41. The Philosopher's Stone by Colin Wilson

I was hesitant about picking this up, but the cover sucked me in.  I feared it was going to be a book with too much philosophical rambling.  My premonitions turned out to be correct.  Wilson even says as much in the intro, where he admits that the weak storyline is just a flimsy excuse for him to enlighten the world with his thoughts on perception and the power of the mind.  I am not going to say that this is a bad book.  I will say that it is definitely not my kind of book.

The story basically follows the life and scientific/intellectual journey of the protagonist, who develops an interest at a young age for deep studies of esoteric subjects. He gets mentored by a master in this field, who dies and leaves him half his estate, allowing him to devote his life to study.  At some point, he puts a tiny shard of special medal into his forehead that allows him to focus his mind.  He starts gaining psychic abilities and this allows him to explore and learn even more.  He soon discovers that there are some other being in existence who don't want to be found out. This leads him eventually to discover the history of Mu, the elder gods and Cthulu himself.  There is a fear they will destroy us but then when he discovers their true history, he realizes humans with his mind power could work with them, both species evolving together.  The end.

That's the story, except it takes up abou 40 of the 250 odd pages.  The rest is him rambling on about who really was Shakespeare, how are brains are under-powered and why everybody else is caught up in negative cycles and he isn't and on and on.  It's really a lot of goofy pseudo-science, some of which is kind of creative, but most which is just sort of thrown at the wall to see what sticks.  The ending where we finally learn the true history of man and our relation to the elder gods (and their history and ultimate downfall) is quite trippy and imaginative.  I would have enjoyed that part more had I not spent all week slogging through the rest of the wanking.