Whitley Strieber

Early life

Whitley Strieber was born in San Antonio, Texas, the son of Karl Strieber, a well-to-do lawyer, and Mary Drought Strieber. He was educated at the University of Texas at Austin and the London School of Film Technique, graduating from both in 1968. He then worked for several different advertising firms in New York City, rising to the level of vice president before quitting in 1977 to become a free-lance writer.

Fiction

Strieber began his career as a novelist with the horror classics The Wolfen (1978) and The Hunger (1981), both of which were later made into movies, followed by the less successful horror novels Black Magic (1982) and The Night Church (1983).

He then turned to more serious speculative fiction. He wrote Warday (1984), a New York Times bestseller about the dangers of limited nuclear war, and Nature's End (1986), a prophetic novel about environmental apocalypse, both in collaboration with longtime friend James Kunetka. He is also the author Wolf of Shadows (1985), a young adult novel about nuclear winter.

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, Strieber, is the sole author of Catmagic. Strieber's personal publishing company, Walker & Collier, is named after two of the 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).

In recent years he returned to the vampire saga that began with The Hunger, adding The Last Vampire (2001) and Lilith's Dream (2002) to the storyline.

Communion and the visitors

On December 26, 1985, Strieber reportedly had an experience in which he thought he was abducted from his cabin in upstate New York by non-human beings of some kind. He wrote about these experiences in his first non-fiction book, the best-selling Communion (1987). Communion is generally interpreted as a claim of alien abduction, but Strieber says that he draws no firm conclusions about the nature or source of his experience. He refers to the beings as "the visitors," a name chosen to be as neutral as possible, and leaves open the possibility that they are not extraterrestrials and even that they exist only in his mind. He has repeatedly expressed his frustration with what he feels are fantastic claims incorrectly attributed to him.

Strieber went on to write three more books about his experiences with the visitors, Transformation (1988), Breakthrough (1995), and The Secret School (1996). Each was commercially less successful than the last, and all three are now out of print. Other visitor-themed books of Strieber's include Majestic (1989), a novel about the Roswell UFO incident; The Communion Letters (1997, reissued in 2003), a collection of letters from readers reporting experiences similar to Strieber's; and Confirmation (1998), a non-fiction book presenting purported evidence for the reality of UFOs and abductions. An upcoming novel, The Grays (2006), will convey his cumulative knowledge, experience, and impressions of alien contact through a fictional narrative.

Strieber wrote the screenplay for the 1989 movie Communion, directed by Philippe Mora and starring Christopher Walken as Whitley Strieber. The movie covers material from both Communion and Transformation and introduces some new themes not present in the books.

The Master of the Key

In the pre-dawn hours of June 6, 1998, Strieber was reportedly visited in his Toronto hotel room by a mysterious but apparently human man who delivered an unsolicited lecture covering various subjects from spirituality to the environment. The man gave no name, but Strieber 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 very different (not contradictory, but largely non-overlapping) accounts of what the man said. Strieber has mentioned his own misgivings about the truth of The Key, admitting the possibility that he made it all up. ^*

Before publishing The Key, Strieber co-authored The Coming Global Superstorm (1999), a book about the possibility of rapid and destructive climate change, with Art Bell. 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.

Personal

Whitley Strieber is a Roman Catholic and was formerly associated with the Gurdjieff Foundation. He left the Foundation shortly before the experiences reported in Communion, but remains interested in the mystical teachings of G. I. Gurdjieff and P. D. Ouspensky and makes frequent references to them in his non-fiction writings.

Strieber is married to Anne Strieber. They have a son, Andrew, who appears in Communion and Strieber's other close-encounter books.

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