Blogspot Review of ITLAD and "The Daemon"

You may be interested to know that I have received (as far as I am aware) my first BLOGGER review of my books. This can be found at http://pelicanist.blogspot.com/2009/09/round-in-circles.html.

It is an interesting review and I am honoured that John Rimmer has taken time to not only read my work, but also to spend an amount of time putting together the review.

Some of his comments imply that he has failed to grasp many of the subtlities of ITLAD, but this is not unusual. Indeed his questions have been raised (and answered) many, many, times, on my FORUM.... specifically the accusation of solipsism.

I was also intrigued as to why he feels that my science is "old hat" He writes:

"The reader who gets this book looking for the latest evidence from psychical research, some new amazing scientific breakthrough will be sorely disappointed, for this book is really just an amalgam of poorly understood, often very 1970s pop science and philosophical musings."

In my posession I have literally dozens of books written in the last four or five or years that support the concepts I discuss in my books. For example Rosemblum and Kuttner's Quantum Enigma (2006), Michio Kaku's Parallel Worlds (2005) and Marcus Chown's magnificent book The Never-Ending Days of Being Dead . Each one of these writers are at the leading edge of their profession as physicists .... all with doctorates and professorships. Why John feels that this is "1970's pop science" is somewhat of a mystery to me.

I cannot also give a wry smile that John feels that my writing does not explain any Fortean events (by implication I must say rather than be outright statement) because the founder editor of the ultimate Fortean magazine, Fortean Times does not agree with him. Bob Rickard gave the Daemon nine out of ten and waxed lyrical about how refreshing the book's central concept was. An added smile crosses my face regarding the excellent reviews of both my books in The Journal of the Society for Psychical Research. Again this implies that the SPR do feel that my hypothesis has merit.

I do not feel that an author should challenge a review of his work, and after all I still stress that John has given me the honour of reviewing my work in the first place. I suggest that maybe some of my readers, and members of this BLOGSITE may be motivated to comment (in a positive and constructive way, please) in response to this comment by John:

"One wonders what sort of person could be attracted to Peake's philosophy, presumably someone who has had a fairly cushy life, which they would love to rerun with just a few minor changes here and there, and little empathy or regard for other people less fortunate than oneself."

I suspect (hope?) that John may be more open to my ideas than first seems ... after all, somebody who calls his blog site "Magonia" should appreciate that the reality we perceive is not quite as it seems (I presume this "Magonia" is taken from Jacques Valee's wonderful book A Passport to Magonia - a well thumbed 41 year old copy of which has pride of place on my bookcase).