Talk:Walter Siegmeister

The Encyclopedia of Cults, Sects, and New Religions

So, Arxiloxos has added The Encyclopedia of Cults, Sects, and New Religions as a reference here, with the gloss "excerpts available on Google Books". Which would be fine, except that they aren't (available). There's no preview or snippet view of this book where I live. Can anyone see what it says about Siegmeister? If so, would they be kind enough to quote it here (in quotes, with attribution, under Fair Use)? It'd be helpful, thanks. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 20:02, 21 August 2013 (UTC)

• Sorry to hear that. GBooks provides a preview of this where I am. It's only a couple of sentences, part of an article on "Hollow Earth (Inner Earth)", but it provides RS confirmation of this book's place in the context of the hollow earth fringe-theory. The first sentence gives the name of the book, the author, and the 1964 pub date; the second sentence summarizes the contents briefly: "It reported on the conspiracy to keep the truth about the hollow earth, flying saucers, and holes in the earth's poles which provided access to the interior of the earth secret from the human race." GBooks shows a number of other books that discuss Bernard/Siegmeister in the context of pseduoscience. It all suggests that his work was a reasonably well known piece of nutty-fringe science at one time (note, for example, this newspaper column that calls the book "famous" even as it describes the author as a "wacko"[1]). --Arxiloxos (talk) 01:09, 22 August 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for that, most helpful. This is of course a major problem with using G-books as a source, that "your mileage may vary", and indeed very often does so. I can't look at this now, but it seems possible that that source says nothing that isn't already in the Whitsel article, which is detailed and well written. But if I may, I'll check with you again on that. Thank you, Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 17:00, 22 August 2013 (UTC)