Mutants and Mystics Quotes

“We are all future butterflies who think, wrongly, that we are just slugs. And we are evolving, whether we admit it or not, into something else. Something with wings.”
― Jeffrey J. Kripal, Mutants and Mystics: Science Fiction, Superhero Comics, and the Paranormal

“Shaver’s worldview was a deeply paranoid one in which pretty much everything of importance was traced back to evil deros and sinister machines in the hollow earth. He did not believe in God, an afterlife, a spiritual world, or paranormal powers: all such htings were the purely physical and totally illusory effects of the ray machines of the deros. We have all been duped, and we are constantly being zapped in our dreams, diseases, and disasters. “The unseen world beneath our feet, malignant and horrible, is complete in its mastery of Earth,” he declared with not a doubt or qualification in sight. So, too, there is no such thing as astral travel or spirits. The spirits seen in séances are in fact projections of the machines controlled again by entirely physical creatures seething and scheming below us. Like other hollow earthers before him, Richard Shaver was what Palmer called “an extreme materialist.” He knew nothing of the psychology of projection, and he seemed completely incapable of thinking symbolically or metaphorically, which I take as a fairly clear symptom of whatever psychological condition he suffered.”
― Jeffrey J. Kripal, Mutants and Mystics: Science Fiction, Superhero Comics, and the Paranormal

“I cannot say that truth is stranger than fiction, because I have never had acquaintance with either,”
― Jeffrey J. Kripal, Mutants & Mystics: Science Fiction, Superhero Comics, and the Paranormal

“THAT’S WHAT SF IS ALL ABOUT. IF YOU WISH TO YIELD TO REALITY, GO READ PHILIP ROTH; READ THE NEW YORK LITERARY ESTABLISHMENT MAINSTREAM BESTSELLING WRITERS. . . . THIS IS WHY I LOVE SF. I LOVE TO READ IT; I LOVE TO WRITE IT. THE SF WRITER SEES NOT JUST POSSIBILITIES BUT WILD POSSIBILITIES. IT’S NOT JUST, “WHAT IF—.” IT’S “MY GOD; WHAT IF—.” IN FRENZY AND HYSTERIA. THE MARTIANS ARE ALWAYS COMING.”
― Jeffrey J. Kripal, Mutants & Mystics: Science Fiction, Superhero Comics, and the Paranormal