The scene should be set for an invigorating clash of ideas. Unfortunately this does not occur, at least in the book. The first problem is tactical. For Wilson to write a book attacking Von Daniken on his own account would be good, and indeed he has done so. For some third person to put together the contributions of each of them to a live debate, together with some of the questions asked at the debate and the replies of the two principals, would also be good. But this book is uneasily neither one nor the other. It is an account of a debate written by one of the participants (and illustrated, we may add, by his daughter and his daughter-in-law). After a disagreement, most of us run through it again in our minds, and think of the devastating thrusts we could have made, if only we had thought of them at the time – l’esprit d’escalier, the wit that comes to us on the stairs outside after we’ve left. Most of us know, too, how illusory these triumphs are. They succeed only because the other party is not there to reply. However honestly Wilson has reported this debate, he cannot escape the suspicion that that is all his book is; and consequently, it is less convincing than a simple attack on his own behalf would have been. Suspicion is heightened when we see that large parts of the book consist of questions from members of the audience addressed to von Daniken, but replied to only by Wilson.

As might be expected, Wilson comes off better in the debate. Von Daniken has been exposed falsifying evidence (e.g. the picture of the ‘parking bays’ on the ‘airfield’ of Nazca, which he later admitted were only a few feet across), telling lies (e.g. that he personally entered a cave in Ecuador, denied by the man he says was his guide and later admitted by him as told for dramatic effect), and ignoring published evidence (e.g. Thor Heyerdahl’s account, long before von Daniken’s first book, of how the Easter Islanders showed him how their ancestors had erected the giant statues; or The American Weekly’s discovery of Bridey Murphy, the Irish ‘previous incarnation’ recalled under hypnosis by Virginia Tighe, as genuine memories of Mrs Tighe’s own girlhood in Chicago – see Time 18 June 1956; regrettably Wilson does not mention this exposure).

Even without these personal failings, von Daniken’s case would be very difficult to support, for it is logically particular. If ancient human civilisations were influenced by astronauts from outer space, then the influence must have occurred at some specific time or times, at some particular place or places. Von Daniken is very vague about exactly where or when he supposes the ancient astronauts to have made their visit, or about how many visits there were. Thus it is hardly surprising that von Daniken comes off worse, even apart from the fact that our informant is his opponent in the debate.

Wilson does manage to attack some of the more serious incoherencies in von Daniken’s position, which is all that could reasonably be expected, since von Daniken manages to make four or five errors of fact in each paragraph. But Wilson’s attack is by no means as strong as could be wished. Much of the time he merely argues from authority, though to be sure he does, unlike von Daniken, cite them in a form which enables the reader to check them. Wilson’s is a sloppy attack. For example, he says of a Mexican picture they are discussing, ‘It is showing this man Pacal at the time of his death, and the date actually given on the sarcophagus – it is just before 700AD (p. 45). Wilson is here confusing inference with observation: it is as unlikely that the ancient Mexicans gave their dates in that form as that Julius Caesar dated coins ‘55BC’. Wilson claims, on the authority of an astronomer, that ‘There is no certain knowledge of a single planet outside our solar system’ (p. 64). It is not for another sixty pages that he quotes the astronomer and his evidence, viz. that Barnard’s Star is observed to wobble in the way that it would be caused to wobble by a (large) planet (p. 125). Granted our knowledge of the planet is not direct observation; but it is nevertheless a little harsh to describe it as ‘only conjecture’ as Wilson does. There are grades of evidence, degrees of support, and that Barnard’s Star has at least one planet is fairly well-supported conjecture.

Further, Wilson has some rather strange views of his own. For example, ‘Ultimately we come to the point, based on objective evidence, that UFOs are a Satanic device. They are basically evil, and they are a special phenomenon of the generation we are now living in.’ (p. 123). ‘Beings in UFOs, and entities associated with other manifestations of the occult, do indeed take over a human brain (p. 161). Unfortunately, I have not read Wilson’s UFOs and Their Mission Impossible, in which he supports this theory, but prima facie its seems more of a conjecture than the existence of a planet for Barnard’s Star.

War of the Chariots was evidently prepared in haste. The writing is careless, there are quite a lot of misprints. It does not raise any important additions to the overwhelming battery of objections to von Daniken’s theory, and I cannot imagine why anybody would want to buy it.