Customer Reviews

The Quickening : Today's Trends, Tommorrow's World

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It seems that in this book Art Bell has attempted to create a New Age version of Christian end-times teachings promulgated by sensationalists such as Hal Lindsey. He attempts to describe how various aspects of the world are changing in new and radical ways, and how the rate of change is accelerating, with the result being some kind of apocalyptic critical mass occurring in the near future. The chapters of this book discuss the various facets of this accelerating change in the most elementary and shallow terms. Bell seems to have written this book the same way one would have a fireside chat and casually toss around ideas and current events, and the result is writing that is painful to read. This is the kind of book one can pick up, skim through, and get the main idea while simultaneously watching a football game. If you are really interested in what Art Bell is saying in this book, then save your money, check it out from your local library like I did, and spend about one hour on it. That is about all the time it is worth.

Yuck. This book is "written" (I'm being generous here) for simple minds. Asked to read this book by a friend of mine I wonder how a career entertainer like Art Bell could print/approve of such simple-minded, unfocused dribble. Either he cannnot write and simply rubber stamped a 4th grade ghost writer's work, or he simply CAN'T WRITE. Don't waste your money!

Let's begin. I listen to Art Bell, I have listened to Art Bell, and -- when he is on the air -- I will continue to listen to Art Bell. He is unsurpassed in radio, his talk show (Coast to Coast AM) is one of the most interesting shows on the air. Unfortuately, he has "retired" and subsequently been replaced by George Noory -- but Bell himself also continues to host the weekend editions of the show, and occasionally subs in for Noory.

That said, this book is truly horrendous. I can't help but get the impression that Bell wrote this as an attempt to break into the world of current events. Except minus the current. Oh yeah - and minus the events, too. As if his radio success would deem him capable of catering to the more discrimiating readers of books - those of us who are able to string syllables together, rather than just twist a radio dial.

(No offense intended.)

Rather than coming off as an informed, thoughtful global analyst, Bell manages to sound instead like a self-serving paranoic wacko who feels compelled to spew his baseless philosophies to anyone willing to listen. He punctuates his writing with blatant half-truths and ignorant conclusions, trying to set the stage for his banter with half-assed anectdotes. Rather than coming off as intelligent, Bell sounds campy and unintelligent. Much like his radio show, it seems like his primary intent - when writing about the perils of the future, whether it be biologically, internationally or others - is to striek fear into the hearts of his viewers. While he most assuredly accomplishes this often on his radio show, when one reads it -- it sounds ridiculous.

The fact that Bell's show is so excellent exacerbates how astonishingly horrendous this book is. Don't waste your time, or your money. This book is a thinly-veiled marketing ploy to rake in a few books, using Bell's listener base as donators.

------------------------------------------------------------------------ Skeptical Briefs December 1997

A Skeptic's Notebook

Art Bell's Quickening Is Sickening

We've long known that Art Bell, night radio's paranoid propagandist, knows how to rave and rant. What we didn't know was whether or not he could read and write. An organized rumor that he is, indeed, literate comes to us in the form of an alleged "book" titled The Quickening: Today's Trend, Tomorrow's World. The question of Bell's literacy is not fully settled, however, because on the title page we are told there was an editor, one Jennifer L. Osborn, who had a prominent role in this publication. Quickening, unfortunately, was released this year by a firm labeled Paperchase Press of New Orleans, Louisiana. Added suspicion is cast upon Bell's claim to authorship by the presence of Ms. Osborn's name right under Bell's in a very suggestive position. After one dips into the book's pages, however, it becomes crystal clear from the chapter titles, the gloom-and-doom themes, as well as the litany of errors and misinformation -- plus the hysterical and repetitive exaggerations -- that the ideas, if not the words, are, indeed, classic Bell.

Just as he does in his nightly radio diatribes, Bell in this word-assembly, is out to terrorize anyone naive enough to read him. Each chapter of this "book" begins with a little "story" whose intent is to frighten one into believing the human race has had it. Although each tale is designed to scare us into calling our Senator, all come off just about as chilling as a Halloween pumpkin.

In one story a couple is no longer able to have children because the wife has a venereal disease. In another, a man catches a drug-resistant form of malaria. In others, two terrorists blow up an oil field, two teenagers poison themselves by inhaling upholstery cleaner, and a bunch of German skinheads catch and torch a Turk. Each of these grotesque tales is Bell's way of assuring us that our in! dividual and collective future is going to be pure hell. Even worse, our prophet tells us, is the fact that everything around us today is moving so fast, i.e., "quickening," that none of us Simple Simons is able to keep up with these fast-moving times. This is especially true for simple Art, who apparently never misses a single issue of The Weekly World News and seems to believe every word he reads. "Every aspect of our lives is accelerating and changing at a faster and faster pace," Art tells us; and since he can't keep up, then no one else can either! So there!

He or Osborn (or both) are thoughtful enough, however, to give us a warning at the beginning of their book:

Warning: The following material may not be suitable for those of you not prepared to face the realities of the future. These may seem like isolated snapshots of some far-off world. In truth, they are all symptoms of the same cause: The Quickening. . . .

Looking at the chapter topics, we can easily see just what is ringing Art's bell. First, there is the world's booming technology, with the Internet, fiberoptics, virtual reality, smart computers, cloning, and all them other goblins the scientists are creating. Next we have the economy (which is America's heavy load and which nobody understands), the European Union, Asia's cheap labor, and the disastrous road we're on to a global economy! Then there's the government, which is fragmented and in decline as we are moving daily to that horror of horrors: global government! And look at society, in particular, our society with its rampant crime and immorality and weakened fabric due to militia groups, terrorism, and hordes of illegal immigrants. Then, of course, there's the shame of shames -- our religion and spirituality. Are your spiritual? Is your neighbor? Look at all those weird New Agers, all that crappy modern psychology. This is what has brought on all the UFOs and alien attacks and abductions and talk about a crazy one-world religion!

Behold our messy environmen! t with its out-of-control consumerism and humongous garbage piles, smog everywhere, lead in all the kiddies cereal, chemical spills and leaks, global warming, ozone holes, and fallout of all kinds from massive overpopulation! The latter, of course, causes horrible disease and famine. Not only are there a lot of new and scary diseases but all the old plagues are coming back and our antibiotics are no longer working. Only prayer can save us! Then there's our old Mother Earth, who seems to be undergoing menopause with all her earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tidal waves, tornadoes, hurricanes, droughts, and floods; and don't ever forget all those mountain-size asteroids and comets heading our way. Worried about the future now?

Within each of his woe-filled chapters, Bell manages to get off some real cobs of wisdom and advice. For example, Bell tells us, "We have children we do not know how or have the time to raise." We are also advised, "We have to learn self-discipline and stop reproducing. There're too many people already."

Art is also concerned about our freedom, and he notes, "The world now has more freedom than in the past but at what price? The trouble is that increased political and social freedom has had a degenerative effect on the moral fiber of humanity" (p. 306). Chinese, North Korean, and Cuban citizens thank their lucky stars every day for their firm moral fiber.

We are then told that "Secular humanism is the trend of `the Quickening,' but this has had the backlash of creating a narcissistic population bent on having its own way" (p. 306). Of course, none of the other religious and sectarian groups are ever interested in "having their own way." In another religious revelation, Bell passes on the shocking, humongous news that "homosexuality [now can be found] even in the church."

Bell also tells us, "We must save more of our earnings. We should learn to do with less . . . to continue to live as we do will yield people -- o! ur children and their children -- who will not know how to adequately take care of themselves, to take care of each other, and to care for the world upon which they must depend for resources" (p. 308). Then in the same voice Bell tells us, "We can't change." He informs us that there is ethnic hatred everywhere; there is a great disparity between the rich and the poor; we still live under the threat of nuclear war; we are destroying our environment; and, since we cannot change some things, "We should change ourselves as individuals." "My hope," Bell says, "is that we as humans will come to our senses. Believing things are `not really that bad' will doom us." Answering his own rhetorical question "Where is the Quickening taking us?" Bell says, "To a global government with a benevolent dictator. If this is what it takes so be it." The plague of pompous pieties, platitudes, and propaganda never ceases!

It is very difficult for us to believe that Art Bell (or anyone else for that matter) would have the unmitigated gall to ask the public to pay $24.95 for 336 pages of childish inanities or to have them read such drivel as, "Ghosts and apparitions exist and houses can be haunted. Of that there is no doubt. . . . Psychic abilities are all spiritually based and occultic" (p. 193). Bell's chapter-by-chapter exposure of his massive and seemingly inexhaustible ignorance and his utter lack of scientific background and training, as well as his total inability to present a respectable rational argument, is embarrassing, even for a grade-school reader.

It is highly unlikely that this silly essay will be reviewed by other critics, since the kindest thing one can do for the author of a "truly bad book" is to ignore the social boo-boo and find something more worthy of criticism. Reviewers, nevertheless, also have a duty to protect the potential reader from nausea and intellectual indigestion. My only justification for spending this much ! time and effort on The Quickening is to warn any and all unwary readers that it is even worse than Bell's self-congratulatory newsletter After Dark. Somewhere toward the end of this distressing work Bell confesses, "writing a book is no easy task." In Bell's case the chore is well beyond his abilities, and despite Osborn's help, he still hasn't done the job. The best that can be said about The Quickening is that it is, indeed, sickening! ------------------------------------------------------------------------

About the Author

Robert Baker is emeritus professor of psychology, University of Kentucky. ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Please! Do not confuse this "end times" work with the wonderful work by Stuart Wilde of the same name.

Your personal criteria for what would make a "prediction" believable will be sorely tested with Art Bell's book -- and that is, perhaps, this work's greatest flaw. Mr. Bell apparently decided that it was not necessary to supply sources, bibliography, assorted names and dates, or other pertinent information which would have allowed we readers a chance to research his assertions. Without this basic info, we're left simply with Mr. Bell's statements about thus and such. Now, this isn't typical "scholarly" writing -- but then, Art Bell isn't trying to be a scholar....he's just presenting unusual information and his beliefs about it. (Personal opinion is appropriate material for books, so it is not legitimate to criticise Mr. Bell for having an opinion. You only have to be willing to let him express himself -- you don't even have to agree.) At the same time, without source support it's pretty hard to take some of the more outlandish stuff seriously...and, by extension, the whole book starts to look silly. So, the book actually becomes a means of testing your own credibility/flexibility/open-mindedness, and your willingness to just "let the guy talk". Anyway, it's kinda fun to speculate....

While The Coming Global Superstorm is a book of researched fiction, this is a work of researched facts. Here, Art Bell analyzes the overall acceleration that the world has been experiencing, and where it might take us. He clearly shows why in this age, there exists the possibilities of more plagues on Earth. He ponders the threat and reality of nuclear terrorism. He presents the reality of a one-world government through globalism. He discusses our constantly changing weather patterns and what could develop from them. And he shows how technology is changing to further empower individuals, corporations, and nations to accomplish more than they have ever been able to before --- and where this could all lead us. The title of the book suggests that we are "going somewhere fast," and the author used to constantly refer to that concept on his former radio program Coast to Coast AM. He qualified his statement each time by saying that he didn't know where we were going, but that, in fact, we were going. This book will explain what he meant.

This book proves that Art Bell's talent is as an interviewer, not as an author or authority in anything. There's nothing in this book that you wouldn't find by reading the newspaper for a week!

This book is written like a newspaper and reads like one. Quite frankly, I appreciate his efforts at dumbing it down to a level anyone could enjoy. I didn't buy this book to read scientific research or statistics. I bought this book for Art Bell's unique outlook on life and that which is going on all around us. It's a light read that just begins to make you think about what's wrong with our society. The solutions to the problems of the world, as Art Bell sees them, are left up to the reader. Thank you for that, Art. I believe one problem with America today is that nobody searches for the answers to lifes mysteries. We expect everything and try our hardest to use as little of our precious junk food energy reserves to get it. Thanks again, Art, for a very interesting book. Keep up the good work!

This book desreves zero stars, but we gave it one star because there is no lower rating. Our metaphysical reading group at Pages for All Ages Bookstore in Champaign, IL, concluded this book a complete waste of paper and ink. Art Bell has a fun radio program, but his editors have created an awful book. This is a book of NO answers. Does Art Bell have an opinion on anything? We couldn't find one. But the book does manage to reflect some paranoid, superstitious position of the most murky kind.

The greatest disappointment of this book was the tone of it, as if impending danger lurks around every corner and we as a species are doomed. If the man had offered one answer it might have been different, but the whole book was a collasal bummer, even for our acutely optimistic reading group. Book readers everywhere, avoid this piece of tripe at all costs!