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Rating: 
Summary: A Very Worthwhile Ride
Review: Because I learned so much from Seifer¹s first book WIZARD, which is a biography on the inventor Nikola Tesla, I decided to check out STARETZ ENCOUNTER, even though it was a novel. Not only was I not disappointed, I was truly amazed. I couldn¹t tell where reality ended and fiction began. The story reads like a real-life drama, kind of remindful in tone of THE FIRM or MARATHON MAN. It is a tale about the American news reporter Rudy Styne (a take-off on the name Rudolf Steiner??) who begins to study the bizarre world of the paranormal and along the way discovers a plot by ex-KGB right-wingers to murder Western neuroscientists who are studying ESP. Some of the characters seemed to be based on real people. For example, Abdullah Manu was very remindful of Israeli spoonbender Uri Geller.
I liked very much Seifer¹s attempt to show actual experiments in the field of parapsychology as the plot follows Styne through the literal mind-field of the world of ESP. I enjoyed the relationship between Styne and his girlfriend, Chessie. Styne¹s alter ego, Imo Bern and his brother an Olympian also humanize the story.
This is by no means a simple tale, for just as we follow Styne¹s investigation, we also, through Imo's eyes, go into the heart of Siberia to enter a top-secret underground Russian parapsychology lab. Imo is a three-dimensional character torn between his duty to his nation and the duty to his own soul as he, and we, the reader, grimace during the grisly experiments he must perform on the brains of live monkeys and later on humans. Two of the characters in this book are actually monkeys. There are also very scary villains
One of the highlights for me in this story is the ability of the author is to hold the reigns on the far out stuff so that everything that does happen seems possible, even though the book covers such far-out topics as ghosts, psychokinesis, levitation and mental telepathy. Fun and thought provoking.
Rating:
Summary: Message from the Author
Review: There were two events that sparked the writing of STARETZ ENCOUNTER. (1) The arrest in Moscow in 1977, of American news reporter Robert Toth by the KGB, for obtaining a paper on telepathy and brain-wave biofeedback, and (2) The shabby treatment superpsychic Uri Geller received from the American press after being tested successfully at Stanford Research Institute and other U.S. military think tanks. Except for the fair front-page coverage in The New York Times, practically every other media outlet including the TV networks ABC, CBS & NBC, and also Time and Newsweek, reported the Toth arrest, yet purposefully edited out the topic of the science paper he received! This slanted coverage has influenced the universities. For all intents and purposes, no major physics or neurology department in this country is studying such a topic as telepathy, even though the evidence for its existence is overwhelming. It is for these reasons that I wrote the novel. A fictional thriller with a sci-fi twist, STARETZ ENCOUNTER takes the reader into the fantastic world of the paranormal, as the story also weaves its way not only through New York and its subway system, but also to Antigua, Florence. Bhutan, Egypt, Japan, and also to a secret underground parapsychology laboratory buried in the heart of Siberia. A comprehensive bibliography has been included at the end which gives the facts behind the yarn. Marc J. Seifer, Ph.D. FROM THE BACK COVER: Like a journey through the Major Arcana, Staretz Encounter takes the reader into the bizarre and mind-boggling world of the paranormal. I enjoyed Marc Seifer's book thoroughly. URI GELLER, Paranormalist Extraordinaire This is a teriffically original book, with elements of satire as well. Dr. STANLEY KRIPPNER, author of Song of the Siren
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