Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea. Blog, Internet resources, online reading groups, articles and interviews, Illuminatus! info.

Tuesday, February 28, 2017

More Email to the Universe news: New RAW interview


Graphic by Richard Rasa

As part of the publicity campaign for the new ebook edition of Email to the Universe, Hilaritas Press has published "Anna Livia Get Your Gun: 23 Questions for California’s Next Governor," an interview with Robert Anton Wilson by Eric Wagner, largely about RAW's campaign for California governor as the nominee of the Guns and Dope Party. It is excerpted from Eric's must-read book, An Insider's Guide to Robert Anton Wilson. 

Email to the Universe includes a section on the Guns and Dope Party, so the interview is a supplement for people who want more information. You also learn how Hilaritas Press got its name, and question 23 seems topical: "How do you think the U.S. government would respond to an attempt by California to secede from the U.S.A.?"

Monday, February 27, 2017

The new Email to the Universe ebook



Over the weekend, Hilaritas Press published the ebook version of Email to the Universe, an anthology of Robert Anton Wilson short pieces and his last book. A print version should follow shortly, and we'll announce that when it becomes available.

Hilaritas Press is the publishing imprint of the Robert Anton Wilson Trust; the rights to 19 of RAW's books have reverted to the estate, and Hilaritas is  republishing them in definitive editions. Email to the Universe follows the publication of Cosmic Trigger, Prometheus Rising and Quantum Psychology. Work also has advanced on the next book, Coincidance: A Head Test. 

From the RAW Trust Newsletter (sign up for it at the Hilaritas Press site):

With the addition of color graphics (and a couple of new graphics) and the fixing of typos and other errors from previous editions, this new edition features an Introduction that we feel the book has always needed. Email to the Universe presents an extraordinary collection of writings spanning 45 years of RAW's writing career. R. Michael Johnson gives us the back story behind the collection of this collection, along with a fine appreciation for the historical context and relevance RAW's writing has on the present. Michael, freelance writer, blogger, rock guitarist, and Robert Anton Wilson-ologist, was the founder of the Usenet group alt.fan.rawilson.

Writing a back cover blurb for this new edition of Email to the Universe was a bit of a challenge. RAW covers so many topics that giving a brief description of the book seems impossible. In addition, as Michael notes in his introduction, RAW was well aware that the form of a book conveys its own message. I guess you just have to read it to understand why it is one of Bob's most popular books, but to give you an idea of how difficult it is to classify this book, from his introduction, here's Michael's list of sumbunall of the book's topics . . .

Atheism, model agnosticism, quantum theory, the many problems of hard-core ideologues, androphobia, James Joyce, dreams and Carl Jung, Korzybski and neurosemantics, magick, Vico and “theotopology,” the subconscious mind and movies, psychedelic drugs and expanded perception, Nietzsche and self-perception, the labyrinthine enigmas and conspiracies involving a small church in the south of France and Vatican banking conspiracies and the Mafia, drug-dealing and modern European fascism; Philip K. Dick, anarchism and libertarian thought, Timothy Leary, Einstein, the erroneous perception of what’s commonly referred to as “normal,” multi-valued logics, alternative economic ideas, literary modernist figures, sexual magick, the occult and secret societies, and the poverty of Euclidean “Left-Right” framing in political thought.

Holy Chao!

* There's a new Afterword as well! We asked RAW's old friend, counter-culture icon Paul Krassner if we could include his essay "Keep the Lasagna Flying" as the Afterword for Email to the Universe. Paul enthusiastically agreed and rewrote a tiny bit of the piece for the occasion.

AND, thanks once again for a great cover from Scott (amoeba) McPherson!

A special enormous amount of gratitude goes to Gary Acord, husband, dad, computer programmer, Gaeilgeoir nua, and "just a fella that likes to help," who contributed greatly to the digital and editorial preparations for this new Hilaritas Press edition. And many thanks as well to Tom Jackson, of rawillumination, for his intrepid help in proofreading!


Sunday, February 26, 2017

Email to the Universe ebook released


The new ebook of Email to the Universe has just been released by Hilartitas Press. You can read about it at the Hilartas Press website.   I'll have a full report up early Monday. The print edition will be out soon.

New R.U. Sirius music video!

R.U. Sirius (Timothy Leary biographer, co-author of the last Timothy Leary book, author of Transcendence: The Disinformation Encyclopedia of Transhumanism and the Singularity,) Mondo 2000 founder etc. etc.) has a new music video out! The Management.





Full name of the artist: R.U. Sirius's Trippin' Coyotes/Creosote Cowboy
Ken Goffman aka R.U. Sirius.

Bandcamp streaming audio track and lyrics. 

Song: "Be My Valerie Solaris." (If you’ll be my Valerie Solanis /I will be your Robespierre
/Nothing can come between us /‘cept that thing underneath your hair)

Full album. 

Follow him on Twitter (as I do.)

Saturday, February 25, 2017

Val's 'Butterfly Language'



There's a big Internet out there. That's my story for why I haven't noticed the  Butterfly Language blog before. Sorry! But I did mention the author here, managing not to grasp she has a blog.

In the About section, blogger Val D’Orazio  mentions that Cosmic Trigger is one of her favorite books. "It is my intention to structure this blog more or less in the spirit and format of that 1977 book. This means: a bit of biography, a bit of pop-culture analysis…a bit of weirdness…a bit of philosophy, religion, politics, drama, speculation, more weirdness, and so on."

There are sections on books, comics, futurology, music, movies, philosophy,  popular culture, science, robots, technology, television and weirdness.

A recent entry noted that Bill Gates, Marc Cuban and Elon Musk had all warned recently that technology may bring massive unemployment. It's an issue Robert Anton Wilson raised many years ago, and which Charles Murray emphasizes in Murray's advocacy for a basic income.

Hat tip, Adrian Reynolds. I've add Butterfly Language to the Sangha section to make it easy to spot new posts. You can also follow Val on Twitter. 

Friday, February 24, 2017

New Eris of the Month


At Adam Gorightly's Historia Discordia blog (essential reading for the RAW fan, bookmark it or keep an eye on the "Sangha" section of this blog) a new Eris of the Month, from "Telthona." More information on the artist here.

Thursday, February 23, 2017

New book with RAW material [UPDATED]


Alex Burns

Book announcement for Personal Mythologists by Alex Burns:

In this intriguing book, Australian political scientist Alex Burns interviews premillennial subcultural icons and conducts New Journalism experiments.

The Personal Mythologists include Vali Myers, the Bohemian muse who created an artistic life; Peter Greenaway, the gifted and controversial film director; J.G. Ballard, the science fiction author who foresaw the Anthropocene; Noam Chomsky, the linguist and political scholar who campaigned for Timor-Leste’s freedom; Robert Anton Wilson, the guerrilla ontologist and target of internet rumours; Jack Sarfatti, the maverick quantum physicist whose time travel theories influenced popular Hollywood films, ethnobotanist Terence McKenna, who inspired fascination with the Mayan calendar, 2012, and virtual reality; Don Edward Beck and Chris Cowan, explorers of memes and human values systems; and Marshall T. Savage, who developed a long-term plan for humans to colonise space.

Personal Mythologists gives you an audience with the desires and dreams of creative geniuses.

I couldn't find the interview with Wilson on the Internet, so apparently this will be something not easily available. Unfortunately, I can't find any information yet on when the book will come out.

Source. Hat tip, Jesse Walker

UPDATE: When I couldn't find the book on Amazon (even on the Australia version), I asked Mr. Burns on Twitter when we should expect it. "Hopefully later this year once I finish writing and editing some new, reflective material."

Tuesday, February 21, 2017

Part Three of Oz' Crowley/Deleuze series






 Gilles Deleuze


Recording engineer Oz Fritz has posted part three of his series of articles on Aleister Crowley and Gilles Deleuze, "with special guest Robert Anton Wilson." RAW fans will be interested in how Oz applies RAW's teachings. Oz also offers a suggestion on which Crowley book to try first: " If someone only ever wanted to get one book by Crowley, I would recommend that be The Book of Lies.  It contains instruction on the entire system of alchemy presented by Crowley.  It's ideal for anyone who likes puns and riddles and doesn't mind having their beliefs challenged.  No blame if you don't like it because it's all lies anyway."


A couple of good sentences: "For many years, I searched in vain for the philosophical Rosetta stone that would put everything in place so that it all made sense.  Making a grand tour of all the great thinkers of human history seemingly lead nowhere - to a desolate, dry, god-forsaken mental landscape of despair and collapse. I was in mortal agony.  After coming across the intuitive voice of Hoor pa Kraat in the Thelemic material, a voice that is not a voice, rather a silencing of internal chatter, I realized that the source of my mental confusion had stemmed from the classic error of putting Descarte before the Horus. ... "

Monday, February 20, 2017

A thought to ponder




 Walt Whitman

[This is quoted as a "Thoughts to Ponder" in Robert Anton Wilson's Email to the Universe, which I am re-reading. The new Hilaritas Press edition will be out soon; more news on that as it becomes available. I was struck by how contemporary the Walt Whitman bit sounded. Source. The Management.]



To the States or any one of them, or any city of the States,
RESIST MUCH, OBEY LITTLE,

Once unquestioning obedience, once fully enslaved;
Once fully enslaved, no nation, state, city of this Earth, ever
afterward resumes its liberty.

— Walt Whitman

Sunday, February 19, 2017

Out of time?





 The Commodore 64, my first personal computer


I have sometimes wished that I had been born about 10 years later, so that I could have been a teenager during the 1980s, rather than the 1970s. It would have been interesting to be a teen during the early years of the PC and MTV, and I like 1980s New Wave pop music better than disco. It seems to me the main good thing about having to deal with eight track tapes and LPs when growing to love music in the 1970s is that I am old enough to appreciate the online/digital music revolution and how easy it has made it for me to have a huge collection of music at my fingerprints.

Which makes me wonder: Did RAW ever think he was born out of time? He loved modernist writers such as Joyce and Pound; did he ever wish he was a contemporary, or a least had followed more closely behind them? Although music technology would have been primitive, it seems to me he might have liked the musical culture better, too.


Saturday, February 18, 2017

'There is no president anywhere'






From Bobby Campbell


"There is no governor present anywhere"
Chuang Tzu
There is no governor anywhere; you are all absolutely free. There is no restraint that cannot be escaped. We are all absolutely free. If everybody could go into dhyana at will, nobody could be controlled — by fear of prison, by fear of whips or electroshock, by fear of death, even. All existing society is based on keeping those fears alive, to control the masses. Ten people who know would be more dangerous than a million armed anarchists.”

― Robert Anton Wilson,
Schrödinger's Cat 2: The Trick Top Hat

Friday, February 17, 2017

Alan Moore vs. Grant Morrison, a 'wizard's' perspective


Alan Moore

 A new article, "Two Of The Greatest Comic Book Writers Have Been In An Occult War For 25 Years," by "Urbanski," a self-described wizard, describes the ongoing feud between Alan Moore and Grant Morrison, the two famous comic book writers influenced by Robert Anton Wilson.

Urbanski says he himself is a "wizard," and that he brings a perspective to discussing the feud that other writers don't have:

So here's where we get to the part that most articles on the Moore/Morrison feud have missed. I'm a comics reader but probably not expert enough to really detail the history or quality of work other than at the 'fan' level. But I am an expert on occultism. And I can say this: the war between Moore and Morrison isn't just a "writers' fight", it's a "wizards' feud." It is two very different views on magick using comics as a medium to fire salvos at each other.

Thursday, February 16, 2017

Robert Anton Wilson on freedom of speech



[Certain recent political events and actions associated with them have revived debate about freedom of speech on social media, so I thought I would let Robert Anton Wilson weigh in.

This is from a letter published in issue No. 10 Robert Shea's zine, "No Governor." The full letter is here.  Wilson is responding to a defense of environmental radicals by Neal Wilgus in issues No. 9 and 10. All of the  issues of "No Governor" are available as PDFs here.  I obtained them from the University of Michigan in the earlier days of the blog— The Management.] 

I think Neal Wilgus has his head up his ass. With all his ifs and ands and buts and subordinate clauses and modifications, he still seems to be endorsing the idea that any "moralist" that thinks X's way of life is "immoral" has the right to come in and trash anything X owns, and I find that bloody damned terrifying. It only seems remotely akin to sanity if  you substitute some person or group you violently dislike for "X,"but put your own name in the place of the "X's " and read it again. See what you think then. If it doesn't work with "the NAACP" or "Bob Shea" or "the Credit Unions" in place of X, it seems a very dangerous idea, even if "Mobil Oil" or "the American Nazi Party" in place of X does not upset you immediately.

Civil liberties remain indivisible, and what can be done to Catholics or Mobil Oil today can be done to Protestants or nudists tomorrow. ("If they can take Hancock's wharf they can take your cow or my barn," as John Adams once said.) Since the majority always rejects the Bill of Rights whenever a sociologist tries the experiment by offering it for approval by a cross-section of the population, and since George Bush earned great enthusiasm for his attacks on the ACLU, I don't suppose Wilgus or most people will understand this point, but we libertarians  have to keep saying it over and over, every generation, and hope it will eventually register.

Maybe Wilgus thinks he knows who "is" "really" "immoral" and who isn't, and only supports vigilante action against the "really" "immoral"? I would congratulate him on having attained Papal Infallibility, except that I suspect he has only obtained the delusion of Papal Infallibility.

Wednesday, February 15, 2017

News roundup at Libertarian Institute



The Libertarian Institute, a relatively new outfit, has been posting a daily roundup of news from Kyle Anzalone that I have gotten into the habit of checking daily. There is a strong concentration on peace issues and civil liberties, but Mr. Anzalone also has a gift for finding news items that a libertarian would regard as particularly outrageous. Some recent examples:

• "Arizona officials are investigating a cosmetology student for giving free haircuts to homeless people without a license. [Link]"

• "A New Jersey police officer has been cleared of any wrongdoing after he shot an armed 76-year-old man. The elderly man was in his home when the officer entered the house after bring incorrectly sent to the address by dispatchers. The man believed the officer was a home invader and was holding a shotgun when the officer killed him. [Link]"

Tuesday, February 14, 2017

Email to the Universe has new introduction


Robert Anton Wilson and Michael Johnson, Feb. 18, 2003, in Wilson's apartment. 

The new edition of Email to the Universe currently being prepared for publication by Hilaritas Press and scheduled to be released soon has a nice bonus: A new introduction by Michael Johnson of Overweening Generalist fame.

If you are not familiar with the story of how Email to the Universe came to be assembled as Robert Anton Wilson's final book, see my interview with Michael.  RAW did not do a good job of keeping copies of his work. Michael Johnson and his helpers, such as Mike Gathers, did a heroic job of gathering up much of Wilson's uncollected material and making it available at the Robert Anton Wilson Fans site, which remains one of the best RAW sites on the Internet. Many of the best pieces posted there were included when Email to the Universe was assembled.

Richard Rasa, director at Hilaritas Press, says Johnson's piece is “the Intro we think the book always needed.” I have read it, too, and it's an excellent piece, a nice bonus for people who buy the book.

Monday, February 13, 2017

New John Higgs book out soon


John Higgs

One of my favorite authors, John Higgs, will have a new book out this summer. Watling Street: Travels Through Britain and Its Ever-Present Past is scheduled for release on July 13, according to the Amazon UK site.  "A journey along one of Britain's oldest and most enchanting roads, from Dover to Anglesey, in search of the hidden history that makes us who we are today." No cover shown, and I didn't seen anything on the U.S. Amazon site, but the British site helpfully says, "This item can be delivered to United States."

Meanwhile, Hilartitas Press is busy with new editions this year of Email to the Universe and Coincidance: A Head Test. More information about those titles will show up here as it becomes available.

Sunday, February 12, 2017

More on the new KLF book



A little bit more information has come out about 2023, the new book by "The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu," e.g. guerrilla ontologists The KLF.

A page by the publisher, Faber, reveals that the book is scheduled for release on August 23 this year and is subtitled, "A Trilogy." There is a pyramid on the cover. Faber's page to promote the book says,

Well we're back again,
They never kicked us out, 
twenty thousand years of 
SHOUT SHOUT SHOUT

Down through the epochs and out across the continents, generation upon generation of the Justified Ancients of Mu Mu have told variants of the same story - an end of days story, a final chapter story. But one with hope, even if the hope at times seems forlorn. 

The story contained in this trilogy is the latest telling. Here it is presented as a utopian costume drama, set in the near future, written in the recent past. 

Read with care 
REMEMBERED – TOLD – TRANSCRIBED 
for K 2 Plant Hire Ltd.

All of this certainly seems suggestive of the Illuminatus! trilogy, although the references seem to be lost on every press report I've seen about the book, such as this one from Jezebel. 

Hat tip, Rarebit Fiend.


Saturday, February 11, 2017

How the Johnson-Weld ticket affected Trump


Gary Johnson

This made me smile: Internal polling from the Libertarian ticket in the last election — Gary Johnson and William Weld — show that the campaign prevented Donald Trump from winning the popular vote. (The polling showed that 75 percent of the Johnson-Weld votes came from people who otherwise would have voted for Trump).  "Governor Weld said that Johnson-Weld internal polling showed that 75 percent of their voters would have voted for Donald Trump had they not been in the race. The Libertarian ticket received nearly 4.5 million total votes in the election. It makes logical sense that three fourths of these voters, drawn to a ticket of former, successful two-term Republican Governors, would be more attracted to limited government advocates promising change from the last eight years. In addition, they saw absolutely no appetite amongst their limited government voters to support the Clinton-Kaine ticket."

Via Jake Shannon at Discordian Libertarians on Facebook. 

Friday, February 10, 2017

More UBI debate


Ed Dolan

Two libertarian economists have been going back and forth on the Universal Basic Income idea, and I find the debate very interesting.

Bryan Caplan attacks the idea, Ed Dolan replies, then Caplan has a rejoinder,   then Dolan responds,  then Caplan again.  I hope this keeps going.

Thursday, February 9, 2017

Excellent Jesse Walker interview



While I usually try to keep up with Jesse Walker, I did not read the interesting recent interview with him on fake news and conspiracy theories until Michael Johnson called my attention to it. Jesse of course wrote a good book, The United States of Paranoia: A Conspiracy Theory, which has a chapter on Discordianism and what Robert Anton Wilson and his circle did in playing with conspiracy theories.

Jesse on Donald Trump and conspiracy theories:

Trump is unusual in that, while there is a long history of people in the executive branch who held conspiracy theories, he has a shamelessness and a cynicism to his conspiracy rhetoric that’s not there with others. In general, in America nowadays, if a conspiracy theory is embraced by the mainstream, people don’t call it a conspiracy theory. There’s a taboo around a lot of the topics. Donald Trump likes to present himself as a man unshackled by the mores of society, such as the one that says you don’t casually suggest that your opponent’s father might be mixed up with the Kennedy assassination, as he did with Ted Cruz.


Wednesday, February 8, 2017

PQ on Finnegans Wake, Brigid and Joyce's language



I am a few days late in mentioning this, but you James Joyce fans out there ought to read PQ's "Happy Birthday to James Joyce! (& The Feast of St. Brigit)" post about Finnegans Wake.

I really need to tackle Finnegans Wake, although I am thinking of re-reading Ulysses first.

Monday, February 6, 2017

Scott Apel on Robert Anton Wilson

This is one of the longer interviews I  have published on this website, and probably one of the most interesting. D. Scott Apel was a longtime friend of Robert Anton Wilson, and collaborated on Wilson's newsletter, "Trajectories," and published Wilson's book, Chaos and Beyond. 

Apel is a writer and film critic. He is worried about his privacy, as you can see from the first question and answer, so I'm not going to publish where he lives or run a photograph of him. But although he may be reticent in talking about himself, as you can see, he opened up when I tracked him down and asked about Robert Anton Wilson. I hope you enjoy the interview. — The Management



RAWILLUMINATION.NET: Can you tell my readers a little bit about yourself?

SCOTT APEL: I could, but I won't. I value my privacy and am perhaps the only Buddhist you'll ever meet who simply hates people. (Some alarmists are predicting the imminent extinction of Humanity; my response is that might not be the worst thing that could happen.) Following in the footsteps of J.D. Salinger and Thomas Pynchon, my goal in retirement is to read, write, and be left alone. If only I could convince my wife that that's a viable lifestyle!

RAWILLUMINATION.NET: How did you meet Robert Anton Wilson, and how did he become your friend? 

SCOTT APEL: I read the Illuminatus! trilogy in 1975, and urged my friend Kevin C. Briggs to do the same. We determined that we simply had to meet this Wilson guy, and get the inside scoop on the mysterious and mythical "missing chapters." We thought that given the amount of esoteric data included in the novel, the excised material must be even more revelatory. Through a series of coincidences or synchronicities, I came across RAW's phone number in January 1976. I called him and asked if we could come up and discuss the missing material. He invited us to his Monday night "salon," where he hosted a loose group of Berkeley scholars, students, hippies and avant garde for wide-ranging conversation and the sharing of information, opinions, insights and, of course, the chronic. When I commented one evening that we were going to miss "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman" because it took an hour to drive home to Silicon Valley, he and Arlen invited us to stay and watch with them. That was the beginning of our personal relationship, which quickly expanded into dinners out, dinners in, movies, and even a memorable May Day picnic with the Wiccans in Stern Grove.

Bob was always hesitant about personal relationships — not paranoia, just a certain standoffishness to protect himself psychologically. He was often approached by weirdoes, and wanted to make sure he and his family were safe. So even though we spent a lot of time together, it took a long, long time before I could claim him as a "friend." Even though I spent an evening with him, or him and Arlen, or him and Arlen and others, literally once a week, on and off, for decades, it wasn't until the '90s that I began to consider him a "friend." We spent about a decade in a master/intern relationship, then about a decade in a business partner relationship, then about a decade as friends. But we never once had a cross word. And considering that he had a tendency to just cut people off who disagreed with him, I was, I believe, his longest-term friend, a claim of which I am very proud.



RAWILLUMINATION.NET: How did Trajectories begin, and how did you and Wilson divide up the work for the publication? 


SCOTT APEL: I knew Bob was always hurting for money, so I determined to find some way to make him some money. Sometime in 1987, I drove Bob and Arlen down to the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California, where Bob was doing a weekend workshop. We sat around in the natural splendor of Big Sur and I pitched him the idea of a newsletter. I knew he'd had one over a decade earlier, and pointed out that desktop publishing could make reviving it a profitable endeavor. We estimated his hardcore worldwide fan base at about 5,000 people, and decided that if even 10 percent subscribed to a quarterly newsletter for $20 a year, we could turn a profit and supplement his income by nearly as much as the pitiful advances he was getting for his books. He was interested, and Arlen was enthusiastic. We cobbled out the details, which boiled down to the three of us being the "board of directors," and splitting profits 3 ways. That way, the Wilsons would get two-thirds of the profit, which was fine with me. The division of labor was very simple: Bob would supply the content, and I'd do everything else — editing, formatting, printing, mailing, banking, etc. Bob would hand over a floppy disk with the contents, I'd lay out the newsletter and run a sample by him and Arlen, then we'd print it and ship it. One of Bob's other job functions was to take flyers to every lecture to spread the word about the newsletter. He named it Trajectories, after his previous newsletter, and later added the subtitle "The Journal of Futurism and Heresy."


The first issue of Trajectories, which was only 12 pages, is dated “Summer, 1988,” altho we worked on the details for months before its release. After refining the concept with Bob, in my editorial I stated that the newsletter was dedicated to “sane futurism,” and was “for people more interested in creating the future than in worrying about it.” The issue featured an interview with Dr. Linus Pauling. Bob was not able to perform the interview and asked me to do it in his place. He had three questions he wanted Dr. Pauling to address, and I had a few myself. It was my pleasure — and honor — to perform the interview. Dr. Pauling, in his ‘80s at the time, proved to be a genial and gracious host, as well as a wealth of intelligence.

(Material you might not want to use, because you’re writing about Bob and not me, include that Dr. Pauling suggested I take 5,000 mg of Vitamin C a day, which I’ve done now for nearly 30 years. When my own doctor asked during one checkup why I was taking so much Vitamin C, I said, “Because Linus Pauling told me to.” He couldn’t argue with a reference like that. I also got Dr. Pauling to autograph a bottle of Vitamin C, which I still have. “No one’s ever asked me to autograph a bottle of Vitamin C,” he said, eyeing me suspiciously. I just smiled and said something like, “Well, you’re never too old to experience something new.”)

This first issue also included Bob’s take on some science news items, a poem by Arlen, and a few ads from RAW-oriented vendors, including the Church of the Subgenius and audio and videotapes from Sound Photosynthesis. All of these items would become staples of the newsletter.

Issue #2 is dated “Autumn 1988” and ran 16 pages — and was stapled! It featured an original piece by Dr. Timothy Leary, an interview with science fiction author Norman Spinrad, and a letters column including feedback from physicist Nick Herbert, author Tom Robbins, and psychiatrist Robert Newport.

Issue #3 (“Back to the Future – Special Futurism Issue”) featured a RAW article, “The Future of the Future,” and a piece by me about Walt Disney as a forgotten futurist – along with the usual features, like a poem by Arlen. Issue #6 was the first to include Bob's subtitle: "The Journal of Futurism and Heresy."

And so on. Over the next few years, thanks to Bob’s celebrity friends, Trajectories would publish original pieces by Dr. Leary, Barbara Marx Hubbard, Peter Russell, and other counter-culture celebs. Bob wrote extensively about the history of Gaia, about experiencing virtual reality (in 1990!), about jury nullification, and about a plethora of other subjects (like book reviews, and — at my insistence — his Top Ten Movies list). The best of the first ten issues of Trajectories was collected in a book we published through my Permanent Press, Chaos and Beyond: The Best of Trajectories.

Our typical production process was that Bob would collect news items he felt worthy of commenting on, and would write one or two major articles for each issue. When I (gently) reminded him of our production schedule, he’d hand me a floppy disk (we both used Macs) a week or two later containing his contributions. I’d format them, lay out the next issue, and fill the gaps with my own material (an editorial, or an occasional humor piece) and ads from our friends and supporters, like Magical Blend magazine. The rest of my involvement is totally boring — production and business details. I’d deal with a printer,for instance, schlep boxes of finished product back to my house, and spend a day or two printing out mailing labels, stuffing issues into envelopes, and organizing the bulk mailing according to the Post Office’s bizarre, labyrinthine and arcane requirements. (I guess I was absent on Career Day when they informed kids that being a publisher often involved an enormous amount of heavy lifting.)

Regarding Bob's contributions: One of the highest compliments I’ve ever received was from my editor at the San Jose Mercury News, where I was the video columnist and wrote monthly feature articles for over a decade. He once told me that my writing rarely needed editing, since “your stuff comes in clean.” As a writer, Bob was a total professional, and his “stuff” always came in clean. I rarely had to edit his material, except to fix a typo or correct the occasional misspelled word. I never cut his material and never altered it. Not only was there no need, but Trajectories was his forum, and I wanted to make sure he knew that he had the freedom to say whatever he wanted, in whatever way he wanted, and that I would publish it exactly as he intended. It was his one forum without censorship, and I’m proud that I was able to provide him with that platform.

Sometime in 1992, for reasons lost to memory, we were having trouble pulling together the next issue. I suggested to Bob that since his fans — the most hardcore of which were Trajectories subscribers — were clearly flexible and open to new experiences, there was no need to restrict ourselves to a print edition. I’d done my “due diligence,” and discovered that it was no more expense to duplicate and mail an audiotape than it was to publish a print edition. (Keep in mind this is 1992, when the Sony Walkman was widely in use, and audio cassettes were king — CDs were only just beginning to gain popularity, and this was nearly a decade before the digital notion of “podcasts” was invented.) Bob readily agreed, and we recorded Trajectories #11 (later offered as “An Hour With Robert Anton Wilson”). I further suggested we produce every other issue as an audio issue, and Bob was enthusiastic — it meant far less work for him (but, unfortunately, not for me). On one occasion, I brought him a CD of sound effects that I thought we might integrate into the audio editions. This resulted in one of the most unusual and controversial audio issues of Trajectories, as Bob decided to fill the first 15 minutes of the tape with nothing more than the sound of people laughing. I was a bit confused at this, until I realized he was illustrating his own philosophy by subverting people's expectations that the audiotape would be an hour of him talking — instead, he virtually rubbed their noses in “laughter yoga” (which came to public attention in the early ‘90s, so RAW can legitimately claim to be an originator of this practice, or at least an early proponent). To this day, I can’t listen to that recording without at some point laughing along—not only at the sound of laughter on the recording, but at Bob’s chutzpah, and the absurdity of his decision.

Trajectories ran something like 23 issues. (I’ll maintain that it ran 23 issues, just to fulfill the ubiquitous Wilsonian “23” mythology.) We produced it on an irregular basis until RAW was just too busy with more important issues, like being the primary caregiver to Arlen. He simply had no time for Trajectories anymore. But during its run, we published some great stuff by Bob, much of it included in the book Chaos and Beyond: The Best of Trajectories, which we published through my small press, The Permanent Press, in 1994.

Issue #14, dated Spring 1995, included an excerpt from RAW’s then-upcoming book Cosmic Trigger 3: My Life After Death, as well as something that is a real collector’s item: the first four chapters of a sequel to Illuminatus!, tentatively titled Bride of Illuminatus. Even though his original Illuminatus! co-writer, Robert Shea, was not involved in the project, Bob lost interest in this work after Shea died in March of ’94 (Chaos and Beyond is dedicated to him), and to the best of my knowledge, these few chapters are the only portion of this novel to survive.

One of the final issues of Trajectories was a videotaped interview of RAW that we produced as an episode of a public access cable TV program a friend of mine had been running for 16 years. With Bob’s blessing, I took the original video, had a new intro and new credits added, and shipped it out as an issue of Trajectories, assuming that few Wilson fans had seen the local Silicon Valley broadcast, but that it would be of interest to them. That taping is memorable in my mind. I wanted to provide Bob with a great experience, and rented a luxury car, picked him and Arlen up in Capitola and drove them to the studio, then took them to dinner at Red Lobster afterwards. (Bob and Arlen loved Red Lobster. When they lived on Brommer St. in Capitola in the early ‘90s, they lived within walking distance of a Red Lobster in the Capitola Mall, and dined there at least once a week. In the final years of his life, when Cathy and I spent every Saturday night with Bob, the SOP was to stop at a Red Lobster in San Jose and order up several carry-out meals for him on our way to Capitola. We became close with the manager who took our order, and when she found out the food was for Robert Anton Wilson, we discovered she was a fan and started adding extra food to our take-out order, free of charge. Bob inspired that kind of love and generosity.) In the years since then, Cathy and I have always referred to the chain as “Red Bobster.” Clips from this interview were included in Lance Bauscher's documentary, Maybe Logic.

Something that might be of interest to you (or not; your call) are the projects RAW and I discussed but never got around to accomplishing. I wanted to stage the existing chapters of Bride of the Illuminati as a kind of “radio play,” for instance, getting some of my actor friends to perform the dialog and narration, and releasing the result as an audio recording — one step beyond the standard “audio book.” But once Bob lost interest in the novel, he wasn’t interested in doing anything with it, and gave the project a “thumbs down.” Another project hinged on the idea that the Wilsons lived only a couple miles from the famous Santa Cruz Beach & Boardwalk (where we would ultimately hold his “Meme-orial” in early 2007). I suggested that Bob write a lecture in which his ideas could be illustrated by the amusement park rides on the Boardwalk (the “reality tunnel” as a hall of mirrors, for instance), and then we’d videotape him delivering the lecture “on location.” Arlen nixed this idea, telling me in no uncertain terms that she would never allow me to put Bob on the roller coaster!

 One additional project did come to fruition, although not in the manner I’d imagined. Sometime around 1989 or 1990 I discovered a list of movies and TV show episodes available on video in which the copyright had expired, and so fell into the public domain. Essentially, this meant that anyone was free to do anything they wanted with these videos. There were enough of these public domain titles that several video companies (Kino Video, for one) were established solely to duplicate and sell them. Although most of these films were unknown old grade Z movies, there were a handful that were surprisingly recognizable. Frank Capra’s Christmas classic, It’s A Wonderful Life is perhaps the best-known title, but there were also a couple Orson Welles films and a couple Mickey Mouse cartoons, among many other treasures. I suggested to Bob that he write a script based on his ideas and philosophy, then we would comb through the list and chose scenes that illustrated these ideas, under his voiceover narration. Although we never moved forward on this project, he did write and in 1992 published Reality Is What You Can Get Away With: An Illustrated Screenplay, based on this idea. (As a text work, he could refer to scenes from copyrighted films for which we could never have legally obtained the rights to use clips, including King Kong, Betty Boop, Chinatown, The Maltese Falcon, and the Zapruder film. I was only mildly disappointed that he did not credit our original project with the inspiration for his book.)

Again, something you might be interested in, or not: We continued accepting subscriptions for Trajectories up until the final issue — which neither of us knew would be the final issue. So there might still be some irate subscribers out there who feel ripped off because they only got one or two issues for their $20 “4 issue” subscriptions. I’d like to assure them that every penny of their subscription money went to helping the Wilsons in their time of need — mostly providing for them during Arlen’s final months, at a time when Bob couldn’t work because he was caring for her full time. I never got a chance to explain to our subscriber base where their hard-earned dollars were going, but literally all money generated through my joint ventures with RAW went directly to him and Arlen. It was precious little, but I like to think it made some contribution to assisting a great artist in his hour of need — even if that’s not what our subscribers signed up for.

While on the topic of ideas that never came to fruition, I approached Bob one time about collecting the best of the numerous articles he’d written over the years for various men’s magazines that had long since gone out of business — magazines with titles like Jaguar, Cheetah,and Cavalier. (My actual first encounter with RAW was in 1974, when Briggs was so impressed by a story entitled “A Finger in My I” in one of these mags that he handed it to me to read. This was at least a year before Illuminatus! was published. We had no way then of knowing how close an association we’d soon have with the author of this mind-bending story.) I suggested to Bob that we could publish an anthology of this early work since the copyrights no doubt had expired with the magazines. But I was shocked when he told me he never kept copies of anything he’d written over the years. I was expecting he’d lead me to a file cabinet that we could turn into a treasure chest, but there was no filing cabinet — and no copies. Plan B was to “debrief” Bob about what he remembered publishing—when and where—and conscripting Trajectories subscribers to participate in a treasure hunt (not a scavenger hunt, you understand) for these old magazines and the lost Wilson writing — something that would be much easier to accomplish if the Internet had existed. Alas, this project, too, fell into the black hole of unfulfilled ideas.

At one point I suggested to Bob that we branch out to create a separate publishing company specifically for his work. We debated several imprint names and eventually settled on “Ho House,” with a picture of a fat laughing Buddha as the logo. I filed the paperwork so we could do business under this name, but it was soon after that that things sadly started to unravel (Arlen’s illness, our move from the Bay Area, and so on), and we were never able to launch his own small press publishing company.

When I think back on the Trajectories experience, I have nothing but fond memories. RAW was a perfect partner, and it always delighted me to write him a check every quarter for his share of the profits from the newsletter and the audio and videotapes we produced through The Permanent Press.

RAWILLUMINATION.NET:  I think "Chaos and Beyond" is an underrated book in the RAW  canon. Were you happy with the book? Are you disappointed it was allowed to go out of print?

SCOTT APEL: Collecting the best content from the first ten issues of Trajectories into a book was my idea, I’m proud to say, although RAW coined the title Chaos and Beyond. (Chaos theory was a hot topic in those days, and fit right into his reality tunnel.) Bob personally selected the material for this anthology and wrote 1994 updates to his articles when appropriate. As with the newsletter, I did all the design and production work on a Mac Quadra, arranged the printing, and so on, through my small press, The Permanent Press. We promoted the book through Trajectories and in several publications sympathetic to RAW’s work, such as Magical Blend magazine, and placed it in a number of specialty bookstores around the country. We split the copyright attribution, and Bob dedicated the book to Robert Shea, who’d passed away a year earlier.

 From the start we never considered this a “big” RAW work of the caliber of Illuminatus! or Cosmic Trigger, but it was a way to leverage existing material into a bit of extra cash for the Wilsons without extensive effort on their part. Chaos and Beyond was always aimed at hardcore Wilson fans rather than newbies, so we expected minor sales. The book was reprinted twice, however, with 1,000 copies in each printing, so it did better than either of us ever expected.

 I’m not sure Chaos and Beyond has much relevance anymore except perhaps to RAW “completists”; much of the material is contemporary to its time —1988-1994 —which is fine for a newsletter but feels dated by now. It’s not likely that anyone wants to read about California’s medfly problem, for example or reviews of “brain machines” now long obsolete. Bob even ended his Introduction by saying, “Needless to say, most of what you shall read here almost certainly will appear ridiculously old-fashioned in about five years” (i.e., 1999), so you can perhaps get some sense of how “ridiculously old-fashioned” the material might seem in 2017. The book served its purpose at the time, however, and does, I believe, contain some timeless material (Arlen’s poems, a couple pieces by Dr. Leary, Bob’s extensive “Future of the Future” essay and his Introduction, “How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Chaos”). Christina Pearson has expressed an interest in republishing Chaos and Beyond as an ebook, and I’ll be turning over all the copyrights to her whenever she’s ready for that.



RAWILLUMINATION.NET: If you don't want to tell me anything about yourself, do you want to tell me something about the late Kevin Briggs, your collaborator in the book of interviews with SF writers, including Robert Anton Wilson?

SCOTT APEL: Kevin C. Briggs (1952-2007) was a friend, collaborator and ex-roommate from our college days and a couple years after. Here’s a description of him I wrote in my mystery novel, The Uncertainty Principle?, in which he (and Bob and Arlen, and Phil Dick, among other people) appear as characters:

            “You!” a deep voice growled nearby. A barrel-chested guy in his late 20’s was striding toward me, glaring. His full beard was unkempt and his black hair tousled carelessly. In his rumpled tan corduroy suit and tiny cowboy boots, he looked like a satyr trying to pass as a salesman.

            “You must be the reporter,” he said, eyeing my pad and pen.

            Like tumblers opening a safe, that voice forced an impression into focus: Gypsy. The curly raven locks, the round face accentuated by round rosy cheeks, the dark eyes filled with larceny and suspicion... Yeah, you could put a gold earring on this guy and wander unchallenged through any Rom camp in the world. Right now, though, he looked worried. And more than a touch pissed off.

 Throughout my life I’ve been accused of being “polarizing,” but Briggs was the original polarizing character among our college crowd: people either loved him or hated him, and no one from either camp wanted to have anything to do with anyone from the other camp. If you weren’t a friend of Kevin’s, you simply weren’t worth any attention. He was brilliant, sarcastic, supremely confident, and intimidating to people who couldn’t stand being one-upped by someone who’d read everything and had an opinion about everything (and everyone). He was also a published poet and an excellent writer, mostly in a Hemingway style of simple, powerful prose. His one failing is that he never followed through with anything, including a couple novels he’d begun and which I read and encouraged him to continue.

We hung out with RAW for years, often with weekly visits. Highlights include a period when we read portions of Finnegans Wake out loud and discussed/analyzed them (which went on weekly for months, in about ’77 or ‘78), and accompanying Bob to Seattle for a 1978 New Year’s Eve day performance of the 12-hour production of Illuminatus! But over the years, as our situations and locations changed, and I lost touch with Briggs except through friends.



RAWILLUMINATION.NET: In your interview with RAW in Science Fiction: An Oral History, you state that The Illuminati Papers contains material cut from Illuminatus! Can you tell me your source for that statement? I've never seen that anywhere else.

SCOTT APEL: The answer is simple: RAW himself mentioned that The Illuminati Papers contains material cut from Illuminatus! He states in the interview that Dell wanted to cut the book down and he and Shea decided they'd rather have a truncated novel published than the full novel unpublished. It's pretty clear that "Papers" includes more than just this cut material (like some interviews with RAW, and articles he wrote for magazines like Oui), but he did rework some of the cut material and added it to Papers. (Several of the articles are attributed to Hagbard Celine or Simon Moon, for instance.) I can't give you a more specific reference, but he did verify this to me verbally on a couple occasions.

FYI, in November 1980 he autographed my copy of The Illuminati Papers thus: "To Scott — Avoid the poor house — Don't become a writer."

RAWILLUMINATION.NET: I liked the Red Lobster story. Can you tell me a little more about what Robert Anton Wilson liked to eat? I know he liked Chinese restaurants, but did he like "American Chinese" food, or the sort of Chinese restaurants that mostly attract Chinese diners? Did he particularly like lasagna?

SCOTT APEL: Well, I have to admit, this question made me LOL, and for several reasons. First, in all the years I’ve done interviews and been interviewed, no one has ever asked about food, and I must admit I never thought about asking a question like that. But you can tell so much about people by what they eat and like to eat! It’s a natural question to ask, but no one ever has asked it before in my interviewing experience. Kudos to you for being original!

When it came to food, Bob was never particularly picky. Early in our association, he seemed pleased when we showed up with KFC, for instance. Briggs and I used to say that the old joke about an Irish 7-course meal (a potato and a six-pack) applied to Bob. But this is not to imply that he was without taste — he knew a great meal from junk food, and preferred the former. But I can’t recall ever hearing him complain about food.

I know he loved Guinness and Jameson’s Irish whiskey, although I rarely saw him drink to excess (a couple examples below). And man, did he love coffee! Giant cans of Trader Joe’s French Roast were a constant fixture in his homes.

Bob loved going to restaurants (as do I), and over the years he had several favorites. I mentioned Red Lobster; when he and Arlen were living in Capitola, they were within walking distance of a RL in the Capitola Mall, and he told me they went at least once a week.

There was a time in the early ‘90s when their daughter Alex was spending a lot of time with them, and the four of us went to dinner regularly. I was always very fond of Alex, who had Bob’s brain and Arlen’s boldness (as well as her red hair). Bob once took us to a pricey dinner buffet at Chaminade, a resort and restaurant in the Santa Cruz area. When they started bringing out baking sheets of crushed ice and dozens of oysters on the half shell, I was convinced I’d died and gone to heaven. Bob got quite a kick out of the fact that with all the buffet had to offer, all I went for was one plate of oysters after another — but eventually decided he was going to do exactly that next time they came.

Another place Bob loved was Aragona’s, an employee-owned restaurant in nearby Soquel. (One of the owners was the illegitimate grandson of W.C. Fields, which made the place that more attractive to us both.) We went there frequently in the late ‘90s. There was a bartender named Bear who Bob claimed made the best martini in the world. He’d usually have two and would stagger out to my car ... and when he had three, Cathy and I would nearly have to carry him out to the car, which we all thought was hilarious. We went to Aragona’s so often that one time when we were seated I said, offhand, “Well, I’m gonna have the Chicken Piccata, and Bob, you’re no doubt gonna have a couple martinis and the spaghetti and meatballs.” He just stared at me, wide-eyed, and exclaimed, “My Gawd! Am I that predictable?” (Only at Aragona’s, I assured him.)

In 1999, when Arlen was bedridden and Bob was her main caregiver, Cathy and I would drive from San Jose to Capitola every Friday night (after I got off work) and spend anywhere from 24 to 48 hours with them. Cathy tended to Arlen, giving Bob a much-needed “day off.” On Saturday afternoon I’d take Bob to The Crow’s Nest, a pier-side restaurant in Santa Cruz, for sandwiches and several pints of beer or Guinness. After Arlen passed in May of 1999, Cathy and I continued to visit Bob every Saturday. We’d cook, or bring take out, or go out to dinner. He had a couple favorite restaurants, including the Golden Buddha in Soquel. We all loved their Chinese food, and often ordered takeout to eat at Bob’s place. (It must run in the family—we ran into Christina and Rex there one night, also picking up takeout.)

I brought my homemade spaghetti sauce to his house one time and we got into a (joking) pissing contest about who made the best sauce. The next week, he cooked his spaghetti sauce, and I had to admit, it was quite good. The secret ingredient, he confided, was tiny shrimp. I never knew Bob to cook anything — he could barely make coffee — but he was proud of his spaghetti sauce. (But I can't recall ever seeing him eat lasagna ... )

 One thing I know for sure is that Bob loved seafood. I mentioned Red Lobster, for instance. When we were in Seattle, we went to the restaurant at the top of the Space Needle and I watched him consume several buckets of shrimp. And when Cathy and I moved to Santa Cruz from L.A. in 2003— specifically to be near Bob, whose legs and health were failing — we re-instituted our weekly Saturday night dinners, and often went to a place on the pier near the Santa Cruz Boardwalk —Stagnaro Bros. Seafood, I believe. We’d load his collapsible wheelchair in the trunk of my vintage (i.e., old) Jaguar and take him there, where he usually got some sort of fish, or lobster. When he got too frail to take out, we’d bring him oysters from a nearby Mexican restaurant in Capitola, El Toro Bravo. He told me he’d had oysters all around the world, and El Toro Bravo made the best he’d ever tasted. (I believed him, because I knew they made the best enchiladas I’d ever had.)

 Sometime around 2002 or ’03, RAW had a lot of dental work, and had all his teeth pulled. He had dentures, but rarely wore them (he said they were uncomfortable). This severely impacted his ability to eat solid foods. He was stoically resigned to a life of soups and puddings when we discovered the miracle of pureeing food. He got a high-powered food processor and we tested most of his favorite foods in it, including steak and, of course, lobster. He was extremely pleased with the result, and even told us that he now preferred his food pureed — he felt it was more flavorful, since there was more surface area exposed to the taste buds.

 From that time on, we spent virtually every Saturday night with Bob. Our SOP was to drive from San Mateo to a Red Lobster in San Jose, where we’d pick up dinner for ourselves and 3 or 4 dinners (mostly lobster) for Bob, then head on to Capitola and have our feast and our evening of conversation and laughs. Cathy prep’d several days worth of meals in the food processor, so all Bob had to do was toss ‘em in the microwave and eat.

 Finally, the recent passing of Carrie Fisher reminded me of this RAW restaurant anecdote: Bob was fond of telling a story (that must have taken place in the early ‘80s when he lived in L.A.) about when Dr. Leary took him out to dinner with Carrie Fisher and Harrison Ford. He said they were all tripping, and at one point he looked across the table and realized, “My Gawd, I’m having dinner with Princess Leia and Han Solo!”




Sunday, February 5, 2017

A RAW bibliography



Via Bobby Campbell on Twitter, I discovered something I hadn't realized before: the bibliography section at the Robert Anton Wilson fan site  has a list, not only of RAW's books, but also of the books for which Wilson wrote an introduction, or otherwise contributed (e.g., the Lewis Shiner anthology of antiwar stories, When the Music's Over, has a rare work of Wilson short fiction, "Von Neumann's Second Catastrophe.")

Saturday, February 4, 2017

Secret Transmissions on anti-authoritarianism


Former U.S. House members Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul, who both favored peace and civil liberties. (Kucinich was my congressman when he held office.) 

Over at Secret Transmissions, Jeff Wolfe has a new posting up on "An Omnidirectional Approach to Anti-Authoritarianism," which makes a variety of points I mostly agree with. He also quotes Robert Anton Wilson in several places. I particularly liked this quote from RAW:

"But I think government should be treated like religion, everyone should be able to pick the kind they like. Only it should be contractual not obligatory. I wouldn't mind paying tax money to a local association to maintain a police force, as long as we need one. But I hate like hell paying taxes to help the US government build more nuclear missiles to blow up more people I don't even know and don't think I'd hate them if I did know them." ― Robert Anton Wilson

My favorite part of the post was the explanations of "anarchism without adjectives" and "panarchism," terms that were unfamiliar to me.

Friday, February 3, 2017

Ten years ago


Photo from the Robert Anton Wilson memorial service, taken on February 18, 2007 by Quinn Norton. Reprinted under the terms of the Creative Commons 2.0 license. 

[Eric Wagner, RAW's Boswell, has sent me the text of the email sent out about ten years ago, Feb. 16, 2007,  inviting participants to attend a memorial service for Robert Anton Wilson. Here is is. The Management.]

Greetings and Salutations!

RAW Cosmic Meme-Orial - Just the FAQs

Where: The Cocoanut Grove, Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, 400 Beach Street, Santa Cruz, CA 95060

When: Sunday, February 18, 2007

Time: 1 - 6 PM

Your name will appear on the guest list at the door. All you need to do to get in is remember your name. (Is that too much to ask?)

PARK across the street from the Cocoanut Grove in any Santa Cruz Seaside Company lot. Give your name at the gate and receive 1/2 price parking - $5.00 discount.

Loosey-Goosey Discordian Schedule (Interference of Eris Expected)

1:00 PM: Doors Open

1:01 PM: Doors Close (Ha ha! Just kidding!)

Chips & Dip

Meet & Greet

Soft drinks and cash bar

Continuous audio-visual presentations

1:30 Open mic! (Hello... Hello... This thing on? Ssssibilance... sssssibilace...)

2:00 Hors d' oeuvres

Live Music

More open mic! (Every man and woman is a star!)

3:00 Raucous Processionary Send-Off! (Noisemakers provided)

3:30 Dove Sta Memora - Bob's ashes to the Bay

4:00 More hors d' oeuvres!

Even more open mic! (Can never say enough about Bob!)

Live Performances and Music!

6:00 Happy Trails!

It's been fun, but they're throwing us out.

See everyone Sunday! Be there or be a two-dimensional geometric figure containing four sides of equal length!





Thursday, February 2, 2017

Robert Anton Wilson on choosing the novel we live in



Robert Anton Wilson

[Today I want to share a quote from an interview with Robert Anton Wilson in the ebook Science Fiction: An Oral History, by D. Scott Apel. The 99 cents book has a good Wilson interview and the other interviews are worth a look, too. Tomorrow, I finally have a day off, and I'll work on my new interview with Apel, coming soon, which you won't want to miss. The quote is used by Ape's permission. The Management.]

"We're all living in a novel, and we've got a choice as to which kind of novel we're living in. I'm dreadfully sorry for the people who are living in naturalistic novels in the James T. Farrell tradition; you know, where everything comes to a bad end, and all there is is injustice and stupidity in the world. People are living in that tunnel-reality because artists created it for them. And they were good artists, in that they were strong, they were powerful, they were influential, and so there are millions of people living in that reality. Then there are people who are living in the heroic Hemingway tunnel-reality still, and there are a lot of timid academic people living in a T.S. Eliot tunnel-reality. Most of the country is living in a television-tube reality. I'm delighted to be living in science fiction. It's one of the more open and exciting tunnel-realities to be live in.

"That was one of Joyce's great discoveries, that everybody is living in a novel. That's why Ulysses is an anthology of novels. It's a novel in the form of an anthology, and each of the characters is living in a separate tunnel-reality that's a mirror of the literature that's been programmed into their neurological circuits."

Wednesday, February 1, 2017

Adam Gorightly on Kerry Thornley and Kerista


Kerista from back in the day (about 1971)

I'm working 10 days in a row and time pressure today is particularly acute, so a short post. But check out Adam Gorightly's "Kerry Thornley and Kerista" post at Historia Discordia, and follow Adam's link to RAW's article on Kerista.