Cosmic Heretics: A Personal History of Attempts to Establish and Resist Theories of Quantavolution and Catastrophe in the Natural and H

Prof. Michael D. Gordin, Princeton University (History of Science)

"Alfred de Grazia was entering his forty-fourth year when he met self-styled cosmic heretic, Immanuel Velikovsky, who was already sixty-seven, and for the next twenty years a wide band of life's spectrum was colored by their relationship. As with a love affair, all that happened in the beginning presaged what would happen later, stretched out on the scale of time, themes doubling back upon themselves, attractions and reservations never to be erased...

As the winter days of 1962 became 1963 in Princeton, New Jersey, 08540 U.S.A., families and friends gathered into clusters like the last of the leaves, so that half-consciously and driven by eddies of customs and calendar, de Grazia saw more of his friends like Livio Catullus Stecchini and of his brother Sebastian. He did not know Velikovsky, and if he had been asked about him, he would have replied that he had never heard of him...

This he confessed when Livio Stecchini, as they walked along Nassau Street on that cold day, brought up the matter, disjointedly, as happens with men walking down the street to no end, old friends whose thoughts needed no introduction nor conclusion... Their conversation would have gone something like this:

"There is a man in Princeton with good material on the scientific establishment... Cosmogonist... They suppressed his books."

"What do you mean, suppressed his books?"

"They smeared him."

"Like Reich? Like Semmelweis?"

"Yes."

"What does he do?"

"He lives here. He writes."

"About what?"

"Mythology, astronomy, the Bible, ancient catastrophes... I can introduce you. We can go to his house. He lives on Hartley Avenue."

"Down near the Lake."

"To take a look at his stuff."

"Maybe... What's his name?"

"Velikovsky."

"Never heard of him."