Apparent Censorship of Whitley Strieber's book, 'The Key'

Updated 9/5/2011

From The Old Edition of the Key was CENSORED, the New One is Not, dated May 15, 2011:

The file that I sent to the printer of the orginal edition and to Tarcher is dated November 16, 2000. It was generated by converting the a Word file into PageMaker using the conventional process, which certainly wouldn't have led to the changes that appeared in the book.

At some point prior to being printed, the file was edited by somebody other than me, and the edits resulted in crucially important changes. When I got the proofs back from the printer, they corresponded with the original, but when the book was actually printed, changes had been made.

Both here and in Jim Marr's 05/19/2011 Dreamland interview of Whitley (The Censorship of the Key), it is assumed that the changes between approval of the galleys and printing were effected by human agency. This seems highly improbable, for a number of reasons, each of which, when added together, diminishes the probability of human conspiracy or a lone human actor. Just finding someone with a deep understanding of the book's message and its implications for humanity, who could also be persuaded to pervert/dilute the message, would, in itself, I think, pose a very difficult challenge. (Still, improbable events do sometimes occur. This forms the basis for the concept of synchronicity, for example. I have heard many reports of 'miraculous' or spontaneous [i.e., highly improbable] healings, which would serve as another class of examples.)

As an alternative to the 'human actor' theory, might we consider a paranormal 'explanation'? I wrap 'explanation' in quotes because a hallmark of the paranormal is that it does not follow the normal rules or logic by which we hope to explain happenings in our world. This is exactly why we call certain events/phenomena 'paranormal'. For most people, then, a paranormal explanation is no explanation at all. However, if you have experienced enough events which appear intelligently orchestrated and which could not possibly have been caused by any human (or at least any human acting within the normally accepted range of human capabilities), then you are familiar with its modus operandi; and this event certainly [plugs right into | dovetails with] my experience of the paranormal. I wonder why this did not (apparently) occur to Whitley, considering his extensive paranormal experience. (His Dreamland shows contain numerous recountings of his strange experiences. For example, while comparing notes with Corina Saebels, he speaks, among other things, of streetlights routinely going out as he passes them and watches regularly failing soon after he dons them.) I suppose we could attribute this oversight to our natural reluctance to admit to paranormal intrusions into the tidy and comforting scenario into which we intend to cram the universe. With regard to this, consider Whitley's 05/28/2011 Dreamland discussion (toward the end of the interview) with Jeremy Vaeni about their close encounter experiences, in which Jeremy says (@54:32), "I didn't want it to be real." And, "So it's weird that you would then not want this to be real, but—as you know—you don't. For some reason, you don't."