Stars That Pause: Ancient Lore, Modern Mysteries, and 2,000 Years of Asian UFO Encounters
by Yi Izzy Yu and John Yu Branscum
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Pub Date 15 Oct 2025 | Archive Date 9 Oct 2025
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Description
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—beginning an odyssey that maps precisely onto modern alien abduction accounts.
In December 1994, twenty-five witnesses near Taiwan's Presidential Office observed five UFOs: a luminous saucer accompanied by four oval objects that looked like they were made of black iron.
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 influence of Taoism on Carl Jung’s psychology and his UFO hypothesis
- 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
- Cross-cultural connections between Asian immortals, Western fairies, and modern alien and ultraterrestrial reports
- How Eastern philosophy, from Buddhism to Taoism, anticipated modern insights into consciousness, the nature of reality, and simulation theory
- Global cosmic egg mythology and its reflection in modern encounter reports
- Related explorations in narrative psychology, symbolic thought, and mythological engineering
As the Chinese scholar Ji Yun observed in 1800: “Those who insist all principles of existence have been discovered are simply being ridiculous.” Two centuries later, as governments worldwide begin to seriously investigate UAPs, and the world comes to terms with the fact that something is happening, his words prove prophetic. With investigative rigor and literary flair, Yu and Branscum reveal how Asia’s rich documentation holds crucial insights into humanity’s relationship with unidentified anomalous phenomena—whatever they are, and whatever we might be.
Essential reading for anyone fascinated by UAPs, Asian culture, or global mysteries. Stars That Pause is a must for fans of Cixin Liu, Ted Chiang, Passport to Magonia, American Cosmic, Hunt for the Skinwalker, and The Mothman Prophecies. A history truly stranger than fiction, it opens new avenues for understanding one of humanity’s most persistent mysteries—through the lens of one of its oldest continuous civilizations.
Advance Praise
Yu and Branscum have recovered something most of us never knew was lost—two millennia of Asian encounters with phenomena that challenge everything we think we understand about reality. This isn't another UFO book. It's archaeology of the impossible, a masterwork of comparative mythology, and like the best art, it makes you see differently.
--Bil Brown, editor of Black & Grey magazine, photographer, and documentarian
Praises and honors for the authors' previous work, The Shadow Book of Ji Yun: The Chinese Classic of Weird True Tales, Horror Stories, and Occult Knowledge
"A new and wholly fresh mother lode of 'true weird tales,' ... the only real comparisons to Shadow Book's treasure trove of bizarre stories, full of humour, horror, suspense, magic and mystery, are Japan's Kwaidan, the Thousand and One Nights, and most certainly Pu Sung-ling's Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio." ―Fortean Times
"While not a novel—and technically not even fiction—The Shadow Book of Ji Yun remains one of the most spectacular and riveting Chinese books in translation available to English language readers. The tales range from the beautiful and inspiring to the eerie and frightening; from the feasible to the impossible. And every single one of them is incredible." ―Books and Bao
"This is a collection of tales which, taken together, leads to the realization of just how weird, complex, and interconnected the world can be." ―Strange Horizons
"Written more than two centuries ago, Ji Yun's 'true weird stories' prove that humanity's greatest fears are timeless." ―Rue Morgue
Awards and Honors of Individual Pieces in The Shadow Book of Ji Yun
*Finalist for the 2020 [Gabriel García Márquez] "Gabo" Award for Literature in Translation
*Selected for New England Review's 2020 Haunting and Haunted Issue
*Selected for Strange Horizons' Samovar Quarterly Special Issue
*Nominated as "Best Microfiction" by Cincinnati Review
*Nominated as "Best of the Net" by Passages North
*Nominated as "Best of the Net" by Cincinnati Review
About the Authors
Yi Izzy Yu works, writes, and cavorts in the weird wilds of Pennsylvania. A former professor at both Chinese and American universities, she now works as a translator and cultural consultant. She is the co-translator of the acclaimed The Shadow Book of Ji Yun, and her fiction, nonfiction, and literary translations have appeared in magazines and anthologies ranging from New England Review and Strange Horizons-Samovar to Unquiet Spirits: Essays by Asian Women in Horror and Silk & Sinew: A Collection of Folk Horror from the Asian Diaspora. She was named a finalist for the 2024 Ignyte Award in Nonfiction and for the 2020 Gabriel García Márquez "Gabo" Award for Literature in Translation.
John Yu Branscum has published books with Sarabande Books, Argus House Press, and Empress Wu Books, and short form work in magazines ranging from Cincinnati Review to Apex Magazine. He is a recipient of the Ursula Le Guin Award for Imaginative Literature, the Sarah Bruckheimer Award for Literature, and the Argus House Press Award for Poetry. He enjoys family rave nights, durian fruit, and lucid dream vacations. Currently, he is in the midst of a long-term performance art project that involves working as a professor of comparative literature, creative writing, and consciousness studies at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, and as editor for the fashion and literature magazine Black & Grey.
Marketing Plan
• Forthcoming blurbs from acclaimed speculative fiction authors including Lee Murray (New Zealand), Ai Jiang (Canada), and Vanessa Fogg (US)
• Magazine special tie-in with avant-garde fashion, literature, and culture magazine Black & Grey (their simulation issue)
• Special upcoming seminar series at author's university
• Upcoming cultural and literary events at conventions, conferences, and universities
• Targeted advertising campaign
Available Editions
| EDITION | Ebook |
| ISBN | 9781953124050 |
| PRICE | US$9.99 (USD) |
| PAGES | 242 |
