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The Secret School: Preparation for Contact
 
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The Secret School: Preparation for Contact (Mass Market Paperback)

by Whitley Strieber (Author)
4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)

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From Publishers Weekly

With this new volume of recovered memories and apocalyptic predictions, Strieber continues the journey he began with Communion, his extraordinarily successful account of alien abduction. While that book was largely about his experiences with "the visitors," the follow-up books, Transformation and Breakthrough, were more concerned with the spiritual implications of alien contact. Strieber now takes this process even further, into prophecy and New Age rumination. He contends that, as a child in San Antonio in the 1950s, he and other children were taken in the middle of the night to a secret school run by aliens in the middle of San Antonio's wild Olmos Basin. The book is structured as a series of "lessons," mostly specific memories of his ninth summer, followed by "commentaries," a series of vague and increasingly wild speculations and predictions. Most of the spiritual content here is a farrago of nearly every New Age preoccupation imaginable?aliens, reincarnation, time travel, millennial disaster, Atlantis, etc.?"proved" by highly credulous readings of popular science articles. As the author of entertaining and elegantly composed narratives about personal contact with mysterious entities that are unsupported by proof and that purvey a maddeningly vague message of spiritual release, Strieber has become the Carlos Castaneda of the 1990s. Even those who don't believe a word of what he's saying will enjoy his writing?about his Texas boyhood in particular?and his ability to conjure a sense of terror, awe and wonderment.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.


From Library Journal

A prequel to Streiber's tales of alien abduction.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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5.0 out of 5 stars Strieber at his most artistic, Dec 7 2003
By William J. Tychonievich (Taiwan) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
According to Whitley, the events in this book "happened partly in this world and partly in a child's imagination and partly in my current imagination." And, indeed, much of it is pretty hard to swallow (the "face on Mars"?... uh-huh). As a reporter of facts, Whitley is less than reliable in this book.

But as an artist, this is where Whitley shines. The imagery is haunting and overwhelming, and it will stay with you. It may not be his most significant contribution to the close-encounter literature, but by literary criteria this is Whitley Strieber's masterpiece.

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3.0 out of 5 stars Strieber continues down a credibility destroying path., Jun 14 2003
By Chadwick H. Saxelid "Bookworm" (Concord, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
Whitley Strieber's fourth book examing the long reaching personal impact/influence that the 'Visitors' have had on him moves the author even farther away from the mainstream audience he jolted with his disturbing tale, Communion. The Secret School begins with his recalling mysterious lessons learned in childhood at a hidden location in the Olmos Basin of San Antonio, Texas. As the events progress, Strieber again paints himself as someone gifted with seeming paranormal abilities (i.e. time travel) and discernment (the book ends with numerous predictions, most of which have yet to come to pass in the six or so years - the time at which I am writing this - since The Secret School was first published). Once again I got the feeling that Strieber is less interested in understanding the Communion experience and more focused on becoming a mover and shaker in the New Age movement (his recent offering of two more 'teaching' books, The Path and The Key, appear to confirm this). Too bad, for the first portion of the book (featuring a child's dream trip to Mars and an attempt to join an amateur astronomy class) hint at a compelling story that would have touched a far broader audience if hidden behind the veil of fiction. As it reads now, the book is nothing but mildly interesting infotainment (i.e. information so sketchy and unverifiable that it is better to read it as simple entertainment). Strieber, as is usual for this sub-genre, keeps the paranormal research overly fuzzy. For example, in the Third Lesson, he mentions travelling through time. But when he digs for some corroborating evidence he only finds a '1945 story' about a woman who briefly appeared and then disappeared on forty-second street (page 55 of my mass market paperback edition), yet he neglects to reveal the exact calender date, nor the name of the periodical and the location of the article in it. He then follows this with more vague stories of "tracking down rumors" and "polling his group of friends" with no dates or information suitable for fact checking. It takes a lot more than second hand stories to convince the skeptics. Strieber also makes claims of being granted visions of a past life that was instrumental in getting the Roman Emperor Octavius to power (and thus saving the Empire from a far too early destruction). My is it not interesting that past lives are all filled with important derring do and intrigue? Not many past life regressions I have heard about ever detail, say, standing in a line at the bank waiting to make a deposit or some other simple errand. Mr. Strieber's pre-Communion books War Day and Nature's End both clearly showed that he wanted to push his fiction past moderately successful horror stories and into the realm of more awareness raising and/or influencing writing. Sadly The Secret School moves Strieber farther and farther away from being able to achieve those lofty goals. This outing is strictly for Dreamland fans only.
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