Some followup to the book Gods Without Men

Area 51 and Roswell

Area 51 is the light rectangle in the center.

In regard to the discussion of UFO sightings in the desert, it turned out that most of us had Area 51 and Roswell, New Mexico, blended together in our minds. I was pretty sure that Area 51 was in Nevada, but not absolutely sure, so I had to look it up. It turns out that Area 51 (AKA Groom Lake) is in southern Nevada and is actually administratively part of Edwards Air Force Base, itself located in the California desert not too far from where the action of the book takes place. Groom Lake in Nevada is where many top-secret spy aircraft have been tested (including the U2 spy plane), also where captured technology from other countries was evaluated. Due to the extreme secrecy that surrounds the facility, rumors have been rife over the years that the base had something to do with either extraterrestrial exploration or captured extraterrestrial ships on earth or both. Due to a Freedom of Information Act request made in 2005, the CIA finally publicly acknowledged a few months ago that there was a test facility at that location, but didn't reveal anything more. Go to the Wiki page if you want to read more (standard Wikipedia caveats apply).

Roswell is nearly two states away from Area 51.

Roswell, New Mexico, is located in the southeast corner of that state, actually quite a way from Area 51. In July 1947, a local newspaper reported that a "flying disk" had crashed on a ranch near there and been taken to Roswell Army Air Force Base for analysis. From thence have sprung many books, television series episodes, and movies about captured alien technology and alien autopsies. The Roswell UFO Incident, of course, has its own Wiki Page.

Changelings

Twice in Gods Without Men, the idea of a changeling figures in the story. First, the child Judy disappears at the site of the UFO cult and is widely believed either to have been abducted by aliens or to have been incinerated in the explosion of the extraterrestrial travel machine that consumed the cult's founder, Schmidt. A fully grown late teen-aged "Judy" later appears to confirm the alien abduction story and become a key figure in what remains of the cult. Later, "Judy" reveals to another character that she is not actually Judy but a young girl from Salt Lake City who was picked up by one of the cult elders and groomed to impersonate the original Judy. When asked how the mother of the original Judy could have been taken in, the substitute answers, "I was the answer to her prayers." The second incident comes at the end of the book, after Raj is returned to Jaz and Lisa with his autism cured, when Jaz begins to suspect that Raj is not his son but a completely different child.

As we were discussing this, something flashed by my mind, but the conversation had moved on, and the thought was gone before it was even fully formed. Later I remembered what I had been thinking about was a movie that I saw a year or so ago, called "The Imposter," about a Texas family whose youngest son had disappeared at age 13. The family got a call three years later from Spain from someone claiming to be the lost teen. His older sister traveled to Spain and identified him as her lost brother even though he was shorter than any male in her family, had brown hair and brown eyes instead of blond hair and blue eyes, had a much heavier 5-o'clock shadow than is normal in a teen, and had a heavy French accent. As the story unraveled, people asked how the family could have been so easily and thoroughly duped, and the answer was that "He was the answer to their prayers." It was one of the most disturbing movies I've ever seen and is available on Netflix (there is also a fictionalized version called "The Chameleon"). Here's the trailer of  "The Imposter".