Chariots of the Gods?
Memories of the Future (Subtitles Unsolved Mysteries of the Past ) is the first non-fiction book by the Swiss author Erich von Däniken. It was published in 1968 by Econ Verlag, especially in Germany was a great sales success and moved to the area of Präastronautik counting theses von Däniken in the interest of the general public.
Formation
By his own account of the author in 1966 and 1967 trips were undertaken in a total distance of more than 100,000 km for the research on memories of the future over the years. Von Däniken these trips will have undertaken in Davos outside of his hotel season operation.
The manuscript memories of the future was filed in the summer of 1967 at the Econ -Verlag, however, found by the editors of the publisher for insufficient. The publisher Erwin Barth of Wehrenalp was quoted as saying the manuscript was " the product of a non- emotional writer ." For this reason, Memories of the Future by Wilhelm Roggersdorf has been processed, which is listed as " processing " in the imprint. Information from the environment of the publisher spoke of that Roggersdorf the text "total to [ge ] wrote [ s ] " have.
Content
Memories of the Future is divided into twelve chapters, together with the preface, introduction, bibliography and index.
The contents of each chapter are:
Reception and criticism
Memories of the Future was published in February 1968 in an edition of 6,000 copies and quickly became a bestseller. Just one year after publication listed Der Spiegel, Memories of the Future has sold out until the end of February 1969 in the Federal Republic of Germany nearly 210,000 times. By the end of September of the year a total of 350,000 copies were sold. Until the end of September 1970 600.000 copies sold were registered. The enthusiasm about the book and the fact spread ideas were temporarily designated by the neologism " Dänikitis ".
On the revenue from the sale of the book Erich von Däniken was involved with a profit -sharing bonus of 7%, other 3 % went to Wilhelm Roggersdorf.
About the qualities of the book listed the contemporary criticism, editing von Däniken his theses " thankfully without deadly seriousness, pardonably with imagination ", but prefer it as " not much use [ ... ] from the admittedly difficult to refute allegation that modern science many finds not been able to conclusively explain. "
Be particularly beneficial for the effect of the book, social psychologist Hans Anger made , among others, " the feeling [ of ], to witness the beginnings of a fiery faith dispute ". Next Anger expressed the belief von Däniken offer content basically " upside-down science fiction". The book was " Although the scientific understanding general is not applicable directly attack " it, but let " the imagination of technological laity much more flexibility than do it sometimes sophisticated to the last detail of science fiction literature [e ] ". Anger made up his position to the fact that the book a " miracle faith " spread, which constitutes the "flight to a pseudo understanding of reality ".
After publication of the book by the French author Robert Charroux raised allegations, memories of the future is a plagiarism of his book Fantastic past from the year 1963. Von Däniken countered this, that Charroux himself had plagiarized the book awakening the third millennium by Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier which appeared in the original 1960. Another response was to introduce the book of Charroux in later editions in the bibliography.
Content of Memories of the Future were filmed in 1970 under the same name.