Staretz Encounter: A New Age Thriller (Paperback)

~ Marc J. Seifer (Author)
Key Phrases: psionic research, parapsychological community, negative psi, Staretz Encounter, Madam Grotchka, Eurasian Parapsychology (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

An espionage thriller, (a la Tom Clancy).... you write with great intelligence and authority . -- Nicolette Phillips, New Vision

I couldn't take myself away from it. I wanted to see what happened next. -- David Kraueter, author of Radio and Television Pioneers

Product Description

Delving into the labyrinthine quagmire known as the paranormal, Staretz Encounter is the story about news reporter, Rudy Styne, from New York City, and his Eurasian counterpart, Dr. Imo Bern, a neuroscientist from a secret parapsychology laboratory in Siberia. The Soviet Union has collapsed, Eurasia is in turmoil. A right-wing extremist, Petar Bonzovalivitch, has come to the fore. Marshalling a cadre of psionic soldiers whose brains have been rewired, Bonzovalivitch launches a clandestine operation to topple the West and restore the empire that was once Russia. His head of psi-ops is black magician Dr. Georgi Boshtov, ex-KGB agent and grand-nephew of Gregori Rasputin. Their target for capture is Egyptian superpsychic Abdullah Manu.

A controversial celebrity, Manu's psychic feats have splintered the scientific community. From the point of the view of the media, Manu is passed off as a charlatan, and the parapsychologists who study him, like NYU physics professor Jay Ketchembach, are billed as pseudoscientists.

Rudy Styne, reporter for Modern Times, wakes up one morning to a foreboding dream which comes true later in the day. Having never had a psychic experience before, the reporter decides to research the topic for an article for the magazine. At the same time, he also begins to uncover Petar Bonzovalivitch's nefarious plan and also interview Professor Ketchembach and Abdullah Manu. Eventually, Rudy and his girlfriend, Chessie Barnsworth, meet up with heartsick scientist, Imo Bern, at an international conference on psychotronics. Bern, who was performing the brain operations necessary for the creation of the legion of human cyborgs, tries to defect and pass his knowledge to the West as Rudy attempts to persuade an all too skeptical news community that Bonzovalivitch is more than an outrageous buffoon.

As the story progresses, Rudy visits psychic researchers and an avatar in search for ultimate truths, only to return to New York to find his local guru, Professor Ketchembach, murdered. Georgi Boshtov and his cybernetic goon squad are on the loose. They kidnap Chessie and also capture Rudy and Abdullah Manu. The climax pits superpsychic Abdullah Manu against the evil occultist Georgi Boshtov in an allogorical battle which recapitulates the eternal struggle between light and dark forces for control of the planet.

In the genre of the Stephen King novels and such movies, television shows and books as The 6th Sense, Martrix, The Green Mile, Powder, The Fury, Lawnmower Man, X-Files, X-Men, The Exorcist and Celestine Prophecy, STARETZ ENCOUNTER is a New Age trek through a paradigm-shifting world where telepathy and telekinesis are more than arcane possibilities.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 464 pages
• Publisher: AuthorHouse (October 6, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1410768244
• ISBN-13: 978-1410768247
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 5.9 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #2,129,422 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Very Worthwhile Ride, January 4, 2005

By	Lilly - See all my reviews

Because I learned so much from Seiferšs 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 couldnšt 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 Seiferšs 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. Stynešs 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 Stynešs 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.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Message from the Author, October 21, 2003

By	Marc Seifer "Author" (Narragansett, RI) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Staretz Encounter: A New Age Thriller (Hardcover)

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