Whitley Strieber's Blog

First, thanks for all the great reviews, and I assume that some of you are also among the Amazon reviewers, so a thousand thanks!

Now, if you've read the Afterlife Revolution, you'll know that my wife Anne died in August of 2015 and then executed a plan of contact that we had worked out back in the 1990s when we realized that there really was an afterlife.

There are a lot of reasons we came to understand this, which are detailed in the book. What I want to talk about here is things that have happened AFTER it was published, and there are a lot of them. Anne is still around and she's good at this.

She has changed the way I feel about life and afterlife, and the way I handle grief. There is just such a bubbling, delightful sense of presence when she is involved with me.

From February 18 to 23, I was at at a conference at Esalen. I was there with my friend and fellow Unknowncountry.com podcaster Jeremy Vaeni, the medium Paul Selig and a woman who was transformed into a psychic by a lightning strike, Elizabeth Krohn.

We were there to tell our stories to a group of academics and social scientists who take a serious interest in extreme experiences.

As those of you who have read Afterlife know, Anne indicates her presence by the appearance of a white moth, generally in situations where no moths are around.

After my presentation on the Afterlife Revolution, most of the conferees went to dinner at the Esalen dining hall. As they were eating, a white moth appeared and flew up and down the table, then flew up in the air and seemed to just disappear. Then, at the final banquet in a private dining room, a white moth flew around and landed on Jeremy Vaeni's head! (Anne loved his approach to the unknown and his show.)

There were no other moths of any kind seen by any of us at Esalen over that five day period. It was just like all the other white moth appearances that have been associated with her--appearances that are carefully timed to be relevant to what is happening when the moth appears.

Additionally, last December, a psychic called Cherylee Black found herself face to face with a ghost called Anne. (Her psychic ability includes seeing and interacting with ghosts.) This ghost was so clear and remained for so long that Cherylee drew a portrait of her. She sent it to her friend and mine, my co-author of Super Natural, Jeff Kripal. He did not recognize the face. Eventually he sent it on to another friend, who wrote back at once, "that's Anne Strieber."

So the portrait was sent to me. Not only is is Anne, it is very close to my favorite photo of her, which hangs on my wall so I can look up at it while I am working. I now have them framed side by side.

Anne was in life a remarkable woman with a strong intellect a wonderful sense of humor and a big, open heart. Since she died, she has been on a mission to confirm to us that we have souls and there is an afterlife, and that we need to look to the health of our souls in whatever way we choose.

She has said many wonderful things to me and others since she died. One of them is "enlightenment is what happens when there is nothing left of us but love."

She came to that in her life and continues in her afterlife, calling to us on behalf of love.

I would not have needed to be a prophet to predict that some real creeps would be out there attacking my new book Super Natural: a New Vision of the Unexplained. One of these oddball has posted negative reviews here on Goodreads and on Amazon, and probably elsewhere as well.

He whines that, while I talk about some disturbing childhood experiences at an air force base, I fail to mention the MK-ULTRA project. But why would I? I have no evidence that what happened to me was in any way connected to MK-ULTRA. In fact, none of the documents so far released about this notorious CIA mind control project of the 1960s mention any involvement with children, and I was no older than 8 when the experiences I refer to took place.

In fact, the only references to such a connection that I can find occur on the very sort of less-than-credible websites that I don't think any rational person would trust.

In any case, most of the reviews of Super Natural have been surprisingly good, and, I think, deservedly so. As I get older, I'm getting less tolerant of the creeps, I suppose. So please take Super Natural on its own credible and honest terms.

I've just published the audiobook of Journey to Dog Heaven. It's available on Audible.com and you can find out more about it on my book page, Strieber.com. The ebook is on most ebook outlets, including Amazon. I do the reading on the audio book--or rather, the actor who lives in here with me does.

Dog Heaven about dogs and their love, and the love we share. Mostly, the story viewpoint is that of a ranch dog called Bob. His master is Buddy and Buddy has to leave the ranch for reasons that Bob cannot understand.

There follows Bob's journey, searching for the love of his life. It is a journey taken by many a dog, but also one that we take in our hearts, searching for love we have lost.

When I was a boy, I had a little rat terrier called Candy, and while she was not a big ranch dog, I did model Bob's love for Buddy and loyalty to him on Candy's for me. But I didn't really need a single model. All dogs are the model. Once give, a dog's love is forever.

Candy used to sleep beside me at night. We shared the same pillow. When my wife first came down from New York to meet my family, she peeked in on me while I was sleeping, and saw Candy in her usual spot. She thought, 'do I have a rival?'
No, but I learned a lot about love from that little dog.

She waits for me still, I know it, just as Bob waits for Buddy. It's often been said that animals don't go to heaven. If that's true, then it can't really be heaven, not as far as I am concerned.

The Journey to Dog Heaven is also about how just plain lovely it is to have a pet in your life. There's a little rhyme in it I'd like to share:

A Message from Bob the Dog

"There’s a whole bunch of us down at the shelter, down at the pound, plenty of dogs and cats to go ‘round. We got lost or abandoned or sumpin’ went wrong. But if you’re comin’ you better hurry, ‘cause they don’t let us wait here for very long."

How about it? Somebody might have your name written on their heart.

To learn more about Dog Heaven, go to Strieber.com.

I have just published a short novel called the Journey to Dog Heaven. It's mostly from the viewpoint of a dog, and in his voice.

It's about the choices that must be made in life, and a dog who makes a really hard one.

The book comes from deep within my life and childhood, when I was a scruffy little Texas boy running around with a scruffy little dog behind me.

My dog was a rat terrier named Candy, so called because she loved candy, was an expert thief, and would defend her candy to the death once she had it.

I also feel that we owe our pets something. They have come to depend on us, and too often they get let down. So the Journey to Dog Heaven is also meant to encourage adoption, especially in families with kids. And cats will do very nicely, too!

In the book, Bob, an Aussie cattle dog living on a Texas ranch, sets out to follow his master Buddy, without understanding that he's gone off to war and cannot be found.

Bob struggles mightily and makes an incredibly hard choice. But, then again, hard choices are part of life on the path to every heaven, including dog heaven.

You can get an ebook now for $4.99. Hardcover and audio will be along in a few weeks.

Find out more about Dog Heaven and all my books on Strieber.com

I have completed Super Natural with my collaborator, Jeff Kripal, the Religion Chair at Rice University. It's going to be published by Tarcher/Penguin in February of 2016.

Jeff is a religion scholar who specializes in modern myth. He is open-minded about the UFO lore, but like me, thinks of it in a much broader way than the usual aliens are here/not here argument.

Since the beginning of history and no doubt before, human beings have been influenced in some way by light. A whole culture arose out of Moses vision of the burning bush. That culture was radically altered when Paul was startled by a flash of light on the road to Damascus. Mohammed was guided by a being of light in his cave. And nowadays, these plasmas or whatever they are seem to be everywhere, and there are apparent aliens to go with them.

So what is all of this about and, above all, why is this enormously important player in human affairs not studied?

These are some of the questions explored in Super Natural. Tarcher/Penguin will be calling in the most important book on the supernatural since Charles Fort published the Book of the Damned in 1919. I hope that it is seen as that and its suggestion that we re-envision the supernatural and the paranormal is embraced. If we do that, it will lead to a fundamental change in the way we view and understand our world and along with it a much-needed expansion of our vision of ourselves and the universe in which we live.

I'm open to questions about it, of course, but put them in the question area so emails will get to me, not in the comments here. Comments welcome, too, of course!

In the Alien Hunter series, one of the abilities my fictional aliens have is to enhance animals with human genes. This leads to the creation of a character called Snow Mountain, who is a Siberian Tiger with a human mind. There are also enhanced dogs, who, like the Wolfen in my first novel, have not only the terrific senses of canines, but the intelligence of humans. They are, of course, on the lethal side.

So this week, when I opened the New Scientist, I was stunned to read that human neurons have been introduced into the brains of mice, which astonishing results.

Immature gilial cells from donated human fetuses were injected into mouse pups. At once, they began taking over the mice brains, pushing the mice cells to the margins.

The result? The mice became much smarter and were tested as having four times the memory of normal mice. (Journal of Neuroscience, doi.org/xfk).

This just floored me, frankly. As those of you who read my books know, I think a lot about such things as animal intelligence (Wolfen) and machine intelligence (Hybrids). I can now foresee a future in which animals like dogs might be dramatically enhanced with human gilial cells. Brilliant dogs, quick to learn, would be a major advance for mankind.

But what are the ethics, here? What would we be creating? In the Alien Hunter series, the enhanced animals are complex, tragic beings. They are created by aliens without any moral constraints, as they don't consider us any more 'human' than the other animals who live on Earth.

We will create super-intelligent animals. Such creatures are simply too valuable. It will happen.

Just as the human-machine interface is soon to enter the brain, it looks as if the animal-human interface is about to enter the animal brain.

Just finished Alien Hunter 3: the White House. It will come out next summer. My editor at Tor/Forge, Bob Gleason, told me he thought it was the best thriller I've ever written. I hope that's true, and as Bob doesn't do a lot of praising, at least I know it's good.

It takes my character, Flynn Carroll into a conspiracy in the White House that turns into a chess game with the denizens of Aeon. This is the planet where the criminals came from in Alien Hunter 1 and 2.

But things have changed on Aeon. There was a revolution, and now the ones who were viewed as criminals are in control of the planet--and they want more.

This is not a typical 'alien invasion' story. It concerns a chess game between Flynn and what is no longer a small group of criminals, but a massive conspiracy with state support. Worse, they are in possession of breathtakingly advanced technology. (Some of which is real, and which we have. But I'll leave you to play with that one!)

How do you take an entire planet, but get rid of its population without destroying it? The aliens have a solution. Flynn has to stop them.

This is a blog I hoped I would never have to write. For most of my career, I have been fighting to prevent this, to slow it down or at least to plan for it.

What is happening is that methane hydrates are melting in the Arctic Ocean and along the US Atlantic seaboard. The methane they are releasing is adding to that already pouring out of tundra in Siberia, Alaska and Canada.

While methane releases have been taking place for the past 10 years, there is no precedent for what is happening now, and it isn’t reflected in global warming models. If the melt of methane hydrates commences an exponential expansion, which is what previous interglacial climaxes suggest will happen, we are could be dealing within less than a generation with a situation that will not be survivable for civilization, and possibly even not for our species.

The reason for this is that the temperature spike that is going to take place will profoundly disrupt things like rainfall, growing seasons, and even the viability of the human body. Summer temperatures across southern China, central and southern India, the middle section of the United States, southern Europe and North Africa could reach into the 130s Fahrenheit. (Many other areas would also be affected, and there would be no part of the globe without very substantial temperature increases.)

This is not a livable temperature for human beings, not for long, and there is not a single global warming model that predicts this.

However, if a methane spike takes place, it will happen.

Now that it has started, the methane release will not stop. How fast it will build is anybody’s guess, but it will build.

It’s a great tragedy that the debate about this was between the left, which took the position that pollution was entirely the problem and the right, which claimed that there was no problem.

Sadly, the reality, which is that carbon dioxide emissions generated by human activity was dangerously speeding up a natural process, was never part of the debate at all.

The result of this is that we have wasted too much time, and now it’s too late. Whatever cards nature deals us, those are the cards we are going to have to play. Unfortunately, those are going to be some very ugly cards indeed.

The most immediate problem in the Americas is likely to be drought. The eastern Pacific has warmed to record levels, and unless tropical rains roll over the US southwest, it’s likely that the drought presently taking place there will not be relieved this winter. In that case, areas of California and Arizona are going to be without water. Should the drought continue for another year, which is far from impossible, it will become the greatest environmental catastrophe in American history.

Indeed, drought is going to be a problem in much of the world, as increasing temperatures intensify evaporation. For example, it’s likely that the drought in the western US will extend into the Midwest next year, resulting in crop disruptions that could become extensive and, ultimately, catastrophic.

The reason for all this is that methane is a very powerful greenhouse gas, 130 times more efficient at retaining heat than carbon dioxide. However, unlike carbon dioxide, methane dissipates in a relatively short period of time, with the result that, forty or so years after the last of the outgassing, the methane will be gone. But the outgassing, once started--as it has--enforces a warmer and warmer arctic regime, which causes more and more outgassing. Because the tonnage of trapped hydrates is so enormous, this can continue for thousands of years.

Should there be any human life left when the process completes and the next ice age begins, it will be far, far less than it is now, with the result that it will not contribute any warming effect. When the methane dissipates, all of that retained heat will be released into space and there will come a year in which the snow cover in northern latitudes survives the summer. From then on, a substantial ice cover will begin to grow until it becomes a new glacier.

By that time, this civilization will be a distant memory, a legend, no doubt, of a golden age in which the future will find difficult to believe.
How I wish that it had been different. I feel that I could have done so much more, but I simply could not break through into the center of the debate, which was where I needed to be.

Now, planning no longer matters. It might help a little to reduce our CO2 emissions, but I would be surprised if it mattered all that much.
What we have done is to hasten the end of the interglacial during which our whole history has unfolded. Instead of planning for the inevitable, we have made it worse.

In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare has Puck say of the young Athenians, “Lord, what fools these mortals be!”

Oh, Puck, you were wiser than ever you dreamed.

For the past few years, I've been writing fiction for two reasons: First, it's where I started and where my heart lives. Entering the world of the imagination is a magical, wonderful thing to do and I relish it. My second reason is that I sense that I have lots of buried memories from my very strange life, and I think that they reveal themselves in the fiction.

This was particularly true of the Grays and the Alien Hunter series. Toward the end of Alien Hunter: Underworld, I found myself dealing with a completely new vision of the reason for all those legends we have had throughout our history for beings living beneath the surface of the earth.

It was really a riveting experience, and a completely new take on the subject.

Then, just this last Thursday (8/21/14) a remarkable thing happened. Linda Moulton Howe (Earthfiles.com) who has done research for me for years, sent me a photo of a creature taken by a trail cam in Pennsylvania. When I first looked at it, I thought it must be a hoax (it looks like a classic garden gnome) but a photo expert, Dan Drasin, who does photo analysis for us says that it is not a statuette because it's moving very quickly. It's unlikely to be a bird because of its coloring and form.

What is so very odd about this--getting back to the fiction-nonfiction issue--is that I was working on a new nonfiction title at the time I received the email from Linda. The chapter I was writing was about creatures that live underground.

For more about this, go to this link on my website and scroll down until you see the picture: http://www.unknowncountry.com/dreamla...

My odd life has left we with a joyous sense of wonder about the world. While I still can't say that I've ever been face to face with an alien, there has been a vast amount of high strangeness, for which I am incredibly grateful. What a life!

I've been finishing a book, working sometimes 15 hours a day, in a kind of frenzy that I get into in the last few weeks of the long journey of writing a novel. Beautiful, terrifying journey. But then, suddenly, the world you have built that has come to seem more real than this one turns out to be words on pages, which is, itself, a kind of amazement. Words are truly magic, and the pleasure of writing--the agonizing pleasure of it--is very precious.

One wishes that one had never embraced the writing life. It's too hard, too unforgiving. But then again, there are the rewards. More than the finished book, for me the great reward is the life it brought me, the people I found in it, the journey that it took me on.

When I finish a book, I am defeated. I cry. But it also feels like a triumph.

This one will be a big surprise, which is all I'll say about its content.

I live to live in writing, my own and that of others. I heard Emma Straub on NPR the other day, and thought her interview was wise and compelling. I bought the Vacationers and got out of it the very thing I needed: release from my own just-written world. A delightful time with a very engaging book. And, I might add, if you've never been to Majorca, you'll want to jump on the next plane.

The Vacationers by Emma Straub

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


A thoughtful, insightful delight of a book. I read it nodding with understanding and appreciating its wisdom. It's also a terrific story. There is literally nothing like the pleasure of sitting down with a book like the Vacationers on a summer afternoon. Thanks, Emma Straub!



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