Louis
Whitley Strieber (born June 13, 1945) is
an American writer best
known for his horror novels The
Wolfen and The Hunger
and for Communion,
a non-fiction account of his perceived experiences with
non-human entities. Strieber also co-authored The
Coming Global Superstorm with Art
Bell, which inspired the film about sudden
climate change, The Day After
Tomorrow. He has persisted as a supporter of
alternative concept advocates through the Unknown
Country website.
Early
life
Strieber
was born in San Antonio, Texas, the son of Karl Strieber,
a lawyer and Mary Drought Strieber. He attended Central
Catholic Marianist High School in San Antonio, Texas.
He was educated at the University
of Texas at Austin and the London School of Film Technique,
graduating from each in 1968. He then worked
for several advertising firms in New York City,
rising to the level of vice president before quitting
in 1977.
Fiction
Strieber
began his career as a novelist
with the horror novels The Wolfen
(1978) and The Hunger
(1981), each of which was later made into a movie, followed
by the less successful horror novels Black
Magic (1982) and The
Night Church (1983).
Strieber
then turned to speculative fiction. He wrote Warday
(1984), about the dangers of limited nuclear warfare,
and Nature's End (1986),
a novel about environmental apocalypse, collaboratively
with James Kunetka. He is also the author of Wolf
of Shadows (1985), a young adult novel set
in the aftermath of a nuclear war.
In
1986, Strieber's fantasy novel Catmagic
was published, co-authored with Jonathan Barry, who was
billed as an aerospace industry consultant and a practicing
witch. In the 1987 paperback edition, Strieber states
that Jonathan Barry is fictitious and that he is the author
of Catmagic. Strieber's
personal publishing company, Walker & Collier, is
named after two characters in Catmagic.
Later,
less successful thrillers by Strieber (all now out of
print) include Billy
(1990), The Wild (1991),
Unholy Fire (1992)
and The Forbidden Zone
(1993).
He
later returned to the vampire saga that began with The
Hunger, adding The
Last Vampire (2001) and Lilith's
Dream (2002) to the story.
His
novel of alien abduction The
Grays (2006) makes use of his alleged experiences
of the phenomenon.
The
author's short stories were collected in the 1997 limited
edition volume Evenings with Demons. Strieber also authored
a short story, "The Good
Neighbor", published in Twilight
Zone: 19 Original Stories on the 50th Anniversary.
Communion
and "The Visitors"
On
December 26, 1985, Strieber reportedly was abducted from
his cabin in upstate New York by non-human beings. He
wrote about these experiences in his first non-fiction
book, Communion (1987).
Although the book is perceived generally as an account
of alien abduction, Strieber draws no conclusions about
the identity of alleged abductors. He refers to the beings
as "the visitors", a name chosen to be
as neutral as possible to entertain the possibility that
they are not extraterrestrials and may instead exist in
his mind. He has repeatedly expressed his frustration
with what he feels are fantastic claims attributed incorrectly
to him.
Strieber
wrote four additional autobiographies detailing his experiences
with the visitors, Transformation
(1988), Breakthrough
(1995), The Secret School
(1996), and Solving the Communion
Enigma: What Is to Come (2011).
In
Solving the Communion Enigma,
Strieber admitted that he used a hypnotist to help him
recall the details of his close encounters and that, during
the time period of his experiences at his upstate New
York cabin in the 1980s, in his words, "I was
regularly drinking myself to sleep when we were there.
I would listen to the radio until late hours, drinking
vodka . . ."
Other
visitor-themed books of Strieber's include Majestic
(1989), a novel about the Roswell UFO incident and The
Communion Letters (1997, reissued in 2003),
a collection of letters from readers reporting experiences
similar to Strieber's Confirmation
(1998), despite its title, does not propose that there
has been 'confirmation' of UFOs or abductions. It analyzes
the evidence and discusses what would be required to provide
'confirmation'. A 2006 novel, The
Grays, presented his impression of alien contact
through a fictional narrative.
Strieber
wrote the screenplay for the 1989 film Communion,
directed by Philippe Mora and starring Christopher
Walken as Strieber. The movie covers material
from the novel Communion
and a sequel Transformation
and which has themes not present in the books. Strieber
stated in interviews years after the movie's release that
he was dissatisfied with the film. When pushed, he indicated
that he was displeased with Christopher Walken's inauthentic
portrayal of him.
The
Master of the Key
In
the pre-dawn hours of June 6, 1998, Strieber was allegedly
visited in his Toronto hotel room by a mysterious but
very ordinary-looking elderly Caucasian man who delivered
an unsolicited lecture covering various subjects from
spirituality to the environment. When queried, the man
airily suggested that he might be called "Michael"
but Whitley has taken to referring to him as the "Master
of the Key". Strieber first reported the visit
in his online journal in 1998 and later gave a more complete
account in his self-published book The
Key (2001). Skeptics have pointed out that
The Key and the 1998
journal entries give different (not contradictory but
non-overlapping) accounts of what the man said. Strieber's
mention of his personally-devised system of shorthand
or abbreviated note-taking in an interview with George
Knapp on June 19, 2011, might at least
partially account for this apparent discrepancy as the
author had to reconstruct the entire 45-minute conversation
with his visitor from a series of barely-legible squiggles
he discovered by his hotel bedside upon re-awakening from
deep sleep much later, that same morning. He also chose
to emphasize different subjects or aspects of the exchange
according to how he surmised they could best be assimilated
by his readers. Strieber claims that the stranger in his
room informed him that humans have an electron floating
in front of their foreheads, and that that may indeed
be their soul. He also claimed the stranger handed him
a vial of unknown white liquid, instructed him to drink
it, and he did.
Before
publishing The Key,
Strieber co-authored, with Art Bell, The
Coming Global Superstorm (1999), a book about
the possibility of rapid and destructive climate change.
He has said that it was based largely on things the Master
of the Key had told him about the environment. The book
served as the inspiration for the disaster film The
Day After Tomorrow (2004) and Strieber later
wrote a novelization of that movie.
Another
recent book Strieber says was inspired by the teachings
of the Master of the Key is the self-published The
Path (2002) which deals with the symbolism
of the Tarot of Marseilles.
Current
works
Whitley
Strieber is currently the host of the paranormal and fringe
science-themed internet podcast, Dreamland,
available on a weekly basis from his website, Unknown
Country. The program was a former companion
show to Coast to Coast AM,
with both shows founded by broadcaster Art Bell, before
being taken on by Strieber in 1999.
Strieber
has also returned to writing novels in recent years, including
The Last Vampire
(2001), and Lilith's Dream
(2003), both being sequels to his 1981 vampire novel The
Hunger. As well, he has authored 2012:
The War For Souls (2007), a horror novel about
an interdimensional invasion, and Critical
Mass (2009), a thriller about nuclear terrorism.
Strieber also co-authored the graphic novel The
Nye Incidents (2008), along with co-authors
Craig Spector and Guss Floor.
His
new novel, The Omega Point,
is a novel "based on a hidden connection between
2012 and the Book of Revelation." This title
released in 2010 is Strieber's second novel dealing with
the subject of 2012, the first being his novel 2012:
The War for Souls.
The Omega Point details
the coming events surrounding 2012. Strieber is effectively
outlining three ways in which humanity may evolve, each
of which are equally disturbing.
Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitley_Strieber
