Build a Flying Saucer: And Other Proposals in Speculative Engineering

by T.B. Pawlicki

Develops theories about how Stonehenge and a Bronze Age, worldwide communication system might have been created, and how modern technology can be used to make a flying saucer, transmute elements, or develop time travel

Genres: Nonfiction, Speculative Fiction

152 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1981

Reviews

[Anna Rebecca · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the book that got me interested in speculative engineering back in high school. For a reader not yet well acquainted with the world of speculative engineering, this book serves as a nice, low key introduction. The book is not especially technical, which is fine for an introduction anyway. Maybe you'll agree with the proposals set forth in the book; maybe you won't. It doesn't matter. Any book that gets you thinking is worth reading.

I found this book inspired me to dig deeper on some subjects, and as I was researching, I happened upon more topics that intrigued me. If not for this book, I might never have been introduced to the world of speculative engineering.

I would recommened anyone give this book a read. It's not a difficult book to read at all. I tell everyone to read this book with an open mind. Don't immediately dismiss something simply because "that's not what they taught me in school". I'm not saying this book contains the gospel truth. What I am saying, is open your mind to the possibilities.

[Nakedfartbarfer]

This was a fave of my older brother, whom I listened to as he held forth about necessary electromagnetism of UFO construction, usually to the detriment of all other conversations at the table. This book is nonfiction, but a fun premise— detailing a lot of the author’s kooky, if thoroughly reasoned, engineering ideas.

The idea of outsider inventors living and working external to academic/corporate/military R&D is attractive, even moreso the idea that they're unfettered to commit brave intellectual subterfuge as they work with power sources or fill markets niches that would otherwise threaten some parent or subsidiary energy company. This book is nifty conjecture-- probably easy to scoff at for any engineer who has done geometric dimensioning or tolerancing for manufacture.

Dunno if any of these ideas would or could work, but in the plucky creative optimism of speculative engineering, I guess it's kinda beside the point.

[Mark Bates · Rating 4 out of 5]

The mysteries of the universe have been revealed to me to keep safe in my secret lair.

[Anthony Flacco · Rating 5 out of 5]

Author T.B. Pawlicki has laid out a beautiful introduction to speculative science and salted it with plenty of great twists on established thoughts and assumptions about the nature of nature. His love of thought and of the power of clear logic and careful engineering is crafted into every page of this book. Of course I loved the section on building a flying saucer - and Pawlicki has such a detailed plans that if we only had a Mr. Fusion to serve as a compact power plant, his design could fly and leave the planet. But I also loved reading his theories on how the pyramids were built and why the notion of eighty ton blocks being pulled along on rolling logs (uphill!) is absurd. The skid-rail counterweight system he proposes is far more likely to represent something like the actual technique used. People who worry about whether or not they "agree" with everything they read should look elsewhere. This is a book for those who love the feel of exercising their brains on fascinating ideas and theories. Mister Pawlicki has produced a masterful work, now decades old, and still as fresh as when it was first published because these are not ideas that go out of style.