I believe Whitley Strieber.
I do. I think he was abducted by aliens. I believe him.
As a writer, I have to admire his willingness to come right out and claim that he was abducted, with all the probing and prodding and public scorn that his admission entails. That takes some cojones. Of course, I tend to believe in aliens and all that jazz myself, so it’s not really such a leap of the imagination for me to think that he’s been touched by an alien.
That said, I’ve just read his newest book, 2012: The War for Souls and I was really impressed. The premise is a little hard to condense into a brief review such as this–parallel dimensions, alternate earths, aliens who want to break on through to the other side (i.e. OUR dimension)–but it gave me the type of book I’ve been craving for a long time: the alien invasion book.
As a sidenote: I love me some alien invasions. “War of the Worlds” is one of my favorite movies (1950s version and the Tom Cruise version…yeah, I said both). In my eyes, you can’t go wrong with ominous motherships hovering above cityscapes and beams of light floating cattle and rednecks into the sky. The problem is, there aren’t enough books that have that kind of plot. Aliens are always advanced and trying to save humanity from itself, or compassionate and caring “angels,” or supernaturally intelligent beings. Blah blah blah. I want aliens who come to Earth with cookbooks titled “To Serve Man.” I want rampaging, “Independence Day” aliens who don’t give two craps about humanity, except to wipe us out and/or serve us for brunch.
So right away I got into 2012. The alien invasion scenes are creepy. Really creepy. Don’t-wanna-go-outside-after-dark kind of creepy. My kind of book.
If you’re late to the conspiracy theory party, by the way, a lot of people believe that the world will end on December 21, 2012 because the Mayan calendar ends on that day. As for myself, eh…I dunno. It could end tomorrow for all we know, because the Schmuck Who Shall Not Be Named might decide to go out in a flame of glory rather than as a lame duck. It’s a crap shoot. I give credit to Strieber, however, for capitalizing on this fear and making a pretty damn good novel out of it.
Fully reviewing this book would mean giving away some plot twistiness, so I shan’t go there. This is just intended to be a half-assed review, anyway. The end of the book gets weird, so read closely to keep up. I would have liked more evil alien stuff, but that’s just me.
So final verdict: if you like aliens, read this book. And if you’re a cheap bastard, wait until late November, 2012, and check it out of your local library. You’ve got a 50/50 chance of not having to return it before your late fees kick in.
