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In recognition of Mac Tonnies, author and blogger, who passed away October 19, 2009
 Although we do not post many news items, we would be remiss if we failed to note the untimely passing of the young futurist blogger and author, Mac Tonnies.
Tonnies' "Posthuman Blues" blog was a popular destination for readers seeking interesting perspectives on some of the greatest questions facing mankind.
Of particular relevance to us at the John Mack Institute, Tonnies wrote one of the best reviews of John Mack's book, Passport to the Cosmos, back in 1999. When we asked him if he'd repost it to Amazon.com to help book sales, he did so without hesitation.
Tonnies was a promising author himself, with his next book, Cryptoterrestrials: Indigenous Humanoids and the Aliens Among Us due for publication in early 2010 from Anomalist Books.
It is impossible to accept that such a young, bright person could be lost prematurely. His death has been reported as natural causes.
For the moment, his blog is still online, and comments in his final entry are being added by those remembering him:
http://posthumanblues.blogspot.com/
Mac Tonnies' review of John Mack's Passport to the Cosmos:
5.0 out of 5 stars Rational, provocative and always engaging
January 31, 2001
By Mac Tonnies (Kansas City, MO USA)
In "Passport to the Cosmos," John Mack succeeds in creating one of the most astute, rational narratives ever written about the "alien abduction" phenomenon. Not since Whitley Strieber's seminal best-selling "Communion" have I read a book that addresses the issue of nonhuman intelligence with such humility and restraint (traits lacking in recent books on the subject, such as David Jacobs' insipidly literal "The Threat"). Mack argues that alien encounters, while subjectively real to experiencers, probably reflect a much more sophisticated model of reality than Western empiricism currently allows. In other words, abduction experiences are likely not "real" in the traditional sense of flesh-and-blood extraterrestrial visitors conducting unsolicited health check-ups (an interpretation exploited by skeptics eager to downplay the reality of alleged alien encounters).
Mack takes time to address the issue from an indigenous perspective, drawing on testimony from experiencers in Africa and South America. The parallels, he reveals, are as startling as they are productive. In them, Mack concludes that we are indeed coming into contact with a largely (though not entirely) unrecognized intelligence that appears to antedate space-time as we know it.
Mack is to be applauded for his skepticism and determination in helping our understanding of what is perhaps the most misunderstood phenomenon in the world today. "Passport to the Cosmos" is a landmark book in a field with too few reasoned perspectives and way too many unbounded imaginations.
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