New Kindle eBook, "Phantoms and Monsters: Cryptid Encounters" by Lon Strickler will please fans of the paranormal despite some bumpy editing

Review by KEN KORCZAK

I'll cut right to the chase and say I enjoyed this Kindle ebook. That's probably because the subject matter interests me greatly. So for its intended audience - folks like me who are fascinated with strange creatures and the eerie phenomenon that surround them - this is a can't miss selection.

I'm not going to give it my top recommendation, however, for reasons I'll explain in just a bit. But first, a brief summary for those who want to know what's in the book:

PHANTOMS AND MOSTERS: CRYPTID ENCOUNTERS is a collection of raw eyewitness accounts of legendary beasties: Bigfoot, mothman, and there's a few serpent-like river monsters and a "little people" encounter thrown in for good measure. Here you will find mostly raw or only minimally edited email letters from average folks who were astounded to encountered strange creatures in their everyday lives.

I should say there is also a number of reports of some really weird sightings - bizzare, peculiar creatures -- some of which I have never heard of before, and for that I add extra praise.

However, the buyer should be aware of what they're getting here: This is not so much a formal book but a series of "cut-and-paste" selections from author LON STRICKLER'S, popular BLOG. And here is where I have some mild quibbles, based mostly on formatting:

The text is not well-edited. Granted, the author wanted to retain the exact flavor of the original reports of folks on the ground, and I applaud him for that. But the dicey production values go beyond just lack of editing to other factors, especially a constantly shifting text size. Sometimes the font size goes from bigger to smaller from page to page, and this makes little sense to me - and for many it will be distracting.

There are also some raw reports that should have been edited a bit more rigorously - the most intriguing and fascinating report involves an Ohio man's encounter with the famous mothman entity -- made even more interesting because his story relates to the famous Silver Bridge collapse disaster of 1967, which killed 46 people.

This entry is exceedingly bizarre, frightening and gripping - but I had to stop and re-read many passages several times to be clear about what they guy was trying to say because his writing was so muddy. If it was me, I would have provided additional editing or perhaps inserted commentary to help the reader understand this man's amazing story.

So, this is an ebook created mostly from a "raw dump" from a blog with minimal formal editing - yet, it still gets a sky-high recommendation from me because the content is so interesting, and contributes valuable information to the record.

Ken Korczak is the author of: MINNESOTA PARANORMALA

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The Other Pilot by Ed Baldwin is an aviation thriller that gets muddled in the middle, making the plot veer off course for a crash landing

Review by KEN KORCZAK

THE OTHER PILOT is an ambitious attempt to write a thriller novel which incorporates some of the most relevant issues of our day - the banking crisis, the growing mistrust of the U.S. Government, political power, conspiracy theories - all wrapped up in the world of hot-jock fighter pilots who live, breath, sleep and eat flying, fighter jets and all things avionic.

The problem is that the author's skill is not equal to the task at hand. The first three chapters are tight and do an excellent job of setting up a confounding mystery - and the last three or four chapters feature some fine, well-handled action scenes that get the blood pumping.

However, the downfall is the vast muddy middle of this novel. Writer ED BALDWIN, a retired Air Force flight surgeon, loses his grip on the control stick of his plot. He sets out to follow a well-designed literary flight plan, but instead gets lost in heavy fog and crash lands in a swamp teaming with conspiracy theories, right-wing paranoia about the U.N., NRA gun-nut blather, corporate banking scams, and preachy lectures on the innate human superiority of the fighter pilot.

Ed Baldwin

I'm well familiar with pilots. I once worked as communications writer within the aerospace industry. This afforded me the opportunity to meet, interview and interact with some of the most stellar and accomplished pilots of our day.

For example, I met and interviewed the great Scott Crossfield, the first man to break Mach 2. I sat down to a lunch and conversed with an impressive guy -- the Marine aviator James Buchli -- who logged more than 4,000 hours in jet fighters, including combat missions in the F-4 Phantom II. Buchli went on to fly four Space Shuttle missions.

One of my best friends while I worked in aerospace was a Vietnam-era B-52 pilot who happened to grow up in the same small North Dakota town as my first cousin, who was also a B-52 pilot and retired from the Air Force a Full Bird colonel.

But the bottom line is - and this is what those-who-are-absorbed-in-the-bliss-of-Aviation-Salvation-but-who-want-to-be-writers don't understand - is that there are those of us who don't care all that much about airplanes, bombers and fighter jets. We think they're boring. And believe it or not, I really don't think that a man's pilot license can automatically trigger a sexual frenzy in the female human body, or that taking a woman flying in the clouds will cause her nipples to get hard (as happens in this book).

No, I'm a lowly earth-hugging drudge, skulking along in the low-paying gravel pits of the writing business. What really gets my rocks off is a tight plot, a blistering pace, a viewpoint character who is constantly in the clutches of grave danger, and who is fighting tooth and nail, page after page, to defeat the evil forces marshaled against him.

I like of lot of narrow escapes, background maneuvering and intrigue. I don't give a bent wing flap if the plot is driven by fighter pilots or cloistered nuns weaving carpets in Tuscany -- as long as the rendering is compelling and gripping - and keeps me jabbing the Kindle "page-turn button" like a cobra striking a small, furry animal.

This story makes too many unscheduled landings to let the characters kick back with some cold beers, spicy burritos, fried chicken, collard green and the occasional bout of athletic sex. But even great sex and peppery food can be dull if it stalls out the plot and causes a nose dive down to storybook swampland.

If you are among the Aviation Elect, have accepted Frank Borman as your Personal Savior, and believe the only thing that separates you from the slavery of a foreign power is a fleet of demigods stroking the sticks of F-16s armed with 2,000-pound bombs - you may enjoy The Other Pilot. If that's not you, well ...

Ken Korczak is the author of BIRD BRAIN GENIUS

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"The Circle and the Sword" by Nigel Mortimer is a rare gem which is an important addition to the field of paranormal investigation, ufology and exploration of mystical studies

Review By KEN KORCZAK

I believe this small book is an important document. It is a genuine, authentic and intriguing addition to the field of ufology and paranormal investigation -- written by an upright “regular bloke” (his words) living day-to-day among what is one of the most important focal points for unexplained phenomenon in the world.

THE CIRCLE AND THE STONE is the story of NIGEL MORTIMER who lives in the North Yorkshire area of England near the fabled ILKLEY MOOR – a sub-realm of greater ROMBALD'S MOOR -- a location of incredible rock carvings and ceremonial stone monuments dating to the Neolithic and Bronze Ages. Other megaliths that have been erected here for reasons unknown and known throughout the ages.

In the late fall of 1980 Mortimer was a carefree teenager working as an office clerk. Suddenly, uninvited, without warning or reason, the home where Mortimer lived began to manifest strange poltergeist activity -- banging noises, doors mysteriously flung open -- and something extremely strange (and almost comical) happened to his sister. Then came the night of November 30 when Mortimer had a personal encounter with one of the famous glowing orbs of Ilkey.

Mortimer at first thought he had experienced merely a brief sighting. He awoke one night "for no apparent reason" and felt compelled to look out his window. In the icy cold skies, Mortimer espies an anomalous moving light -- a spherical object -- which moved across the sky, and then appeared to come straight toward him. He observed the object for a time -- experiencing many strange sensations as he did so -- but mostly forgot about the event upon awakening the next morning.

But in coming days, Mortimer came to feel that his sighting was more than a simple, passive event – the glowing orb seemed to have reached somehow deeply into his psyche, implanting a seed within him that would grow into a powerful and irresistible obsession with the bizarre manifestations of this enchanted region.

NIGEL MORTIMER

Mortimer’s experience was both a blessing and a curse. It seized what was once the life of a "normal bloke" and later responsible father, husband and hard-working family man – and flung him onto the path of obsessed UFO investigator.

Mortimer could scarcely believe what was happening to himself. His first marriage began falling apart; his work life suffered – yet he couldn't set aside his deep fixation. A second marriage would later fall prey to his unstoppable quest as well. It seems that all aspects of the “normal life” for an honest man from a small English village would be consumed by ancient powers inhabiting the moorlands of England.

People have been reporting sightings and encounters with strange glowing orbs Ilkley Moor for uncounted centuries. That this phenomenon exists here is beyond question. The historical record is rife with accounts of bizarre encounters with “energy globes” that have come to be known my many names – “Wi ll-o’- the-Wisp, Jack o’ Lantern (or Lanthorn), Kitty Candlestick and others.

The well-documented historical record of this phenomenon adds credibility to Mortimer’s story – a man who has been living and prowling Rombald’s Moor his entire adult life. He has put his personal credibility and reputation on the line within his community, which adds weight to the integrity of his account.

So this book is not only a must read – but gets my highest recommendation – but now it is time for some tough love – and my tough love message comes in two parts:

First:

The fact is, the technical rendering of the Kindle edition of this book is extremely rough. I would urge the author immediately to implement a thorough editing and reformatting. Much as it pains me, I owe it to the readers of my reviews to warn them that here they will find numerous typos, glitches, uneven formatting to the point of considerable distraction. I won’t belabor this – and so – I leave the issue there.

Second and more importantly:

I believe this book, The Circle and the Sword – as it stands --represents one of the greatest missed opportunities in the history of UFO/mystical/paranormal literature – but it’s still not too late.

Let me explain:

What we have here is one of the best personal stories of UFO/mystical experience encounter in the world. That’s not hyperbole. It’s a story that spans decades, and it is a saga of unquestionable integrity. In the context of history, the quest of Nigel Mortimer is important to the legacy of the region.

So what I’m saying is that this book begs to be so much more.

The combination of Mortimer’s personal story -- the struggles of his personal life, his obsessive quest, his inability to free himself from the powers of Ilkley Moor – combined with the astonishing (and authenticated) mystical phenomenon associated with ancient monuments – cries out to be expanded in deeper, richer detail.

For me, the very best books are those that read like a compelling work of fiction, but are, in fact, true stories. We have the beginnings of that here. Mortimer’s story contains the four primary key and classic ingredients of the best fiction: character, setting, theme and plot.

Consider:

• Character – Nigel Mortimer is inexplicably obsessed, thrust unwillingly like an Odysseus into a journey of magical encounter. He is often lost, depressed and feels hope is lost. But he keeps pressing forward on his hero’s journey, finding strength, sometimes glimpsing wonders and joy, sometimes finding unexpected help along the way.

• Setting – What could be better? The ancient terrain of Rombald’s Moor, like something out of a Thomas Hardy novel. A scene littered with hoary ancient monuments, redolent with the ages, virtually shimmering with the latent potential of primeval energies – a picturesque, austere, yet beautiful landscape.

• Theme – The quest for ultimate knowledge; the challenge of melding the modern ufology with mythology and the genuine, lost esoteric mysteries from the mists of time.

• Plot – The main plot is a quest for knowledge and enlightenment. It’s a mission to uncover the secrets of a magical, hidden alternate universe. And there are subplots aplenty – the struggling relationships of Mortimer with his family; his sometimes dicey relationship within a modern community that has lost touch with its magical past and greater reality. Mortimer’s story is an alchemist’s heart-wrenching search for spiritual gold.

Mind you – I realize nobody is asking for my advice – and Circle and the Stone stands as a gem (although must be edited). However, I offer my comments as a fellow writer, journalist and maven of the UFO/paranormal genre who much admires this work, and wants more of it and from it.

Ken Korczak is the author of: MINNESOTA PARANORMALA

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LightQuest by veteran UFO investigator Andrew Collins puts an intriguing new spin on what might be going on behind the UFO phenomenon

Review by KEN KORCZAK

LIGHTQUEST is among the most intriguing UFO books I have read in a long time; the author's approach is refreshing, even while traveling a lot of familiar ground. He manages to make ufology interesting again with new spin and perspective.

What's particularly fascinating is that ANDREW COLLINS takes a favorite foil of the most ardent UFO debunkers and turns it back on them - commandeering one of the skeptic's best "go-to-debunking tools" and effectively taking it out of their hands.

What we're talking about here is plasma - as in the natural formations of plasmatic balls of light energy which form as a byproduct of certain geological processes beneath the earth's surface.

Hard-core skeptics, such as Philip Klass, frequently trotted out plasma as a favorite explanation for mysterious lights manifesting in bizarre patterns across the sky and landscape - whether it was the famous "Foo Fighters" which dogged military aircraft during World War II -- or the thousands of encounters with globes or saucer-shaped objects on a lonely road in a remote location as reported by unsuspecting motorists.

Klass often maintained the gullible observers were mistaking natural emissions of plasma light - including stuff like "swamp gas" - for otherworldly aircraft or some other paranormal phenomena. Klass often pointed out that natural plasmas can act in weird and unexpected ways, giving the impression of alien intelligence operating behind them.

Well, Andrew Collins agrees that plasma lights are almost certainly natural formations generated by earth-bound processes, specifically, high pressure faults beneath the surface of the earth. This theory is on solid ground (no pun intended) - such plasma formations have even been recreated in a laboratory setting by applying immense pressure tools to certain kinds of rocks until they burst forth plasma emissions.

But then Collins takes it a step further - or perhaps I should say, several miles further - by suggesting that these natural plasma emissions might actually play host to intelligent life forms -or "light beings" - which leverage the plasma state and manifestation to enter our dimension and plane of existence for short periods of time.

ANDREW COLLINS

If it sounds farfetched, I say read the book: Collins does a marvelous job of providing a solid theoretical model of how a natural plasma formation could be the "temporary body" of trans-human life forms. He brings in quantum entanglement, and also offers physicist David Bohm's "implicate order" as a background framework of how all this could come together.

His theories are backed up with case studies - both famous incidents, such as the Barney and Betty Hill abduction, and the amazing events which took place at the Rendelsham military base in the U.K. - as well as lesser known cases of abduction that are not widely known.

Is this a perfect book? No. There is much I would quibble with - it's not as tightly written or eloquent as one might hope. I also think Collins gets some things dead wrong, such as his conclusion that hypnotic regression is by-and-large unreliable in retrieving memories of "lost time" events as the result of abduction scenarios.

Admittedly, for the past couple of decades, I was in complete agreement with Collins about the quality of information gleaned via hypnosis - until I read the works of Harvard-trained psychiatrist John Mack, who makes a powerful argument in support of hypnosis as a legitimate investigation tool.

There is also the case of the Hills whom were hypnotized by one of the world's best experts in hypnosis, Dr. Benjamin Simon. I would urge the author (and others) to read or review the marvelous book, CAPTURED: THE STORY OF BARNEY AND BETTY HILL written by the niece of Betty Hill, Kathy Marden, along with a co-author, the famed UFO researcher Stanton Friedman. In this book, we see how hypnotic regression - when done right and professionally - includes any number of protocols and safeguards which can screen out imaginative content infecting the narrative of memory.

But like I said - I'm just quibbling here. LightQuest is a terrific, must-read for anyone interested in the UFO phenomenon. Even those well-versed in ufology and who have consumed scads of UFO literature over decades (like me) may learn something new, or maybe see this most enigmatic and confounding of subjects in an all-new light (pun intended).

Ken Korczak is the author of: BIRD BRAIN GENIUS

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"Awakening's Treasure" by G.A. Codazik is a disastrous, bungling attempt at transcendent prose-poetry

Review by KEN KORCZAK

There is a common saying within the Zen community: “To speak about Zen is to not know Zen.” To write and read about it is to not know it either. Of course, that hasn’t stopped uncounted monks, teachers, lecturers, poets, sages and authors (of all traditions) from spewing millions of words and publishing tens of thousands of pages about – ironically – “that which cannot be named.”

But that’s the way it is. And you know what? There’s nothing wrong with it. It’s a paradox. Talking and reading about transcendence will not help you achieve it or get there, but you have to talk and read about it anyway. That’s what’s endlessly weird about “enlightenment” or “full realization” or whatever you want to call it.

However, that doesn’t mean that every book written on this ultimate topic is of equal quality – and this book, AWAKENING'S TREASURE, is an unqualified disaster.

This is a struggling, stumbling, clumsy and muddy attempt to point the way and inspire, but goes fantastically awry on multiple levels.

It’s riddled with imprecise metaphors, clichés and hackneyed phrases, painfully repetitive imagery, and that imagery is pedestrian, pretentious, dull, pompous and boring – and depressingly so.

Let me prove that what I am saying is accurate with selection examples, starting with:

Hackneyed and cliché phrases

EXAMPLE: “We’re drawn to our inner garden/ignoring all else/Like a moth focused only on the flame”

Not only is a ‘moth to a flame’ a hackneyed metaphor, the way it is used here misses the mark.

When we use ‘moth to a flame’, we are generally talking about a negative event, or an unfortunate happening. The moth gets fooled, and then singed or burned to death – yet the author choses this negative cliché to describe how we are drawn to the transcendent state!

Ridiculous!

EXAMPLE: “… when our inner Ocean rains its grace/A rising tide lifts all boats.”

Well! How about a tired phrase gleaned from politics and greedy businessmen? The ‘rising tide’ comment was popularized by Ronald Reagan in the 1980s in reference to his trickle-down economics favoring tax breaks for the extremely wealthy, and has since worked its way into common usage.

The phrase was actually first coined in a speech by President Kennedy in 1962 – and his speech writer borrowed the phrase from some businessmen selling yachts in New England.

But the bigger offense is that ‘A rising tide lifts all boats’ is a dull, overused image that does nothing to inspire – much the opposite, it drags us down by invoking the dull dreariness of life.

I could go on with many more but let’s move on to:

Improper, imprecise language:

EXAMPLE: “Waiting only the turning of our heads to see it, Like (sic) sunflowers tracking the motion of the sun.”

Again, a worn-out metaphor – but also an inaccurate one based on a common misconception – you know – a delusion.

Let’s me tell you as a guy who lives in a rural area next to a large field of sunflowers – they don’t follow the sun. Sunflowers come up facing the sun in the east, and when the sun sets, their faces remain glued to the east.

This from Wikipedia:

This old and chronic misconception was debunked already in 1597 by the English botanist John Gerard, who grew sunflowers in his famous herbal garden: "[some] have reported it to turne with the Sunne, the which I could never observe, although I have endevored to finde out the truth of it.”

One of the primary paths to enlightenment involves what spiritual masters call, “just seeing.” That is, just see your world for the way it really is. Don’t overlay your world with pre-formed ideas or what you have pre-conceptualized based on common knowledge – but just perceive directly. So I find it painfully ironic that the author trots out a metaphor based on a common misconception – and a well-known one at that.

That’s inexcusable.

That this is a short book, and that there are so many examples of clumsy usages and utterly bland imagery borders on the astounding.

My rather severe and strict Ninth Grade English teacher, Mrs. Allen, often withered us with her red-penciled condemnations if we allowed “colloquialisms” to slip into our school essays. A colloquialism is a word or phrase that is employed in conversational or informal language but not in formal speech or formal writing.

Mrs. Allen would roll over in her grave if she knew that books like Awakening’s Treasure were on the shelves and floating around as ebooks in cyberspace – it’s almost as if the author made a concerted effort to break the record for the amount flat colloquial usage that could be fit into a limited space.

Just a few of the "dead wood" and "junk phrases" clogging up this manuscript:

"Asleep at the wheel ..."

“All this stress calls out for a cosmic shock absorber …”

“Just running on autopilot with life in overdrive …” (Yet another automobile metaphor, I guess)

“Prime the pump …”

“Dirty laundry is laid bare …”

“Grasping at straws …"

“Crawl out on a limb …”

“Can’t get a word in edgewise …”

“Collapse like a house of cards …

“Providing a wake-up call …”

“Speaking with a forked tongue …”

“A poster child on automatic pilot …” (the author uses both forms, ‘autopilot’ and ‘automatic pilot’, demonstrating again a painful inattention to word choice)

“Emerge from a cocoon…”

“Like a hall of mirrors …”

“Swept under the carpet …”

And there's lots more.

So the writing is either lazy, sophomoric or amateurish, but is there at least some substance delivered in terms of what the book promises – to help people find their way out of the delusional daydream of unreality to a state of transcendent clarity?

The answer is that is offers absolutely nothing of substance. Rather, this document is like a caged parrot repetitively squawking without understanding threadbare phrases which do nothing to illuminate transcendent concepts that have been been known for centuries.

Ken Korczak is the author of: BIRD BRAIN GENIUS

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"The Mystery Experience": Author and philosopher Tim Freke says forget about "full realization" and don't worry about enlightenment; get with Cosmic Love and you'll have all you need

Review by KEN KORCZAK

While I was reading The Mystery Experience by TIM FREKE I kept thinking about how many weight-loss books are published every year. Here in the U.S. we have an obesity epidemic despite the fact that whole forests have been cleared by the weight-loss book industry in past decades and millions of people have read them.

Yet millions are still fat. It this bizarre, or is it something "paralogical," as Freke might call it?

I mean, everyone already knows how to lose weight, right? You eat less and exercise more. That's it. And yet, weight-loss books, some of them hundreds of pages long, keep spewing forth from publishing houses. The armies of the obese keep buying them - looking for that key, that fix, that cure, that "secret" method to stop being fat and flabby!

Why?

Why not just eat less and exercise more? Ask any weight-challenged person and he or she will quickly tell you: "It isn't just that easy!"

Well, I never said it was easy - sure, a few will have hormone or biological component exacerbating their obesity-- but the fact remains that the best way for most to lose weight is no secret at all -- to eat less and exercise more.

So wherever you find an agonizing problem with a simple solution that people cannot accept, you will find an almost unlimited opportunity to sell thousands of books that talk about anything but the most simple solution to the problem - and the more elaborate the solution the better.

That's sort of what this book, THE MYSTERY EXPERIENCE, is. It's an extremely elaborate solution to a universal problem - except that the solution is about a billion times more elusive than the "secret" to weight loss - making it all the better for the book seller and seminar promoter.

Tim Freke

The problem here is what Buddha called the "Dukkha" - the dull, aching misery of daily life that we all feel, which sometimes inflames into true suffering, only to recede again, but never completely. I like the way the great American writer Henry David Thoreau put it: "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation."

Tim Freke experiences this too. His solution is to not deny the Dukkha, or meditate it out of existence -- just the opposite - he opts to acknowledge it, embrace it forever, and use it - as a "paralogical" lever to induce a communion with that ultimate source of cosmic bliss, the Universal Loving Energy or Consciousness of All That Is, God, or whatever you want to call "IT."

His solution is a positive addiction to what he calls the "WOW!" experience.

Resorting to an addiction is a common and desperate attempt to fight the Dukkha. Some people drink, some take drugs, smoke a lot of pot, others watch TV and play video games. Some practice meditation or give themselves over to the teaching of a guru. Some people eat, become obsessed with accumulating money, and some flit off to an Amazon rainforest to imbibe in hallucinogens with a jungle shaman. Some buy into a mainstream system of religion, others try to have all the sex they can have before they die.

Certainly, some addictions are positive addictions, while others are negative and destructive. But in the end, an addiction is an addiction. Like Deepak Chopra said: "A positive mind is still an agitated mind."

Tim Freke has opted for a positive addiction - to that ineffable experience of cosmic bliss of Ultimate Love. He was fortunate to have this "WOW" thing drop spontaneously upon him like a bomb when he was 12, which led him to commit the rest of his life to pursuing more of the same, and to figuring out just what all that WOW is and what it means.

But wait a minute - is Tim Freke's addiction to something that is real, or is it an elaborate self-delusion? Well, yes and no.

Clearly, the Cosmic Love he speaks of is well-documented throughout history and throughout all cultures- and while IT could never be nailed down in a laboratory setting - I am satisfied that there truly is an ultimate field of energy that is pure love and that we are all connected to it, whether we know it or not. In a deeper sense, however, it's still a delusion when we experience it - but so what? The fact that it's a delusion doesn't make it bad - something that is not real cannot be good or bad.

So is there anything wrong, then, with a guy like Time Freke being addicted his quasi-delusional Universal Field of Love and basking in its all-embracing warmth and joy?

There's nothing wrong with it.

It makes him feel good, and if he can teach it to others, a lot of other people will feel very good, too. Indeed, Tim Freke makes his living writing and selling books about Cosmic Love - and also conducting seminars throughout the world, which anyone with something like $45 to $90 can attend, not including travel and hotel expenses. No harm done, I say.

My only purpose here is to point out what is manifest: Like weight loss books, thousands of people will read Tim Freke's books, thousands will attend his seminars, and he'll write even more books, and people will buy them too. And then they'll continue to buy dozens of other such books by other writers. Hundreds of books offering salvation from the Dukkha will endlessly grind out of the publishing mills or be produced by self-publishers - and millions will keep buying them.

Does it sound familiar? It sounds like the weight-loss book industry wherein millions are sold and the problem always remains. The "secret" is ever elusive. It reminds me of what Jesus said: "The poor will always be with us."

And as long as there are the poor - spiritually and materially - there will always be a Jesus figure. And as long as the Dukkha remains manifest in the experience of human consciousness, there will always be a Tim Freke with a book and a seminar at the ready - and lots of others, too.

Ken Korczak is the author of: THE FAIRY REDEMPTION OF JUBAL CRANCH

Free mystery novel ebook: "The Mystery of Lincoln's Inn" is a pure delight, almost certainly based on true events of a major scandal which rocked Canada nearly a century ago

Review by KEN KORCZAK

Robert Machray is described as a writer of “simple-minded mysteries” in the Oxford Companion to Edwardian Fiction, and this novel The Lincoln’s Inn Mystery would probably qualify as that. In my view, however, it rises above simple-minded. Certainly, this is not a work of literary depth – but it is a well-plotted yarn that is a delight to read and highly entertaining.

What’s even more intriguing is the story behind the novel.

As it turns out, Robert Machray was the nephew of the Anglican Bishop ROBERT MACHRAY, an extremely important figure in Canada from the mid-1800s into the early part of the 20th Century. He was instrumental in the development of the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg.

Bishop Machray was also elected the “First Primate of all Canada” by the General Synod of the Anglican Church of Canada. He was the bishop of Rubert’s Land” a huge area within the vast land of Canada.

In 1874, Bishop Machray’s two nephews, John and Robert Machray, were sent from Scotland to live under his care. John was educated at the University of Manitoba and went on to become an extremely powerful and later notorious public official in Winnipeg. He was eventually convicted of embezzling and/or misappropriating $1.8 million in funds from a variety of sources. (John Machray)

This was an enormous amount of money in early 1900s Canada, making John Machray something of the “Bernie Madoff” of his time, at least in this region of southern Canada. He died in prison in 1933.

So what’s remarkable to me is that in this tale a criminal British lawyer, Cooper Silwood, has embezzled funds from his own law firm and partners, Eversleigh, Silwood and Eversleigh. It is almost certainly inspired by the machinations of John Machray.

And yet, this book was published in 1910, some 22 years before Robert Machray's brother was finally prosecuted and convicted. It seems amazing to me that author Machray would write a novel that is so obviously based on the shady practices of this brother. One might think the book would have tipped off the Powers-That-Be that something was rotten in Denmark ... er, I mean, Canada!

It makes me wonder if the author was making a kind of back door attempt to flush out his own brother. Like his famous uncle, Robert Machray was ordained clergy of the Church of England. Even though he resigned his clerical duties to pursue the life of a writer, perhaps he maintained a high degree of moral propriety, and thus may have been disgusted about what he apparently knew about his brother.

Anyway, you don’t have to appreciate the extraordinary background to enjoy The Mystery of Lincoln’s Inn. All the juicy elements of a great mystery are here. There’s a dastardly criminal. There are pure-of-heart good guys and women who get caught up in an agonizing web of deceit, greed and corruption. A mysterious death and a jilted lover also thicken the plot and add depth to the narrative.

But what I really liked about this book is a hint of an understated cynical humor. This is almost a black comedy. It’s as if the intelligent, sophisticated and former Anglican minister Robert Machray found the folly of his fellow human beings not just sad, but slightly ludicrous.

The book is set mostly in London, but I was delighted that some of the events take place here in my native Minnesota. I think any lover of mystery novels will find this a first-class read. It hasn't lost it's edge or relevance despite being published more than a century ago.

Note: This book is available as a free download ebook in all formats on the Project Gutenberg site HERE.

Ken Korczak is the author of: THE FAIRY REDEMPTION OF JUBAL CRANCH

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"One Just Man" by Stan I.S. Law will be a mind expanding feast for some, but others may find it's philosophical theme well-traveled and well-worn ground

Review by KEN KORCZAK

Two central motifs that pervade ONE JUST MAN center on dualism and paradox. And so it is appropriate that my review will be somewhat dualistic and paradoxical. That is, I am going to very highly recommend this book, but I will also offer some rather sharp criticism.

The premise is one common in literature: a man who has a Messiah complex, or a man who really is the Messiah, but doesn’t know it yet. It’s a theme that pops up across all genres: In science fiction there is Michael Morcock’s “Behold the Man” and Philip K. Dick’s “The Divine Invasion.” In New Age literature there’s Richard Bach’s Don Shimoda. In contemporary literature Chuck Palahnuik’s creates Victor Mancini. In classic literature there are many: Camus’ Meursault, for example. Of course, Nikos Kazantzakis reimagined Christ himself in his 1953 classic, “The Last Temptation of Christ.”

In ONE JUST MAN, then, we have Dr. Peter Thornton, a brilliant, up-and-coming Montreal physician who slowly begins to realize his powers of healing go well beyond medical science. He’s a resistant and reluctant messiah, but eventually his “gift’ overpowers him. As the novel progresses, he must accept his fate for what he is.

Because the best fiction is based on character author STAN I.S. LAW scores high marks for crafting a viewpoint character in a way that is subtle yet powerful – but it is another character that looms over every moment of the narrative in an even more subtle and powerful way – the family butler Winston Smith.

Imagine if you could a mix of Batman’s man Alfred with the legendary Hermes Trismegistus. Or maybe if you combined equal amount John the Baptist, Simon Magus, Erwin Schrödinger and Sir John Gielgud – you would then have the mysterious Winston Smith.

The first third of the novel is absorbing because Dr. Thornton's fierce introspective struggles are compelling. We meet a cold-as-ice clinician who is the consummate professional, yet has a penchant for sleazy liaisons; he “relieves tension” by banging nurses in hospital linen closets, only to forget their faces before he gets his pants zipped up. All his off duty time is spent in heartless, robotic study of the chemistry and plumbing of the human body so that he can become the most efficient doctor, more akin to a mechanic of bodies than a healer of people with souls.

To paraphrase Viktor Frankl (echoing any number of Zen masters): “One does not pursue enlightenment; it must ensue.” This is the case with Peter Thornton. The time comes when he can no longer deny the reality that he has the power to heal by touch. His transcendence from ordinary doctor to messianic healer happens quietly but definitely. He doesn’t ask for it, but he gets it.

Thornton suddenly cannot suffer personal material wealth and possessions; prestige means nothing; all goals and graspings drop away. He becomes a simple “faith healer” of men, banishing pain, disease and suffering with a touch.

But then the novel goes drastically off course. Peter Thornton becomes a conduit for healing, but he has no control over his gift. The power of healing nearly kills him, even as it gives life to others. He then is rescued by the mysterious Winston Smith and proceeds to enter upon a long period of convalescence. Unfortunately for the reader, this period of integration involves endless discussion and heady philosophizing with his girlfriend in a remote cabin in the Canadian wilderness.

There’s a lot of lofty philosophical blather, but nothing happens.

All tension is drained from the narrative. Thornton and his partner are free to enjoy food, sex, blissful natural vistas and starlight as they ponder the enigmatic duality of soul and spirit, the paradox of matter as energy, and the numbing conclusion that a particle singularity exists simultaneous as a wave form.

One of the most inexplicable choices the author makes is to reduce Dr. Thornton’s love interest from a brilliant, beautiful, powerful woman crackling with aggressive sexuality into a simpering girlish sycophant – she goes from being one of the world’s most erudite physicists to a mildly confused scrub woman, cook and sex partner for her exulted new Messiah, who adopts the appallingly pretentious (egotistical?) name, Petrus Latter.

I mean, if the original Jesus Christ was as preachy, dull and bordering on maudlin as this guy, it’s little wonder he was crucified.

Stan I.S. Law

What seems to be happening here is that the author has contrived a fictional scenario to serve as a vehicle to deliver his metaphysical determinations – he does an excellent job of creating interesting, vivid characters, but then settles in to string them like puppets, commanding them to chatter on about the nature of human reality, physical reality and consciousness – and about how all of it is informed by implications falling out from quantum theory.

But does the author at least present a sound philosophy and metaphysics? Yes, he certainly does – and he does so with great lucidity and eloquence. Stan I.S. Law is obviously a brilliant guy, and a writer with a great heart. He is a marvelously elegant wordsmith. His prose is effortless and beautiful. However, in the meta-analysis, there is not a single revelation being made here that isn’t already known by a large segment of today’s reading public.

So the measure of how much you enjoy this novel depends on the level to which you understand timeless, universal principles of metaphysics (Vedic, Buddhist and Gnostic Christian ), and your awareness of how modern quantum mechanics appears to support what enlightened visionaries have been shouting out to us for millennia.

If you don’t know a lot of this stuff, you’ll find this book a scintillating, mind expanding feast. But if you already have at least an intellectual understanding of the metaphysical concepts presented here, you might be bored stiff through the last half of the book.

Ken Korczak is the author of: THE FAIRY REDEMPTION OF JUBAL CRANCH

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Free ebook: "The Autobiography of a Cornish Smuggler" not much about smuggling, but a rather a man's spiritual journey to renounce the greed, violence and suffering of the world

Review by KEN KORCZAK

When I saw this free ebook, THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A CORNISH SMUGGLER, I eagerly downloaded it and settled in for what I hoped would be tales of intrigue, danger and adventure on the high seas. The book is based on the manuscript of Captain Harry Carter an Englishman who was born and raised in Cornwall, and who grew up to adopt the life of a smuggler.

But there’s precious little about smuggling in this manuscript.

Most of the document written in 1809 by Carter describes his personal spiritual journey as a God-seeking Methodist after abandoning the illegal and harrowing life of a smuggler.

But I must also add that I was not entirely disappointed. His quest to find God and inner peace does not read like most of today's (or any era's) insufferable Christian tripe. Rather, Carter’s journey projects more like the journal of an acetic monk. He pitches no dogma, offers no haranguing lectures and does no proselytizing.

His journey might better be compared to that of a Buddhist renouncing all the material illusions of the world, or a Hindu seeker determined to focus only on the transcendent, and a desire to merge with the omnipresence of Universal Consciousness.

Carter’s strength is his ignorance, something he confesses to repeatedly throughout his many travails and travels. He possesses what Zen master D.T. Suzuki called “beginner’s mind.” Innocent like a child, he uses the broad tenets of Methodism, but finds his own way with constant simple prayer, fasting, singing (chanting), and a refusal to strive and grasp for wealth. He never resists the aggressive forces which confront him along the way. He only doggedly seeks peace, anonymity and to be left alone.

Carter is like a spiritual Ulysses, buffeted about by the winds of chance and circumstance. Like Ulysses, he often finds friends and aid at unexpected moments. His post-smuggling travels take him all the way to New York – which must have been a fascinating place in 1789 – back to England and then to France where he was caught up in the Reign of Terror precipitated by the French Revolution.

He becomes a political prisoner, but his incarceration is light-handed and mostly “in-house.” Carter demonstrates that a man who has absolutely nothing to gain, nothing to lose, and absolutely no worldly agenda cannot truly be imprisoned.

His aura of complete humility, his renouncement of all things material and his laser focus on aligning his soul with God is inspirational, no matter what your faith, maybe even for an atheist.

Even more famous than Harry Carter’s was his older brother, John, who to this day enjoys a lustrous status among Cornish culture. In Cornwall, John Carter's star eclipses that of another legendary English social malcontent -- Robin Hood -- except Carter was certainly a real person and a real smuggler.

Smugglers were part pirate, part free-enterprise businessmen, part organized crime – but for the most part – few of them considered what they were doing wrong, even though they knew it was illegal under British law. The people of Cornwall were dirt poor. Their only options were to work seasonally in local tin mines as near slaves, scrabble out a living on a rocky patch of farm, or maybe eke out a living as fishermen.

Smuggling was a road to riches – it not only enriched the smuggler, but the loot trickled down considerably throughout Cornish society.

This document was published in 1900 under the auspices of John B. Cornish, who provides a helpful introduction and notes, and who is also listed as editor. A bit of Internet sleuthing turned up nothing about Mr. Cornish, so I’ll leave it at that.

My bottom line is that I find this to be a remarkable tidbit of history. It may not provide much insight into the world of Cornish smuggling, but “Captain” Harry Carter is an endearing and admirable soul. I was delighted to to have met him through the words he left behind.

Ken Korczak is the author of MINNESOTA PARANORMALA

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"The Roswell Legacy" by Jesse Marcel Jr. is written by a man who was there, but this book offers nothing new and the prose struggles

Review by KEN KORCZAK

Let me just say that Jesse Marcel Jr. has my great admiration. He’s lived an honorable life as a hard-working physician, healer of the sick, father of eight children, grandfather, National Guard member, served in the Iraq War for 13 months as flight surgeon – he's a classic all-around, All-American good guy.

He also projects a warm, avuncular vibe in the TV and video interviews I have seen -- he’s obviously a marvelous human being – I wish he was my uncle or my next door neighbor.

And thus it pains me to inform my readers that THE ROSWELL LEGACY is a fairly awful book.

There isn’t a single new revelation to provide a single shard of information that might shed new light on what really happened at a remote desert about 75 miles from Roswell, New Mexico, on June 14, 1947. Everything said about the supposed crash of an alien spacecraft (or something) at the location has already been aired ad nausea in a blizzard of other books, articles, TV shows, movies, Internet sites.

True, Marcel is more than a footnote in the annals of UFO lore. By virtue of his fiddling for about 20 minutes with some of the debris of whatever crashed in the desert when he was an 11 year old boy, Marcel has gained a minor star in that strange constellation of players that comprises the field of ufology.

He says he wrote this book to clear up scads of egregious misinformation and false statements that have been made about his father by debunkers and skeptics over the years, as they questioned Jesse Marcel Sr.’s role as one of the first men to see the Roswell crash site, and collect some of the wreckage.

Dr. Jesse Marcel Jr.

But he adds absolutely nothing new to the record. Everything he tells about his father is known. If anything, Marcel somewhat dulls the luster of his father’s reputation. He describes Marcel Sr's slow descent into alcoholism and a bitter sense of cynicism and alienation from the military, possibly related to the government’s attempt to control whatever message it wanted to control about the Roswell incident. I give the author high points for unflinching honesty, however.

The quality of the writing is barely adequate, if not poor – it reads like a high school student turning in a report about what he did on his summer vacation. There is also more than a little flat-out padding with bland information about space travel anyone can find on Wikipedia, a superfluous appendix, too much info about weather balloons, and a chapter written by his wife who adds minor, irrelevant pleasantries.

A number of errors are made as well, – for example, the Soviet-Era space station MIR is misidentified twice as “Muir.” Also J. ALLEN HYNEK'S name is incorrectly spelled “Hyneck.”

Furthermore, Marcel mistakenly says that the famous “swamp gas” concept was a favorite go-to explanation that Dr. Hynek used to debunk UFO reports. The truth is, it was reporters who misunderstood something Hynek said in a press conference which led to the popularization of the “swamp gas” term, and it was the media which subsequently hammered “swamp gas” into the public consciousness.

If the price was maybe .99 cents for the Kindle edition, I would say go ahead and buy it. But this is not a significant contribution to the Roswell legacy.

Ken Korczak is the author of: MINNESOTA PARANORMALA

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"Captured! The Barney and Betty Hill Experience" is a surprisingly absorbing read which reveals never-before-released information about this most famous alien abduction case

Review by KEN KORCZAK

I was two years old when what is still probably the most famous case of alien abduction of all time occurred in 1961 – that involving Barney and Betty Hill of New Hampshire. When I was about seven years old I was struck with a magnificent obsession for astronomy, and that naturally led to an interest in the possibility that Earth was being visited from the stars.

So I have been aware of the Hill abduction saga virtually all my life. Over the decades, I have read a book or two and dozens of articles about the case. It’s also frequently discussed in other UFO books. I vividly remember being glued to the TV as a teenager over the 1975 made-for-TV docudrama of the Hill story starring James Earl Jones and Estelle Parsons.

Thus, ever since KATHLEEN MARDEN'S book CAPTURED! THE BARNEY AND BETTY HILL EXPERIENCE first came out in 2007, I've been taking a pass on it, thinking, “What more is there possibly to say about this already over-analyzed case?” and:

“Do we really need another Barney and Betty Hill book?”

I now know the answer is “Yes!” I decided to purchase “Captured” partly on a whim, but also because it's been too long time since I read a good UFO yarn. I was flabbergasted by how much I still did not know about the case after all these years – in fact, I can say that I have an all-knew perspective.

I have opted to move myself out of the “skeptic” column regarding the Hill abduction into the “believer” column – as difficult as that is for me to say.

Marden (who is the primary author of this book and who is Betty Hill's niece), rolls out a case that may be wholly circumstantial – but the weight and the aggregate of all this circumstantial evidence as presented here would be more than enough to hang a man in any court of law.

By contrast, the alternative explanations offered by some of the greatest skeptics and debunkers – including Carl Sagan, James Randi and Philip Klass – seem petty, sparse, cherry-picked and highly theoretical by comparison.

Kathleen Marden and Stanton Friedman

In Captured!, Marden (along with famed UFO investigator STANTON FRIEDMAN who consulted on the book and also wrote a couple chapters), presents a painstaking, point-by-point analysis of every aspect of the case, from an in-depth analysis of the hypnotic regression sessions compared with consciousness memory accounts and Betty's dreams; the lives and character of the Hills; actual physical evidence (left on her dress); the famous “Star Map”; follow-up events and sightings – and how the aftermath played out in the lives of the Hills for decades to come – the latter of which shows how the case actually has gained credibility over the years.

I noticed that some other reviewers were turned off by one of the late chapters in which the authors launch an intense and scathing attack on skeptic and debunkers. I think some will find the tone of this chapter a bit overwrought, harsh and even mean – and yet, there is not charge made that does not point to direct and obvious, egregious errors committed by debunkers – which they seem to get a free pass on.

That’s because the general public – even myself at times – still find is astoundingly difficult to wrap our collective minds around the implications which naturally fall out of the Hill abduction case. I mean, if their story is true – it means space aliens are running around, picking up ordinary people, sticking anal probes up their orifices, and conducting studies on human being like so many wildlife biologists drugging and tagging animals.

The danger, though, is in making comparisons that are mundane. The true meanings behind alien abduction scenarios like the Hill case have their actual basis in a kind overarching-meta-reality … or … or … perhaps in terms of some greater, higher dimensionality of thought and conception of the universe.

The bottom line is: Barney and Betty Hill may have had a genuine abduction experience, but what the event actually means and implies may be something that can never be known in terms of the current way we model our ideas about what is real and what is unreal. It is something that is beyond the ken of material and empirical science – but also beyond any level of metaphysical and spiritual conceptions we have managed to develop as a species at this point in our evolution.

Ken Korczak is the author of: THE MAN IN THE NOTHING CHAMBER

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Free ebook "The Sex Life of the Gods" by Michael E. Knerr is a super campy, hilarious science fiction read from the early 1960s

Review by KEN KORCZAK

In the 1950s and early 1960s there was a certain market for “smutty” science fiction novels. They were often issued by small shady publishers who worked out of a crummy one-room apartment or maybe some seedy rented office. They paid $250 to $500 for 50,000 words. The thin paperbacks sold for 50 cents.

Sure, $500 was decent money back in the ‘50s, but it still wasn’t exactly lifestyles of the rich and famous. But one good thing about it for writers was that it was a way to break into the business, and hopefully move on and up to better things.

One such writer in this game was Michael E. Knerr. He was from a small town in Pennsylvania and he very badly wanted to carve out his place in literature, maybe science fiction, or writing historical books and westerns. He was a close friend of the more famous H. Beam Piper, also of Pennsylvania. Piper was one of those guys who clawed his way out of the science fiction gutter to gain considerable respect in that field – until his career cooled off and he put a bullet in his own head. He was Knerr’s role model.

This offering, THE SEX LIFE OF THE GODS by Knerr is a classic example of what, in effect, was the Internet content mill of the day – cheap novels designed to be written fast and published with salacious titles and lurid covers. They promised steamy sex mixed with thrilling space opera. They were distributed to book stands in drugs stores and vanished from the shelves three months later, never to be seen again.

The market for such fare was most likely young male loners – you know -- teenage boys, perhaps, or early 20s men who were not exactly slick with the women – the kind of guys who probably read a lot of comic books, glued together model airplanes and, well, I’ll say no more.

But they could live vicariously thought these novels thrilling to the escapades of flinty-eyed, square-jawed heroes who could make beautiful women squirm with sexual desire just by walking into the room. The space jockey was fast with a ray gun, could expertly pilot a starship, do sword battle with bug-eyed aliens – they were Han Solo, Buck Rogers and Captain America all rolled up into one.

Books such as Sex Life of the Gods was considered “soft porn,” in their day, but as Knerr himself said: “We could have read them to our children.”

He was right about that. The so called sex scenes in this book, by today’s standards, barely constitute a trip to first or second base, if you know what I mean. Believe me, there’s more sexually charged content in any of today’s family prime-time TV sitcoms. A daytime soap opera is hard-core porn by comparison.

Knerr and others like him wrote these books at lightning speed. They were strictly “one-time through the typewriter only jobs” and then rushed off to the publisher. The next challenge was getting paid. Writer’s like Knerr were sometimes cheated out of pay, or often had to settle for half the $500 originally promised. They worked with no written contracts – just verbal agreements and maybe (maybe) a handshake. The latter is unlikely because the relationship between writer and fly-by-night publisher was usually dicey and unfriendly, to say the least.

Some aspects of Knerr’s life as a hack writer may sound care-free and romantic – those who knew him said he could live on one $500 or $600 payday for months. He lived on a sailboat in California while gaining traction as a popular writer – but sometimes he starved, and I mean literally. He once subsisted on a few cans of cranberries and dry crackers for days.

MICHAEL E. KNERR

Knerr eventually had to opt out of the freelance novelist game to work as a small-town newspaper reporter back in Pennsylvania, but he never gave up writing. Reports vary on how many books he actually published – some say six or seven, others say as many as 20. He may have published under several pen names, and he apparently eventually gained some momentum as a writer of western novels.

Sex Life of the Gods, for me, was an enjoyable read in the extreme because of the campy fun effect – you know, like watching an egregiously bad science fiction movie, such as PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE. Knerr said guys like him “stole their plots right out of TV Guide.” Ha, ha! That’s for sure. Sex Life of the Gods is just so cookie cutter in terms of plot and character, it’s almost like he used a flow chart – “Name hero – give him x problem – have him meet/fall in love with sizzling dame – make him on the run from (insert cops, CIA, military, aliens) – enter chase scene here --- has sex here …” and so forth.

I suggest you download this free gem immediately and have an incredibly great laugh and some pure camp fun– but at the same time – reserve some respect for a bona fide hacky pulp fiction artist who was actually much more than that – by all accounts. Michael E. Knerr developed some serious literary talent and published some quality books before he died in 1999 at age 64.

NOTE: This is a free download at Project Gutenberg which you can find HERE.

Ken Korczak is the author of: THE MAN IN THE NOTHING CHAMBER

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Kindle ebook science fiction short story "4EVAH" strives to be a humorous spin on immortality but comes off as irritating and snarky

Review by KEN KORCZAK

Here's the thing about a short story: The writer has very few words to create a satisfying piece of fiction. Writing a great short story is one if literature's most difficult feats. That's because, ideally, you should masterfully include the four basic elements of literature: Plot, character, setting and theme.

If you fail at any one of the four, the short story is a bust.

The great writers who have proven themselves can break the rules or ignore the "same old" because they have paid their dues and earned some artistic license to create an innovative piece of writing. But if you are an unknown author with little or no reputation, you better be paying attention to plot, character, setting and theme.

This short story, 4EVAH by WRIGHT FORBUCKS, doesn't get the job done. There no real plot here - only a scenario, or maybe a premise - a drug has been invented that bestows an unlimited lifespan upon the user. The story describes how such a drug might reshape society and the consequences it has for things like population control, social structure and war.

But lots of speculation about the crazy kind of world an immortality drug might create is not really a plot which a believable viewpoint character can work through as the readers cheers him or her along.

That's what drives a great story - a vivid, sharply-defined character struggling to solve a problem as he/she works though a plot, heading toward a happy or tragic conclusion.

What we get here is a vague, poorly developed character - with a rather snarky and irritating voice-- describing his school, telling us about this, telling us about that, calling this person a "moron" and that person "stupid" - which is merely annoying and not at all compelling.

Ken Korczak is the author of: BIRD BRAIN GENIUS

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"Autumn Shadows In August" by Robert W. Norris is okay as novel, but would be powerful as a memoir

Review by KEN KORCZAK

It has been a while since I have been as mystified by the technical choices a writer has made in crafting a novel as I was when I read this offering, AUTUMN SHADOWS IN AUGUST by ROBERT W. NORRIS.

Here is a book that has everything going for it:

• A writer of significant skill, heart, and passion for his craft

• A powerful central premise

• Superb real-life material to draw upon

• An often absorbing no-nonsense writing style …

… and yet … well, I just keep asking myself, “Why?”

Why, for example, the choice to present this as fiction? There’s nothing inherently wrong with creating a novel based on real-life experiences, but this piece begs to be a memoir, not a novel.

Before I rave on, a brief synopsis: An American ex-patriot, David Thompson, is living in Japan, the final destination of a man who chose self-exile after opting for the roll of conscientious objector during the Vietnam War. He was drafted into the Army, but refused to fight, and so was thrown into a military prison. They tried to break him, brainwash him and reprogram him – but he outlasts them. They spit back into society as an “undesirable.”

This prompts Thompson to launch himself on a life of wandering the world, much of the time in a pot and LSD-soaked haze. Since he has been robbed of his fundamental self-identity as a “normal American” his journey is a search for self-meaning and perhaps to find or build a new identity. Along the way he encounters some of the most dangerous and depressingly hopeless enclaves on the globe, such as the horrifying, filthy, disease-ridden poverty in the darkest allies of Calcutta.

But Thompson eventually finds a kind of secular salvation in that he lands a stable job teaching English in Japan, finds a loving, beautiful wife, and achieves middle class mediocrity – albeit not in America-- but among a modern culture which accepts him.

The novel plays out when Thompson and his wife take a vacation trip to Europe partly so Thompson can retrace some of the pain of his past, and also reconnect with a kind guru-friend figure – Thomas Knorr – only to find that Knorr has just died.

ROBERT W. NORRIS

Also, the author states this book is an homage to two writers of tremendous influence on his life: Hermann Hesse and Malcolm Lowry.

The problem for me: The character David Thompson is a molecular-thin veneer sprayed with an atomizer over the identity of the author himself, Robert W. Norris.

Yes, yes, yes I realize there are mystical elements and events, such as when Thompson-Norris meets none other than a character from Hesse’s novel Steppenwolf in an Amsterdam pot den – the mysterious Pablo. Pablo from Steppenwolf supplies Thompson-Norris with hallucinogenic mushrooms, a bit of advice and a kind of magic chess set.

So some might say: “That’s why this has to be presented as fiction; the real Norris could not have met a fictional character from another author’s book in a work of nonfiction.”

Wrong!

Robert W. Norris could indeed have met Pablo in Amsterdam and that meeting would have been every bit as real and legitimate as if he had met any other living human being. That Pablo comes in the form of imagination (or even a drug-induced reverie) does not make him one iota less authentic.

If you don’t think so, then I invite you to find the nearest engineer and tell him that he is no longer allowed to use imaginary numbers (i) in calculus equations when he is designing some machine that will have real application in the objective, physical world. Making use of that which is “unreal” or "imaginary" has never bothered mathematicians, scientists and engineers – why should it bother an author, or memoirist?

Or maybe the author hoped to shield the real people he encountered in life? However, the skilled memoirist would have no problem finessing these kinds of details – but enough, I’ll drop it. The author chose to make this a work of fiction – I’ll honor that while finding it vexing.

Several other aspects of this work also seemed jarring and incongruous to me. For example:

When Thompson-Norris swallowed the powerful magic mushrooms supplied to him by shamanic figure Pablo, I strapped on my seatbelt and prepared myself for a Terrence McKenna-like or perhaps William S. Burroughs-like journey into the disturbing strange and intense – but instead, I found myself being treated to a breezy scene far more akin to something out of Ray Bradbury’s “Dandelion Wine,” or perhaps his short story, “The Sound of Summer Running.”

The hallucinogenic mushroom prompts him to relive with exceptional vividness a joyful time from his childhood when he became immersed in that most profoundly spiritual-American game, baseball. He shares this sun-soaked carefree time with his boyhood best friend, Damian (inspired by Hesse’s “Demian?”).

But why should this completely normal, wonderful, decent and absolutely non-dangerous re-lived memory need be induced by a powerful magic mushroom supplied by a shamanic figure? I confess: I don’t get it.

I will say, however, that I loved the way the blissful baseball vignette transitions into the disturbing accounts of his journeys through India, Turkey and Iran – it makes for a brutal contrast that is literary gold. (So much about this novel is excellent.)

But, but ... there are many other “Whys” I might air – such as why include that baffling opening shemp (I borrow a jargon term from cinema out of desperation) – which quietly dissipates as something barely necessary. It is also mistake to call this an homage to Hesse and Lowry. These magnificent novelists influence and inform the book yes, but -- now I'm just quibbling -- and I've gone on too long already. So here’s my bottom line:

This has the making of an excellent memoir – indeed, it is a memoir -- a significant and important piece, possibly even a “Great American” memoir. What men like Norris did in adopting the mantel of conscientious objector is an act of tremendous heroism and commands my utmost, undying respect.

The writing is often brilliant and engaging, even absorbing.

However, presenting this document as fiction drops a clog into the whole system of the book, knocking it off kilter in more ways than one. Making us try to believe this is fiction is a crippling distraction. That's because fiction requires the reader to adopt that “willing suspension of disbelief” -- which in this case in untenable.

We never believe in a fictional character named David Thompson, but we do believe in Robert W. Norris. He's the real deal.

Ken Korczak is the author of THE FAIRY REDEMPTION OF JUBAL CRANCH

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Skip Atwater's "Captain of My Ship, Master of My Soul" is about a lot more than remote viewing; It's a profound testament of one man's spiritual journey

Review by KEN KORCZAK

A twist on an old Hindu proverb goes something like this: “There are a million paths to God (or enlightenment or heaven); it doesn’t matter which one you take, as long as you get there.”

It’s this quote that makes me think of FRED HOLMES ATWATER, best known as Skip Atwater. Here is a man who found his personal path to enlightenment, but ah, what a strange road he took.

Think back to when the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union was grinding away. Both sides are harboring enough nuclear weapons to not only destroy the other – but take out the whole world in the process. The hate and enmity of these two behemoths threatened swallow our beautiful blue-green planet in a nuclear fire of mutual madness.

Now imagine that one of the key warriors in this global stalemate of loathing is working diligently to ensure that his side prevails. He is a member of the most feared corps of elite warriors – an operative in the dark, seamy, paranoid, dangerous world of military intelligence -- he's a spy.

Skip Atwater could fairly be described as a kind of elite “super spy,” not because he was traveling the dark corridors of the world collecting information or performing assassinations – but because of the amazing assignment he landed.

It became Atwater's task to study, and possibly develop, a team of psychic spies that could use ESP to snoop on the Soviet Union, or any enemy of America. Even today this sounds like an insane idea –- a mixture of New Age or occult voodoo mixed with the militaristic paranoia of the Cold War. It sounds more like a paranoid Philip K. Dick novel.

Except that it's all true. Skip Atwater was the spearhead that led the U.S. Army to spend millions of dollars and years of manpower to develop elite super corps of spies who could reach out with only their minds to get behind any wall, bunker or secret hidden base the Soviets might be hiding anywhere in the world.

By all accounts, Skip Atwater would seem to be the opposite of anyone’s definition of a Cold War spy. He is a gentle man by nature – sweet, kind, humble, unassuming, blonde and handsome – a guy with a natural but quiet charisma -- the kind of guy that makes everyone feel strangely good when he enters a room.

That’s the way I bet you will feel when you read Atwater’s book, CAPTAIN OF MY SHIP, MASTER OF MY SOUL: LIVING WITH GUIDANCE.

These pages are part autobiography, and part detailed record of what Atwater did to develop the now famous (or infamous) PSI method known as remote viewing as a tool for U.S. intelligence.

Atwater starts with his childhood, telling of strange mystical events he experienced, but which his metaphysical-minded parents encouraged him to think of as “natural.” These experiences including things like out-of-body experiences, seeing auras and even an instance of levitation!

SKIP ATWATER

Atwater voluntarily joined the U.S. Army at a time when the Vietnam War was heating up and getting ugly – but he joined only to stave off being drafted, and to prevent himself from having to kill someone. Instead, Atwater asked to join military intelligence – and he got his wish –or as he repeatedly puts it, "I was on my path, I was being guided, I was on track, I was being protected”by something he calls "Guidance."

The middle part of the book is a fairly detailed and exacting account of how the remote viewing program was developed, including some pretty terrific “how to” information for those interested in trying their own hand at this esoteric process.

For me, the juicy part of the book (to borrow a phrase from DEAN RADIN who wrote an intro) is the latter third where Atwater describes his work at the Monroe Institute in Faber, Virginia, his post-military job.

THE MONROE INSTITUTE was established by the famous out-of-body traveler ROBERT MONROE, author of several superior books on the topic.

It was here that the now also famous HEMI-SYNC TECHNOLOGY was developed – an audio system using something called binaural beats – to enhance brainwave activity, enabling people to explore alternate or advanced states of consciousness.

Atwater's is probably the very best book I have read about remote viewing (though I have only read about a half-dozen). It goes well beyond remote viewing itself to discuss issues of spiritual growth and expansion.

Like another early remote viewing pioneer – physicist Russell Targ – what began for Atwater as a hard-nosed attempt to bring scientific understanding and military application to ESP ended up a journey of profound spiritual transformation -- and his story is beautifully and eloquently told in these pages.

Ken Korczak is the author of THE FAIRY REDEMPTION OF JUBAL CRANCH

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