The Perception Experiment

Jason Glover
Thirdeye Publications (2007)
ISBN 0979098122
Reviewed by Tyler R. Tichelaar for Reader Views (6/07)

Jason Glover’s “The Perception Experiment” is a thoughtful, philosophical yet entertaining tale of what goes wrong when a young Christian man begins to have doubts about his religion and God’s goodness.

The reader is first given a warning that: “to read further is to commit yourself to the cause of enlightenment, even if the results are unpleasant. Choose wisely.” The text itself actually purports to be a chronicle left behind after the apocalyptic events of a war against God.

The novel begins with a young Christian man who lives in a perfect society where everyone loves God and works to build a good Christian community. He seeks to be perfect in the holy life God expects from him. However, he becomes troubled when he starts to hear voices, and then begins to hallucinate and see strange images, many of which are sexual or just against his Christian mindset. He cannot understand what is wrong with him, so he prays to God for help, but when help is not forthcoming, he begins to doubt his faith in God’s existence and in God’s goodness and concern for humanity.

The plot moves along when the main character misses church one morning and the church members come to his house. He tries to avoid them, finally realizing they are trying to control his mind, or that God is controlling all their minds. When he decides he will not return to the mind-controlled church but be a free human being, he comes into contact with some exotic characters who tell him God is controlling everyone and that it is their mission to destroy God. These characters bring him to meet Satan, who informs him he has been chosen to be the Anti-Christ who will bring about God’s destruction. This situation leaves the main character with many questions before he is able to decide whether he will join the conspiracy against God.

Christian readers may find the book offensive, unless they can suspend their religious beliefs just to enjoy the plot twists and remember the book is fiction. If people do find the concept of “The Perception Experiment” offensive, the narrator would suggest they ask themselves if they too have been brainwashed by religion. Jason Glover raises many interesting questions about God’s nature and His selfishness to create humanity simply so they will worship him. “The Perception Experiment” even suggests Satan was created by God so people would be loyal to Him, seeking His protection. In the novel Satan is unaware how much he is merely God’s tool. Glover’s knowledge of the Book of Revelation is incorporated into his apocalyptic novel, and the novel also relies heavily upon the science-fiction genre and modern technology for its plot devices.

Jason Glover has written a very thoughtful and intriguing novel, especially since he is only 24. In a few places, my mind wandered during the less concrete scenes of hallucinations and mental confusion the narrator suffered, which sometimes made me wish the plot would move along, but I enjoyed the overall concept of “The Perception Experiment,” and expect even greater achievements from Glover’s pen. Until Glover publishes another novel, fans may enjoy visiting his website where they can find out more about how to become a prophet and end mental slavery.

 

Reviewed by John Cartwright for Reader Views (5/07)

I knew I was in trouble with this book the minute I noticed the number of “I”s and “me”s per page. It was one of those patterns that jump out like noticing the “uh’s” in a politician’s speech or a guest on a TV show saying “ya know” every other phrase. All of these are indications of a peculiar thought pattern that requires time for the mouth to catch up with the brain. In this case, “The Perception Experiment,” by Jason Glover, the reader is subjected to a litany of issues of faith of the narrator, none of which is original or, worse, dealt with in a fashion that even approximates a genuine questioning. After three or four pages, we can readily see that the trial of faith the author would have us believe he is wrestling with was decided way before he typed the first word of the novel. This is theoretically a dystopic novel, but real dystopia has a surface sense to it, a reassuring order that makes one, at first, wonder if it might not be so bad after all, as in Atwood’s “The Hand Maid’s Tale” or “Huxley’s Brave New World.” The real horror of dystopia is not in the loss of individuality but in the idea that perhaps that’s not so bad; ask Karl Marx. The dystopia of this novel, however, seems oppressive and ineffective from the git-go, as they say.

I try not to be put-off by spelling and typos, not because I think they are permissible, but because in this age of Spell-Check and other non-human devices that replace intellect and care, so many errors make it through even large publishing houses. Small ones should differentiate themselves from the large pack and produce flawless works the way one might expect a master watchmaker to produce a better watch than Timex because, if you’ll pardon the pun, he has more time to do it right. On page 20 of the current, tome, for example, the word “stationary” appears when the author means “stationery.” This should make the reader wonder, and it did, what care went into the crafting of the text itself. The author states, “Even God must have motives, because I know God must have a plan. So what was God’s plan when He created me?” I certainly don’t know, but a host of major authors has dealt with this in a much more painstaking and less emotive way, from St. Augustine in “The City of God” to Jim Crace in “Quarantine.” There is a sense of shouting in this novel or, in a more modern way of defining it, this novel is a rant. The narrator is inexplicably and unrelentingly angry, frustrated and full of the type of self-importance that Maugham so beautifully crafted in “The End of the Affair” without a reversion to what my creative writing teacher in college called “purple prose” of which this novel is rife. I believe that the author intended this novel to be a sort of mirror to “The Book of Revelations” in the “New Testament.” In the final chapters there are all sorts of devils, demons, dragons, monsters and a host of characters that we saw in Blatty’s “The Exorcist.” What the author fails to do, however, is to take the “vision” of John and translate it into modern terms even though that is what he tells us in the promo material on the front free endpaper.

I suppose I have trouble with the title, “The Perception Experiment,” because I’m not sure that I’m getting the point of the “experiment.” Maybe I’m not capable of what he calls “perception.” Perhaps the reader is a lab rat and his perceptions are being toyed with to prove a point, to do an experiment. I volunteered in grad school for some Psych department experiments. But it was nothing like this. I don’t mind being preached to and this novel does a lot of that. But I do mind being shouted at for endless hours and this novel does that a lot, too. On the other hand, perhaps that is the author’s point: how much can you stand before you throw this book in the trash? To quote the author, “End transmission.”

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