Review by KEN KORCZAK
Imagine a baseball player who gets four or five at-bats in an important game, and every time he steps up to the plate, he blasts a home run into the seats. Author Steve Volk pulls off the literary equivalent of such a feat, with this marvelous book, Fringe*ology.
Volk weilds his pen like a meaty baseball bat, or better yet, like a sword of illuminating light. Chapter after chapter, he hits his subject matter out of the park. Amazingly, he does so while handling some of the most controversial, contentious and thorny issues of our day involving science and philosophy, belief versus nonbelief, religion versus atheism, life and death.
Volk is one of those rare writers who can levitate his words across the page, rising above all of the often vicious rancor and back biting that characterizes the ongoing battle between hard-line atheists and the most gullible New Age airy-fairy folks.
The primary proposition of Fringe*ology is this: There is a vast middle ground that must be considered when confronting subjects that carry what the author calls a "Paranormal Taint." Ghosts, UFOs, religious experience, an afterlife, dreaming - Volk contends that our modern debate has descended into a deplorably unconstructive situation in which each side has retreated to their respective corners, where all they do is lob stink bombs at each other, deriding and criticizing each other - when the fact is that, almost certainly, neither side has a monopoly on the truth.
That old cliché, "less Heat and more light" virtually is reborn to become fresh again is this book as the author leads us through a well-researched, varied, detailed and sensible approach to paranormal subject matter.
Easily a 5-Star read, and perhaps one of the most important books for the mainstream reader written on this topic in at least 10 years.
Ken Korczak is the author of: MINNESOTA PARANORMALA
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