Mike Gathers' interesting podcast

As I mentioned I would, I listened to Mike Gathers' in the latest Hilaritas podcast, above, as I was intrigued. It is interesting, personal and candid. Mike talks about his two trips to Costa Rica for Iboga psychedelic therapy, what is was like, how it affected her personal habits and his health. He's planning a follow-up session. Mike is careful to explain that Iboga is dangerous, and not something to experiment with by yourself. 

'Saucers, Spooks and Kooks' news roundup

Saucers, Spooks and Kooks is a new movie based on the Adam Gorightly book of the same name, which I enjoyed. 

Here is an official podcast.  You can also read a roundup of other podcasts.  And there's a post on how the movie got made.  And here's the Substack home page.

Watch here.

Have a nice day!

Atomic bomb test at Bikini Island in 1946 (Wikimedia Commons photo).

One of the reasons I miss Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea, besides the obvious ones, is that I wonder what they would make of advances in computers in general, and AI in particular. (They were both fascinated by personal computers; there's a little bit about this in my Robert Shea book.) At age 69, I love my smartphone and marvel at the computer I can carry in my pocket. Technology is wasted on the young. I was a teenager in the 1970s, when our second TV was a black and white with antenna ears, and mobile music meant eight track tapes.

Anyway, here are a couple of things that caught my eye, alarming or black humor, depending on your temperament:

1. "AIs can’t stop recommending nuclear strikes in war game simulations." The lead sentence: "Advanced AI models appear willing to deploy nuclear weapons without the same reservations humans have when put into simulated geopolitical crises."

Via Jesse Walker, who writes, "I was rooting for the resolution of WAR GAMES and instead they kept giving us the setup for THE TERMINATOR."

2. Scott Alexander mentions one of the winners of the ACX forecasting contest and then writes, "Seems potentially bad that so many of the people who win forecasting contests are professionally involved in some form of worrying about AI killing us. Hopefully that’s just a coincidence."

PQ on Joyce and the state violence of evil days

Joyce and Militarism, a book cited by PQ. 

Peter Quadrino has a new piece up at his "Finnegans, Wake!" blog. The new posting is "Evil Days": Joyce and State Violence and it refers to recent events in the U.S. but mostly discusses the brutal repression by Britain when the Irish were trying to achieve independence.

As Peter explains, Joyce had quite a few friends who  were killed by the British, including in the wake of the Easter uprising. (Peter calls these killings "executions," but I think that implies more of a due process than many of the Irish rebels got). Here is Peter on one of the killings:

"One of Joyce's school friends was named George Clancy, he appears in Portrait as Davin, later he became the mayor of Limerick. He was the mayor when one night, the Black and Tans dragged him out of bed and summarily executed him in front of his family. This was in 1921. Joyce was remembering the shock of this almost 15 years later, in a letter to his son Giorgio 4 Feb 1935 he mentions "my poor friend George Clancy (Davin in Portrait). ... He was afterward Mayor of Limerick and was dragged out of bed by the Black and Tans in the night and shot in the presence of his wife." (Letters 1, Gilbert, p. 357)

Mike Gathers' guest? Mike Gathers!

The Hilaritas Press podcast released Monday has a format that's a little different this time. Instead of the usual interview of a guest by Mike Gathers, it stars Mike himself, doing a monologue.

It also sounds really interesting, and I will be listening to it soon. Here is the blurb:

"Hilaritas host Mike Gathers does all the talking this episode as he describes his illuminating experiences with iboga psychedelic therapy."

That's an iboga rainforest shrub behind Mike. 

RAW's circle of friends

RAWnet, the "Friends of the Ideas of Robert Anton Wilson," has moved to a new location on the RAW Trust website.  It's a "people who RAW knew personally who influenced him, or the other way around, and folks who were in some respect experts on RAW," Rasa says.

It can be fun to look at the biographies. For example, I followed the links for Mark Frauenfelder, pictured above,  and discovered he has made several TV appearances, including the Colbert Report. 

'Illuminatus' on list of 'weird books'

 

An article at the Microsoft Network, "32 weird but brilliant books if you are seeking to read something different, as shared online," includes Illuminatus! as one of the books. 

The article is attributed to Asli Akalin, although I wondered if AI was used for the compilation.

Aside from Illuminatus!, I have read a number of books on the list: If On a Winter's Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino, A Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole, Babel-17, Samuel Delany, and 334, Thomas M. Disch. It's not a bad list.

Hat tip, Nick Helweg-Larsen. 

My latest Bandcamp album

Above is a jazz album, Incandescence, released by trumpeter and composer Sarah Wilson and her sextet, that I bought after I heard one of her songs on a Cleveland jazz station. It was released on Bandcamp, a cool website and app that brings musicians and listeners together.

Jazz artists get little exposure in the modern culture, and I like the album, but I am mainly posting to bring your attention to Bandcamp. If you haven't tried it, it's a place where independent artists can post their music for sale (or even give it away). Typically, Bandcamp lets you listen to music before you decide whether to buy it. Purchase prices are generally quite reasonable and also allow the customer to stream the music from the useful Bandcamp smartphone app.

My collection of purchased material currently has 23 items, and many of the albums are by artists connected in at least some fashion with RAW fandom. So, for example, my music from Bandcamp includes The First Trip, a Tales of Illuminati soundtrack by Steve Pratt; Jukebox Musical by Danny and the Darlings, another Tales soundtrack; Ambient Blue by Starseed (e.g., Rasa's band); Tank Girl by Noah 23 and Squat the Condos by Prop Anon. Of course, I also have good stuff by people with no connection to the topics of this blog, such as Sundown: Whispers of Ragnarok by Sassafras (e.g., Ada Palmer's Norse Myth song cycle), and The Time Curve Preludes by  Emanuele Arciuli and Costanza Savarese, music by a modern composer I like, William Duckworth. 

Bandcamp is worth taking a few moments to explore if you are into music. 

Robert Anton Wilson on 'All Things Are Lights' [UPDATED]

From a Sept. 4, 1986, letter written by Robert Anton Wilson to Kurt Smith:

"Shea is a nice guy and a good friend, so I told him All Things Are Lights was a wonderful adventure novel. That's my official opinion. I hate the bitchiness and nastiness that infests the literary world and I try to remember never to bum-rap anybody, but especially not old friends."

Via Michael Johnson, thank you Michael! Does anyone have any context, or any other comments by RAW about Shea's novels? I liked All Things Are Lights and it was a favorite of his widow, Patricia Monaghan. 

Update: In the comments, Eric Wagner writes, "Bob once sent me a Medaeval reading list. He told me he had sent a similar list to Bob Shea before he wrote All Things Are Lights." I forgot to ask Eric if he still has that list, but I'll ask now.

For the record, in the acknowledgements, Shea writes that "many people" helped him, and adds, "I would especially like to express my gratitude to Jeanne Bernkopf, Bernadette Bosky, Frances C. Bremseth, Gerald Bremseth, Ric Erickson, Christine Hayes, Dave Hickey, Dr. Joseph R. Kraft, Mary Kay Kraft, Neal Rest, Michael Erik Shea, Morrison Swift, Robert Anton Wilson, and Al Zuckerman." 

 

Bobby Campbell comic book volume nears completion

 

Bobby Campbell has posted a new comic, and reports that he will be soon collecting his completion of a long series as one big graphic novel. Here's the report in the latest newsletter:

"Never mind the B.S., here's a new comic!

"Agnosis! #3 Ep. 1 - "BEFORE THE LAW"

"Agnosis! #3 is the fifth and final installment of my OKEY-DOKEY comic book series, nearly 23 years in the making, and soon to be finished and collected in one handsome volume :))) I'll be irregularly serializing the final issue as I go.

"If you need to get caught up on what came before, the entire series has been spiffed up and made more user friendly than ever before!

"https://weirdcomix.com/OKEY-DOKEY/

"OKEY-DOKEY is the forthcoming meta-modern graphic novel by Bobby Campbell, Marcelino Balao III, and Todd Purse. Featuring two intertwined comic book adventures, Agnosis! & BUDDHAFART, which weave together to form the Dream@wake_Sutra, a Discordian Hypersigil that tells the tale of the tribe as a SUN PLAY OF THE AGES in five Acts :)))"

It's still there

During the heyday of the big box bookstores -- I still miss the Borders chain -- I would always browse the science fiction and fantasy section. And I could usually count on spotting a copy of Illuminatus! in the section.

While the days of a bookstore in every big shopping center in the U.S. appear to be gone, Barnes and Noble has been making a comeback lately and is opening about 60 new stores this year.   One of them has just opened in Strongsville, on the west side of Cleveland, and my wife and I visited it yesterday. I did my usual SF browse. The section was a bit confusing, as there were two separate A-Z sections, but I spotted a copy of Illuminatus!, as you can see. It was good to see it was there. 

The science fiction section was pretty large and has a good balance of classic authors and newer ones.

'The Unseen Internet' is a new book that seems interesting

Earlier this month, MIT Press came out with The Unseen Internet: Conjuring the Occult in Digital Discourse by Shira Chess, and it seems like a book some of you might be interested in. 

Here is part of the book blurb: "Historically the emergence of the internet was concurrent with technopaganism, which blended digital technologies with the occult in ways that are both seen and unseen by the casual user. While technopaganism is not the only lens with which to understand the emergence of the internet, it is an understudied one that reaches toward contemporary anxieties about the ineffability of our tech."

Joseph Matheny called the book to my attention in his latest Substack, 

Matheny says he tried to do a similar book and endorses Chess'. "I will give it a full-throated endorsement and assure you that you will be in capable hands ... Included in the interviews, acknowledgements, and profiles (besides your’s truly) are friends, acquaintances, and co-conspirators: Nick Herbert, Tiffany Lee Brown, Jon Lebkowsky, Robert Anton Wilson, Klint Finley, R.U. Sirius, Richard Metzger, Don Webb, Timothy Leary, and Douglas Rushkoff, to name a few. I’m sure I left someone out, but it wasn’t on purpose." More at the link.

Chess has a Substack. 

Review of '28 Years Later: Bone Temple'

 

By Tracy Harms
Special guest blogger

Deep in the roots of Science Fiction are the pulps, disreputable depths from which visions of zombie hordes emerged. Pulp magazines were a most lowbrow medium. This was a medium where SF and Horror smudged together too closely to bother sorting one from the other.

A bit more recently, SF took to centering tales of apocalyptic futures. This subgenre has offered more of a mix between coarse titillations and sophisticated social commentary, and has proliferated so much for so long as to make one wonder whether Science Fiction is always and only portrayals of wildly disastrous futures. It’s not, but that’s been a sweet spot for sales, exactly as the pulp heritage of SF makes unsurprising. It meshes well with zombies, too.

28 Years Later: Bone Temple is the new release in a film franchise that has all the superficial hallmarks of a comic book. I went in expecting a zombie flick and a gory action flick and a civilization-struggling-in-collapse flick. In these regards I wasn’t disappointed, but to my surprise some viewers were. They wanted more zombies and more cathartic sprayings of blood and bones. Tough luck for them. They unwittingly stumbled into a strikingly crafted storyline, a highbrow Science Fiction tale that earns its place among other SF works that insert serious thematic implications where ticket-buyers thought they were choosing pulp shallowness. Such is life.

We’re not done with the stereotypes, though. Bone Temple hinted strongly, from the conclusion of the prior film, 28 Years Later, that it would be riffing on Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange, and/or the infamous film version of that story. That classic work of UK SF put an overt eye towards “the future,” and particularly to puzzles regarding social cohesion in the face of modern transformations. Might children wind up feral in the absence of adequately civilizing influences? The answer in the world of the Bone Temple is strongly affirmative, most distressingly so.

People, unlike zombies, entail all sorts of complications. People bring moral problems that outweigh mere violent death. The street gangs in A Clockwork Orange were counterposed against establishment institutions. While the police, courts, and psychiatric wards in Burgess’ tale were apparently inadequate to prevent gangs from forming and wilding, they were present and poised to intervene and suppress. The world of 28 lacks any such taming powers. The gang that fleshes out most of Bone Temple is in social free-fall.

As a result, 28 Years Later: Bone Temple may be the most alarming horror film I have seen in years. As in: could the world of our future send us to Hell? Not literally the mythological spiritual abode, of course, but a simple human pattern of suffering, ignorance, and evil which easily passes as its namesake. One in which people come to expect, accept, and enact the worst.

Last year’s 28 Years Later laid the groundwork and context for Bone Temple. The premise of these movies gives a more blatant origin for the horrid brats who rove in gangs than does Burgess’ future. The world was yanked out from under them in their tender years. These films draw us into thoughts about childhood, childhood trauma, and what happens when children are deprived of a decent future. The youthful gangsters clutch to their memories of children’s television entertainment. It was the sparkly portion of their past, now cemented in their minds with no mature art to supersede it. Kids’ TV is superficial and infantile and so are its post-apocalyptic fans. The global disaster which forms the premise of the 28 franchise implies a generation that was stunted in its development. The tensions between childhood and maturity, between innocence and depravity, are magnified through brazen reference to Jimmy Savile, a UK TV celebrity whose reputation collapsed in a sexual abuse scandal. Do these damaged youngsters know he became thought of as a monster? Perhaps; and perhaps that’s why they emulate him. Perhaps not. There’s no internet to inform them. I suspect they would not care. To emulate is to honor a past, even a horrid past, whereas indifferent ignorance is the mark of civilizational erasure.

My interest in this film and in its 2025 predecessor started with knowing it’s written by Alex Garland. Garland has written some of the best on-screen SF I’ve seen over recent years. I’m particularly enamored with Annihilation. I thoroughly enjoyed both Ex Machina and the television series Devs. Garland’s screenwriting is so consistently strong that I will sit down for anything he pens. The storyline of Bone Temple exceeded my expectations. I was expecting something adequate, like the 2025 film that is its set-up. I got a good deal more.

In my enthusiasm I may have given the impression that this is A Most Weighty Film, which would miss the fact that it doesn’t take itself too seriously. Bone Temple is very much crafted to provide an entertaining couple of hours in the theatre, assuming you’re eager to see icky stuff, as lots of moviegoers are. It’s more in the vein of a graphic novel than a work of literature. Yet, it has stuck with me for its character interactions and its plentiful implications. Strong SF concocts fantastical scenes and, through them, pokes at the human condition. That’s everything I wanted from the pulps, and more.

When the Pentagon spied on Nixon

Richard Nixon in 1972 (public domain photo). 

Robert Anton Wilson used to rail about the national security state and how much power was held by unelected bureaucrats. You can see some of those comments if you search this blog for "National Security Act." See for example, this blog post on John  Barth, where Wilson writes about "the sense of uncertainty and dread that has hung over this nation since democracy was abandoned in the National Security Act of 1947 and clandestine government became official. Sometimes I find it astounding that we have lived under fascism for 40 years while continuing the rituals of democracy .... "

The New York Times recently published a piece by James Rosen (gift link) on the extensive spying the Pentagon carried out on Richard Nixon and his aides.  

The piece, "Seven Pages of a Sealed Watergate File Sat Undiscovered. Until Now," describes how Nixon finally found out about the spying. Nixon did not believe he could prosecute the people responsible and reveal the spying without discrediting the military and having his own secrets revealed, but the two people primarily responsible were sent far away from Washington, D.C., and were wiretapped.

Rosen writes, "The Joint Chiefs’ spying formed only one prong of the campaign against Nixon, the most spied-on president in modern times. Declassified documents and scholarship published since 1974 have established that the F.B.I., under its director, J. Edgar Hoover, spied on Mitchell, the attorney general, and that the C.I.A. detailed its personnel to various units associated with Nixon, including the Watergate burglary team and 'components intimately associated with the office of the president,' as the agency admitted in 1975."

A fan writer's tribute to Arthur Hlavaty

Cover for Dillinger Relic 23, one of Arthur Hlavaty's zines posted at Fanac.org. 

Andy Hooper, a prominent science fiction fan who writes a lot about fanzines and fannish history, has justed posted a good tribute/obituary for Arthur Hlavaty. Arthur was a BNF, a "big name fan," nominated many times for the Hugo Award for best fan writer, although many of us knew him as a friend of Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson and the founder of The Golden APA. 

Hooper mentions that he went through a number of Arthur's zines as he was working on the piece. As the Hugo nominations imply, they are well worth reading. Many of his zines are available at Fanac.org.  At one section of the site, they are alphabetized by editor; scroll down in the H section. From the zine pictured above: "Then someone else called up to report that he just read ILLUMINATUS last week, and he's already started hanging out with witches and smoking hash. Some people are just fast learners."

Hooper's piece mentions "Goldencon, a 1980s gathering of Illuminati fandom," does anyone have any more information? 

Danny Robinson's Patreon

The Headies. From left: Grant Robinson - keyboards and vocals, Todd Purse - drums, Danny Robinson - vocals and guitar, Billy Frolic - guitar and vocal and Justin Vavala - bass guitar. Yes, it's the same Todd Purse who is the 'Tales of Illuminatus' artist. 

Danny Robinson, who made a soundtrack album for Tales of Illuminatus No. 2 as "Danny and the Darlings," now has a Patreon. As Bobby Campbell says, he's "he's sharing demos, shop talk, lyric sheets, background lore, and vegetarian recipes as he endeavors to get his forthcoming album pressed on vinyl!"

Here is more information on the soundtrack album; you can read my interview with him and you can read up on his new punk rock opera. 

Rock album includes 'Illuminatus!' song [UPDATE]

I did not hear about it at the time, but in 2019 the Philadelphia rock band Eye Flys released the EP Context. And as Bobby Campbell mentioned in his latest newsletter, the album includes the track "The Triumph of Hagbard Celine." As with most Bandcamp tracks, you can check out the song before deciding whether to buy it. I had trouble making out some of the lyrics, but I did hear "submarine" and "immantize the eschaton" and other words.

"This is an album of commanding, lean noise rock absolutely brimming with vitriol," says the band, describing its music. More information here.  

Update: Please help Bobby with the lyrics; see the comments. 

Does Hagbard Celine shave? Maybe!

 

In his latest newsletter, "By Hagbard's Beard," Bobby Campbell explains how he wrestled with a particular question with his Tales of Illuminatus! comic book adaptations: Does Hagbard Celine have a beard or is he clean shaven? I'll let you follow the link for Bobby's solution!

Lots of other interesting news and bits at the link, don't forget to click through Bobby's links! For example, Bobby is working on his plans for a Maybe Day event on July 23 in Berkeley, California: "I've been scouting venues and bugging the locals. Speaking it into existence one step at a time :)))"

Technical difficulties at RAW Fans Germania

 

Robert Anton Wilson Fans Germania is an excellent website of RAW material maintained by Martin Wagner. The main website is currently down because of technical difficulties. Martin is addressing this, but in the interim, please use the site archive. 

Mass market paperbacks are going away

 

A fascinating article in the New York Times details a major cultural shift for readers -- mass market paperbacks are going away. Of course, the Illuminatus! trilogy originally was published as a trio of mass market paperbacks.

I used to buy many mass market paperbacks. I still have my original paperbacks of Illuminatus! But nowadays, when I buy a cheap book, it's an ebook. I have hundreds of books on my Kindle, most of them purchased on sale for a couple of bucks or so. Mass market paperbacks used to be the easiest way to be able to read anywhere. But because I have a smartphone, and a Kindle app on my phone, I have a big library I carry everywhere I go. 

What we read last month

What Mark Brown read:

Cocktail Time by P. G. Wodehouse  1/3/2026 
Melmoth the Wanderer by Charles Robert Maturin  1/14  
The Night Life of The Gods by Thorne Smith  1/22   
The Charwoman’s Shadow by Lord Dunsany  1/29
Llana of Gathol by Edgar Rice Burroughs  1/31

What I read in January: 

A Kiss for Damocles, J. Kenton Pierce.
Hellenistic Philosophy, John Sellars.
Red Heart, Max Harms.
Beyond Control, Jacob Sullum.
The Fourfold Remedy, John Sellars.
Forged for Destiny, Andrew Knighton.

As usual, the rest of you are invited to post in the comments about what you read last month. 

RAW and his editors

 

Michael Johnson's latest Substack, "Ezra Pound and Robert Anton Wilson and Publishing and Editors," examines RAW's general disdain for the editors he worked with. There are lots of interesting comments to the post. The piece is "part one," and I am really looking forward to part two. 

Bobby Campbell on the Robert Shea anthology

 

One more item, if I may, from Bobby Campbell's latest newsletter: 

"Wanted to make sure I mentioned this wonderful addition to the Illuminatus! canon, an excellently crafted spotlight on co-author Robert Shea. My enthusiastic review is enclosed below:

Meet Bob Shea! The legendary co-creator of Illuminatus!, Hodge to Robert Anton Wilson's Podge, a luminous man of letters, friendly suburban zen buddhist anarchist, and visionary creator of better tomorrows, that you are most welcome to enjoy today!

Tom Jackson has crafted a perfect introduction to Robert Shea's literary labyrinth, a guided tour of his revolutionary ouvré, wherein Shea's unique voice delivers enlightening epiphanies as casually as an old friend discussing the weather.

Make no mistake, the mystic mystery of Illuminatus! continues right here and now!

More on the book here. 

In a comment on my recent post about the latest Hilaritas podcast, podcast host Mike Gathers said the podcast on the Shea book and the Vincent Murphy podcast were two highlights in the 2025 podcasts. I thought the Shea podcast was good, too --- not because I was on it, but because Mike Shea told so many wonderful stories about his father. 

Maybe Day event planned in Berkeley, California, in July

Wilmington Comic Fest at The Queen in Wilmington, Delaware 1/10/26

Bobby Campbell's latest newsletter has an announcement that I think deserves a separate blog post, so that it can get a little attention: " I have set my sights on an in-person Maybe Day event in Berkeley, California on July 23, 2026. We'll see!"

I hope this comes together, and of course as I learn more, I will share here. 

Bobby of course is the founder of the annual Maybe Day celebrations on July 23, and the more recent midwinter Maybe Night events. At first, these were online celebrations, but recently Bobby has shifted more toward in-person events, such as his Wilmington Comic Fest conventions. 

I am a big fan of the possibilities of the internet, but there also is something to be said about in-person meetups. I certainly loved my time with Gregory Arnott and Bobby at Confluence in Pittsburgh, and I got to meet up with Gregory and his wife at another Confluence. 

Free 'Tales' webcomic and other Bobby Campbell news

 

In his latest newsletter, Bobby Campbell announces that Tales of Illuminatus No. 2 has now been released as a free webcomic, so that everyone can now read it. Print and digital copies remain available, as the free version likely won't be around forever. 

"I'm super psyched to have this out in the wild, and hopefully catch more folks up on our illuminated tales as we ready the next installment," Bobby says.

Bobby has combined two separate newsletters, previously on Substack, and moved to a new platform,  ghost.io, for a combined newsletter, Gloria Discordia. If you got the previous newsletters you should be getting the new one; otherwise, sign up here. 

I'll have a separate post on some of Bobby's other news, as I don't want it to get lost in the Tales announcement. But you can go ahead and read all about it. 

History lessons

A couple of history offerings that caught my eye, one of possible interest to RAW fans and one  that might interest Robert Shea fans.

RAW was a World War II revisionist, and I recent ran across an announcement from Thaddeus Russell for an online course, "World War II: The Great Blowback," scheduled for Feb. 9-12:

"To most Americans, World War II is the only 'good war'—the one conflict you’re not allowed to question without being accused of bad faith or worse.

"But over the last two decades, a growing number of of scholars has been assembling a very different narrative: that U.S. policy under Franklin Roosevelt turned regional wars into a truly global war, guaranteed the realization of the Holocaust, and was principally responsible for producing the greatest catastrophe in human history.

"This is the new history of the Second World War that I’ll be presenting in a 4-part live course at Unregistered Academy."

More information here.  

While I am open to World War II revisionism, I admit to being cool to the "Allies made Hitler did it" school. Speaking of which, Russell's Substack also has a recent interview with Darryl Cooper. 

Meanwhile, Tyler Cowen recently did a mini-review of Jack Weatherford's  Emperor of the Seas: Kublai Khan and the Making of China, which covers the period of history in Robert Shea's two Shike novels. Tyler wrote, "A fun and good book, think of it as explaining how Kublai Khan beat Song China but subsequently lost to Japan.  The Ainu play a role in a wide-ranging and still historically relevant story."

Scott Apel's wild novel

I have just finished reading The Uncertainty Principle?, an oddball detective novel (or maybe, as the text says, an "anti-detective novel,") by Robert Anton Wilson's longtime friend, D. Scott Apel. It is quite a wild ride, and I found it hard to stop reading. The hero is private investigator Alec Smart, there are I think three  novels that feature him. 

Several real  people appear in the book under fictional names, including Robert Anton Wilson, Arlen Riley Wilson and Philip K. Dick. Here is one of the descriptions of the RAW character, "Timothy Aleister Finnegan,":

From my perspective, I stood facing an avuncular guy who couldn't be mistaken for anything other than a writer. He was middle-aged, a few inches shorter than my six feet, but well-matched with his wife. He had a large, round face which tapered down to a pointed gray goatee, and he wore his salt-and-pepper hair slicked straight back against his head. He looked like nothing so much as the unlikely offspring of a cherub and a satyr. He had an infectious smile, accentuated by laugh lines radiating around his sharp blue eyes. In those eyes was a hint of endearing devilishness; a touch of the Trickster. The cherub as confidence man. There's an old joke that says, "After you shake hands with him, be sure to count your fingers." I felt like if I counted mine now I might find six. 

The Uncertainty Principle? is available as a paperback (about $15) and a Kindle ebook (about $1).  I have published a couple of interviews with Scott, here is one. 

John Higgs does David Lynch podcast, makes appearances

 

Want to know more about the new John Higgs book about David Lynch? Check out his podcast on the "Highly Irregular" podcast with host John Bernard. 

More news, including UK appearances to discuss the book, on the latest free issue of his Substack newsletter. There is also a paid tier now, as the newsletter explains.