A tragic group of thirty-nine adults were told to step out of their ‘physical containers’ in order to ascend to a UFO arriving soon after the Hale-Bopp comet appeared in 1996, seen as a sign of the end (p.117). The UFO would transport them to the ‘next level above humans’, the Kingdom of Heaven. This was the much-publicised communal suicide of members of Heaven's Gate in San Diego district, California, in March 1997. This useful collection of essays by sociologists and religion scholars explores this notorious new religious movement. Seven of the ten chapters were previously published, and one of these is a bizarre account of the movement's beliefs and history until 1988. As the first single collection of its kind, this comprehensive study offers insights into the history of UFO religions with its extraterrestrials, and explores religious suicides, the role of cyberspace and the appeal of new religious movements in western societies more generally. The 1997 event followed three other infamous mass religious deaths: the People's Temple in Jonestown, Guyana (1978), when 918 adults and children died, the Branch Davidian siege in Waco, Texas (1993), when eighty-seven died, and the Solar Temple in Quebec, Switzerland and France (1994–7) when a total of seventy-five were killed on four occasions. But Heaven's Gate is the only movement among these four where the cause of death was undoubtedly suicide. This movement was an eclectic, postmodern blend of science fiction, unconventional biblical exegesis (mostly from the Book of Revelation), bits of New Age and popular culture, aided by recourse to the internet (still in its infancy), and borrowing ideas from Star Wars, Star Trek and The X-Files. The movement was formed in 1975 by Marshall Applewhite (‘Bo’, then ‘Do’) and Bonnie Lu Nettles (‘Peep’, then ‘Ti’), who believed themselves to be heavenly beings and the two witnesses of the Book of Revelation. Applewhite died in the 1997 suicide pact and Nettles of cancer twelve years earlier. The name Heaven's Gate was only adopted in 1993, as Do and his followers isolated themselves for seven years after the death of Ti (pp. 116, 187). There is some repetition, especially noticeable in the several brief histories given. At its peak in the mid-seventies the movement attracted only 150–200 followers (pp. 38, 186), but the collection suggests that its significance for the study of religion outweighs its numerical size.