The Earth Chronicles

Sitchin’s whole project is a reading of Sumerian cuneiform in which the Anunnaki aren’t gods at all but a species from a planet called Nibiru on a three and a half thousand year orbit, who turned up here to mine gold and engineered us out of the local hominids to do the digging for them. He builds it out across the Earth Chronicles series starting with The 12th Planet, and he does it with real tablets, real museum catalogue numbers, and a translation that essentially nobody else agrees with. Assyriologists say the philology is wrong and astronomers say there is no Nibiru, and both of those are worth knowing going in. Whatever else he was, he wasn’t lazy about it. Whether that lands as history or as extremely diligent fan fiction about history is the thing to settle for yourself.

I will say though, my son owes his name to having a father that read these. So expect a lasting impression.