the buzz log

Is truth stranger than conspiracy-theory fiction? A new book on Area 51 that's already generating a ton of buzz says there was no alien spacecraft that crashed in Roswell, New Mexico in 1947. Instead, Stalin did it -- maybe.

According to Annie Jacobsen, the reporter who authored "Area 51," the spaceship was actually a Soviet spy plane that came down during a storm. Jacobsen claims it was filled with bizarre, genetically engineered child-sized pilots in an attempt, by the Soviet Union's leader Joseph Stalin, to cause widespread panic in the U.S.

The story gets even stranger: The leader of the USSR had apparently been inspired by a radio broadcast, produced by Orson Welles, which was an adaptation of the HG Wells story "War of the Worlds." The broadcast caused mass hysteria in some listeners who tuned in and mistook it for a real-life alien invasion.

And those ET-looking aviators? They were scientific experiments created by the "Angel of Death," Nazi doctor Joseph Mengele, for the USSR. The flight was piloted remotely, according to accounts in the book, and was filled with a crew of "alien-like children."

According to Jacobsen's source, a retired engineer who was put on the project in 1978, the look of the human experiments could explain the alien conspiracy theories: "They were grotesquely deformed, but each in the same manner as the others. They had unusually large heads and abnormally shaped oversize eyes."

True? There's no way to prove it. Like everything related to the mystery spot, documents surrounding the eerie events are still classified.

Still, lack of proof hasn't exactly stopped the book from causing conversation on the media circuit and on the Web. In the last day, Yahoo! searches skyrocketed 3,000% for "area 51 book." And the tome is penned not by a crackpot conspirator, but a respected journalist.

Even the New York Times gives her credence, writing in its review: "Although this connect-the-dots UFO thesis is only a hasty-sounding addendum to an otherwise straightforward investigative book about aviation and military history, it makes an indelible impression. 'Area 51' is liable to become best known for sci-fi provocation."

But sci-fi provocation may be all the book generates. After all, without the government coming out and saying what happened back in 1947, even if there was no conspiracy, the stories of the "Roswell Incident" will remain just that.

See an interview with "The Daily Show's" Jon Stewart about Jacobsen's claims.