Viking secures prize-winning journalist Lavelle’s book on aliens in ‘major’ pre-empt

Viking has acquired Little Green Men: A Journey Through Ufology and the Search for Alien Life by Orwell Prize-winning journalist Daniel Lavelle.

Commissioning editor Greg Clowes acquired world English rights from Matthew Turner at Rogers, Coleridge & White in a “major” pre-empt.

Little Green Men is a first-person quest narrative journeying into the mystery of UFOs and the intensifying search for alien life. The publisher goes on: “Told with an open but sceptical mind, Little Green Men probes the limits of human rationality as well as opening a space for more nuanced thinking on this perennially fascinating subject.

“Little Green Men is a tour de force of first-person storytelling – a deeply insightful slice of Americana filled with adventure and moments of comedy – that will change how we think about unidentified flying objects and our (possible) neighbours in the universe.” It will be published in autumn 2025.

Lavelle is a freelance feature writer from Manchester. His first book, Down and Out, was published by Wildfire in 2022 and won a Royal Society of Literature Award for non-fiction writing. He has covered topics such as mental health, homelessness and culture for the Guardian, New Statesman and the Independent. In 2017 he received the Guardian’s Hugo Young Award for an opinion piece on his experience of homelessness. He and Freya Marshall Payne were named joint winners of the inaugural Orwell Prize for Reporting Homelessness in June 2023.

Clowes said: “Something has shifted in our perception of UFOs and the search for alien life in recent years: there’s been a blurring of conspiratorial and legitimate sources of information, and we need a book to sort the wheat from the chaff with an open but sceptical mind.

“Daniel Lavelle is the perfect writer for this propulsive and wildly entertaining book: he’s unafraid to go out and get his shoes dirty, but he writes with the sensitivity and clarity of style of a seasoned novelist. He moves seamlessly between conversations with conspiracy theorists, scientists and government officials, finding insight (and comedy) wherever he goes. We are extremely excited and fortunate to be publishing his outstanding book at Viking.”

Lavelle said: “If you’d told me on 16th December 2017 that one day I’d be writing a book about ET and the people trying to find him, I would have laughed in your face. The next day, when the Pentagon’s UFO programme was exposed, it was like we were all living in a Steven Spielberg movie. Serious people with serious titles like the President of the United States said there are things in our skies that we can’t explain.

“This shook my whole frame of reference, and ever since, I’ve wanted to make sense of it all. I am an avid reader of Viking books and am humbled to be included among the esteemed authors on their list. I’m also delighted to work with editor Greg Clowes, who shares my burning curiosity about this topic. I’d also like to thank Matthew Turner, who believed in this project from our first casual conversation about it over a year ago.”