Reality-warping Asian science fiction that just happens to be nonfiction.
In 11th-century China, pilgrims would journey to Pishe Lake to witness objects that flew up nightly, shot out dazzling beams of light, then vanished at impossible speeds. In the 18th century, a high-ranking Chinese official was led by two luminous orbs away from the mountains, where female beings transported him inside one. In December 1994, twenty-five witnesses near Taiwan's Presidential Office observed five UFOs: a luminous saucer accompanied by four oval objects.
These are not isolated incidents.
For 2,000 years, Asia has preserved accounts of glowing egg shapes, armored wheels, and Uzumaki-style spirals zigzagging across the sky, emerging from lakes, and hovering over cities. In the testimonies of ancient witnesses, we find the same details that Pentagon whistleblowers report today: objects emitting powerful lights and maneuvering in ways that defy physics and accounts of missing time, sudden silences, and encounters that transform or destroy those who experience them.
Drawing on declassified documents, imperial archives, classical texts, and contemporary cross-disciplinary research, award-winning writers and translators Yi Izzy Yu and John Yu Branscum expand UAP research beyond Western frameworks and open new pathways for understanding humanity's long relationship with unexplained phenomena.
STARS THAT PAUSE delivers:
- New translations of ancient Chinese encounters
- Modern cases proving the phenomenon never left Asia
- Striking connections between Eastern philosophy and current UAP conversations
- 19 provocative deep dives into related subjects, including:
- Chinese UFO theories rooted in qi and yin-yang dynamics
- A cross-cultural history of sexual encounters with non-human entities, from ancient Asian immortals to modern aliens and spirits
- The twinned histories of Asian shamanism and UAP encounters
- Profound similarities between Asian “strange lands” tales and today’s theories about portals and parallel dimensions
- How Eastern philosophy, from Buddhism to Taoism, anticipated modern insights into consciousness, the nature of reality, and simulation theory
- Related explorations in narrative psychology, symbolic thought, and mythological engineering
"In this luminous and fascinating volume, authors Yi Izzy Yu and John Yu Branscum bring together translated ancient and contemporary accounts and refract them through Asian experience and thought. Whether ultimate explanations lie in collective madness, alien encounters, or something else entirely, Stars That Pause invites readers to explore all possibilities while blending paranormal, psychological, and personal interpretations in the authors’ pensive and poetic style. Enigmatic and utterly absorbing."
- Lee Murray, five-time Bram Stoker Award®-winner and recipient of New Zealand’s Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement in Fiction
"Yu and Branscum have unearthed something most of us never knew was lost—two millennia of Asian encounters with phenomena that challenge everything we think we understand about reality. Not just another UFO book, this is a masterwork of comparative mythology and post-disclosure humanities that, like the best art, makes you see differently."
- Bil Brown, editor of Black & Grey magazine
"Stars That Pause is the most ambitious and mind-bending book about UFOs I’ve ever read. It’s mind-bending Asian science fiction that just happens to be nonfiction. Drs. Yu and Branscum’s meticulous translations transport you to strange places, revealing Chinese immortals who mirror today’s alien profiles, sexual encounters with non-human entities, and Taoist UFO theories rooted in qi dynamics. If you thought UFOs were a solely Western obsession, prepare to have your mind blown."
- Xiuping Shang, poet and visual artist
