If you were around and reading metaphysical books back in the 1980s, you are probably familiar with Communion: A True Story, Whitley Strieber’s 1987 account of what he calls “the visitors:” bizarre, unpredictable beings that intruded into his life and subjected him to many years’ worth of bizarre, unpredictable, and even traumatizing experiences.
It was a shocking book, in many respects, and became an instant classic (pardon the cliche) in the genre of UFO Abduction literature.
It was also not the last book on this phenomena that Strieber wrote. Far from it. In the three-plus decades since the publication of Communion, Strieber has penned at least a half dozen other non-fiction titles, each building on the last, and each chipping away at Strieber’s central question: who are these beings, and why are they encroaching on what we think of as normal, rational reality?
Strieber’s newest book on the phenomena, A New World, is a marvelous addition to this writer’s portfolio.
Like his other books, A New World is by turns intriguing, frightening, elevating, and thought-provoking. Strieber approaches the material with scrupulous honesty. He does not portray this phenomena as entirely positive, or entirely negative; he tackles disturbing elements of the UFO experience, for example cow mutilations, as frankly as he does the inherent transcendence of encountering what appear to be other-dimensional spiritual teachers.
But while it is categorized as a UFO book, A New World transcends that category — and it does so because while Strieber may have started his journey as a “UFO abductee,” he has shaped it over the years into something completely different, something more in the tradition of the mystic. Many of the experiences Strieber describes are best describe as visions — visions that have much in common with those reported by saints, shamans, and psychics since the dawn of humankind.
A New World is also a call to action. Strieber is deeply concerned about the challenges humans face today; in particular, our environmental challenges. He calls Earth “a dying planet.” He believes that the visitors are offering to partner with us to help us reverse course, by developing technology and related solutions that will modify the psychological stressors that drive us to violence and war, and that enable us to live in ways that reduce the negative impact we’re having on the Earth’s ecosystems.
Will Strieber’s latest book help to usher in this “new world”?
We are surely not alone in answering, “we hope so!”