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Jazz recommendations on the ECM record label by jazz pianist Ethan Iverson. The article also links to recommendations for recordings on Blue Note, Prestige and Riverside.
A "revolutionary new cryonics company."
Social media is worse than you think.
French Freemasons accused of running hit squads.
Jesse Walker's "Top 20 Movies of the 1940s"
Pyrrho of Elis. Source.
Michael Johnson has a new essay up, "Model Agnosticism: Precursors, Examples." The footnotes are particularly important this time. I've written about Pyrrho before on this blog. See this post, for example, and this one.
Michael has often been enlisted by Hilaritas Press to write pieces for their books. If you are a RAW fan and you haven't kept up with Michael's Overweening Generalist Substack, maybe take a minute or two to browse his archives, which are full of titles such as "RAW and His Publishers" (a three part series), "Thoughts on the Structure of Illuminatus!," "Ezra Pound, RAW and the Two Cultures" and so on. Even the pieces that don't mention Robert Anton Wilson in the title are sometimes influenced by RAW or mention him or connect to RAW's concerns.
A photo of Dr. Semmelweiss
An article by Shreya Suri, "Why Doctors Rejected the Man Who Discovered That Handwashing Saves Lives," published on the Observer Voice website, discusses "Why Doctors Rejected the Man Who Discovered That Handwashing Saves Lives."
The article discusses the Semmelweis reflex, named after Ignaz Semmelweis, a doctor who discovered that hygiene could save the lives of many patients. His ideas were ahead of their time and were rejected.
"The phenomenon was named by author Robert Anton Wilson who used Semmelweis’s story as the paradigm case of how revolutionary ideas get rejected not because they’re wrong but because they threaten established worldviews," the article explains.
A Wikipedia article provides a citation. There is also a Wikipedia article on Semmelweiss.
Observer Voice is an Indian publication. "Observer Voice is the one stop site for National, International news, Sports, Editor’s Choice, Art/culture contents, Quotes and much more. We also cover historical contents. Historical contents includes World History, Indian History, and what happened today. The website also covers Entertainment across the India and World."
Hat tip: Nick Helweg-Larsen.
Bobby Campbell has sent out a newsletter to announce Tales of Illuminatus #3, providing basically the same details I provided yesterday (Kickstarter begins April 23), but also has a bunch of other news.
One of Bobby's announcements is that he's released a free Illuminatus! game, CTHULHUS WAKE.
"An arcane arcade adventure! Nine levels of mini game eldritch action!"
More news if you read the whole thing. You want to know who is "the best cartoonist in the world," don't you?
"
A new Kickstarter campaign is about to launch for Tales of Illuminatus #3, the sequel to Bobby Campbell's first two comic book adaptations of Illuminatus!
Bobby has put up a prelaunch page on Kickstarter. Bobby's message on the page says,
"The circus is back in town!
"More info coming soon with the official launch on April 23rd :)))
Until then stay tuned to the GLORIA DISCORDIA Newsletter
"<3<3<3"
More information soon.
Jesse Walker has a habit of posting movie lists on his website every year, going back ten years, 20 years, etc., but now he's created a new website for his movie recommendations.
Jesse has now launched a Letterboxd site, which features the following lists so far: "Acid Noirs," "Top 20 Movies of the 1920s," "Top 20 Movies of the 1930s," and "Stuff I Watched With My Then-10-Year-Old Daughter While My Wife Was Out of Town for a Week, According to a 2016 Facebook Post I Just Found."
I like old movies, so I suspect this will be a useful resource for me. Seems like a nice bonus that (or so I assume) just about any 1920s movie should be in the public domain and therefore easy to find for free. Above is Jesse's top pick for the 1920s.
UPDATE: I messed up the link to Jesse's new site, but that's fixed now. He's added more movie reviews since this post originally went up.
Photo by Vladislav Babienko on Unsplash
Michael Johnson has a new post up, "Model Agnoticism: Get Smarter and Happier (Maybe?)"
"Wilson said in an interview 13 years before his death that not believing anything and not disbelieving anything is 'one of the most important ideas in my books.' This Model Agnosticism runs like a source code through all of Wilson’s 40-odd books, both fiction and non-fiction. He even wondered about this separation of 'fiction' and non- as reified categories. If we just constantly invent or discover reality, how is this not an aspect of fiction? Why are the holy books shelved in the non-fiction section of the library? Are novels true statements about someone’s world? What is the relation between facts and 'reality'?"
Adam Vorobok, reading a ghost story (Facebook photo)
Parade publishes an article, "Librarians Say These 10 ‘Hidden Gem’ Books Are the Funniest Things You’ll Read All Year," and guess which is one of the books recommended?
Citing Adam Vorobok, a librarian at Cincinnati Public Library, the article says about Illuminatus!,
“Written during the counter-culture days, this trippy novel satirizes conspiracy theories as a way for you to question your own reality tunnel. No book has made me laugh harder than this one,” Vorobok says.
Per the book description, this trilogy addresses “all the coverups of our time,” ranging from “who really shot the Kennedys to why there’s a pyramid on a one-dollar bill.”
Mr. Vorobok also had a podcast as "Warlock Vorobok Reads." , reading classic horror stories. Seems like a cool dude.
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[Editor's note: This blog posting originated when I asked Scott what his favorite books are, and then asked a follow-up question asking him for his five favorite Philip K. Dick books. It was not originally written as a freestanding essay. -- The Management.]
By D. Scott ApelMy all-time favorite quote comes from Voltaire: “If you wish to converse with me, define your terms.” I mention this partially because I spent many, many hours in discussion and debate with other writers and editors at Apple’s iTunes, where we dissected specific words to determine how people understand them and whether we were being misleading when using these words in various promotions. “Best,” for instance, was a verboten term. Who decides what is “best,” and what qualifies a piece of content to be promoted as “best”? Anyone who disagreed with our choices could potentially be offended. But no one had an objection to labeling a movie “great,” since that word is so nebulous as to be meaningless—but it clearly indicates that “we like it.”
The point is that “favorite” is one of those vague words that could be interpreted in many ways. Does it mean pleasure reading? Great Literature? One’s list of Desert Island Books? Guilty pleasures? I published over 200 film-related articles, many of a “roundup” nature (“The Ten Best Film Noir Classics”) and I always began these pieces with “the ground rules” if only to avoid being accused of leaving out someone else’s choice of “best.” So, before I list my choices, here are my parameters: These are all works of fiction, in English (or translated into English). They are not necessarily Great Literature (although some absolutely qualify), but are the titles that had the most profound and longest-lasting influence on my approach to writing. Each in its way revealed how the boundaries of literature can be expanded and illustrated what language and literature are capable of.
In no particular order, the most influential works of fiction in my life include:
Finnegans Wake by James Joyce
Don Quixote by Cervantes
Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov
Labyrinths by Jorges Luis Borges
The Circus of Dr. Lao by Charles Finney
The Princess Bride by William Goldman
Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
Oedipus in Disneyland by Hercules Malloy
Any of Donald E. Westlake’s comic caper novels (The Hot Rock; Drowned Hopes; etc.)
I could also add any novel by Jules Verne and Philip K. Dick’s VALIS (since I’m in it).
And although they might seem out of place, I would be remiss if I did not include MAD magazine (from 1952-1970) and The National Lampoon (1970-’75) – although not novels, these humor magazines were print publications and were primarily responsible for my subversive attitude and approach to writing humor. Add to that the recordings of The Firesign Theater and Spike Jones, and you’ve got some insight into my sense of humor.
Non-fiction has informed my psychological development as much as those works of fiction have influenced my writing. The Top Ten Non-Fiction books in my personal pantheon include:
Collected Works by Carl Jung
The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell
The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck
Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain
Roget’s Thesaurus
The Path to Enlightenment by the Dalai Lama
Science of Survival by L. Ron Hubbard
Mirror of Venus by Wingate Paine
The Book of Thoth by Aleister Crowley
Sadly, these lists cover only print literature. There are so many more deep influences among movies (Forbidden Planet; Last Year at Marienbad; the Marx Brothers; Fellini), television (The Prisoner), and music (Bach, Beethoven’s symphonies, Dvorak’s 9th Symphony, and the Moody Blues are just the tip of that iceberg).
Favorite works by Philip K. Dick
My friend Will Jacobs (also a writer) is also a big PKD fan, and he said something that has stuck with me for like five decades now: "The first Phil Dick book a person reads is always their favorite." My interpretation is that the first PKD novel one reads is so impactful, unique, and different than anything else one has read before that it makes a huge and long-lasting first impression.
My Top 5 Favorite PKD novels would be:
Eye in the Sky (the first Phil Dick book I ever read -- perhaps proving Will's point!)
The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch
VALIS (and not just because I'm in it, but that don't hurt)
UBIK
We Can Build You
...but this is not to say that many others don't have many redeeming qualities. I still quote a paragraph from Clans of the Alphane Moon regularly, for instance.
You will notice that many of Phil's best-known works are not on my list, including The Man in the High Castle and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Nothing against either of them, just not among my personal favorites.
Note: Scott was Philip K. Dick's friend and did a well-regarded book about Dick. This has been added to the "D. Scott Apel Resources" section on the right side of this page.
Brian Doherty (Cato Institute photo)
To my pleasant surprise, the New York Times runs a long obituary for Brian Doherty, libertarian chroniclers and RAW expert. And it mentions Illuminatus!
A couple of sentences from Trip Gabriel's piece:
"Mr. Doherty became a libertarian at the University of Florida in the late 1980s, from which he received a bachelor’s degree in journalism. But he traced his political tendencies even earlier, to his reading, as a 12-year-old, of a science fiction trilogy, Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson’s Illuminatus!
“ 'One of the specific purposes of that work, according to Wilson,' Mr. Doherty later wrote, 'was to do to the state what Voltaire did to the church — that is, reduce it to an object of contempt for all thoughtful people'.”
Microdosing expert James Fadiman is the guest on the new Hilaritas podcast. Here is the blurb for the show:
"Hilaritas host Mike Gathers talks with researcher, author, teacher, and consultant, Dr. James Fadiman.
"Richard Alpert first turned Jim onto psilocybin in 1961. Jim soon moved to Perry Lane, the Stanford Bohemian Quadrant which was ground zero for Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters. There in Menlo Park, Jim guided Stuart Brand on his first LSD experience. He went on to help found the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology and continues to teach to this day. Jim wrote the Psychedelic Explorers Guide Safe, Therapeutic, and Sacred Journeys in 2011, and has co-written with his friend Jordan Gruber, Microdosing for Health, Healing and Advanced Performance, and Your Symphony of Selves: Discover and Understand More of who we are.."
James Fadiman’s website: https://www.jamesfadiman.com/
Institute of Transpersonal Psychology: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sofia_University_(California)
Host Mike Gathers:https://linktr.ee/mgathers23
Producer/Engineer Richard Rasa: http://www.pelorian.com/rasa.html
D. Scott Apel's most popular book
D. Scott Apel collaborated with Robert Anton Wilson on RAW's newsletter Trajectories, resulting in two books, Chaos and Beyond and Beyond Chaos and Beyond, but Scott is an interesting writer in his own right.
So, on the right side of this page, just below the "Robert Anton Wilson Resources" and "Robert Shea Resources" sections, I've created a new "D. Scott Apel Resources" section. So far, those links include three interviews of Scott I conducted her, observations on some of his book titles, and the only complete and accurate bibliography of his books (that I know of) available on the internet. I just added the Hilaritas Press podcast interview with Scott.
I have other items in the works that I'll be adding in the coming weeks.
Scott is less organized in self promotion than many other creators -- there's no official author page -- so I decided to set this up.
John Higgs has released a new edition of his Octannual Update newsletter.
Lots of interesting events in Britain to go to, so if you live there you should read the whole thing, but I will highlight a couple of items of global interest.
The paperback of John's Exterminate/Regenerate: The Story of Doctor Who is about to be released. It's only published in Britain, but John explains how you can order an autographed copy from a business that ships worldwide.
Also, the Mycelium Parish News has just been published, a bit late this time. As John explains, "This is a catalogue of that year’s books, podcasts, fanzines, mailing lists, events etc, that come from alternative or Discordian- adjacent creators. There’s a micro-essay from me in there also." I have just ordered my copy.
Martin Wagner's online collection of Robert Anton Wilson materials was offline for a bit, but he has now launched the revamped Robert Anton Wilson Archives website.
It looks great and it has a lot of interesting material to read. Martin's site and RAWilsonfans.org both deserve your attention as collections of RAW material (and I like to think there's a few things to read here, too).
The new link for "Robert Anton Wilson Archives" is now up under "Robert Anton Wilson Resources" at the right side of this page.
Sehr gut, Martin!
Over at RAW Semantics, Brian has posted new images of Robert Anton Wilson, both art images and enhanced photos. He's getting really good at this.
Brian says:
"A mix of some 'new' photos, repurposed (and quality-improved) old video stills and some of my attempts at artwork. The subject, of course, is Robert Anton Wilson, who I would argue – and despite the efforts of RAW fans – generally doesn’t seem well-served by images of his likeness (good quality source images being few – the web is populated instead with blurred low-res video grabs). I’ve added a boring technical note below the images, for people who like that kind of thing."
The Non Serviam podcast, episode 74, features Mike Gathers. He's interviewed by Lucy Steigerwald.
"For NSP 74, we spoke with Mike Gathers about the politics of Robert Anton Wilson!
In addition, we talked about libertarianism, techno-optimism, the limits of the left-right spectrum, and Mike's recently published book with Hilaritas Press titled, A Non Euclidian Perspective: Robert Anton Wilson’s Political Commentaries 1960-2005 containing many previously published political articles and interviews of RAW."
I've provided YouTube links, but both should be on most podcasting apps.
Bonus news: Afroman won.
Dan Brown said this book "changed my life."
Prominent literary agent Albert Zuckerman has died. He played a big role in the careers of both Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea, although they were hardly his most famous clients.
As Clay Risen explains in his typically excellent New York Times obituary for Zuckerman, Zuckerman had many big successes, including boosting the career of Ken Follett:
"He had a knack for finding promising writers who, with a few pointers, could become rock stars. His first big score was with Mr. Follett, a Welsh novelist who wrote about the English working class until he hired Mr. Zuckerman, who encouraged him to write a thriller instead.
"The result, Eye of the Needle (1978), won an Edgar Award for best novel, sold briskly in Britain and the United States, and cemented Mr. Follett’s reputation as a bankable writer. His books have since sold nearly 200 million copies, and helped make Mr. Zuckerman, as The Irish Independent described it in a 1994 profile, 'the hero of the blockbuster'.”
Zuckerman also had a hand in A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking (25 million copies sold of a book about physics). Zuckerman wrote Writing the Blockbuster Novel, cited as a big influence by Dan Brown.
But of course my main interest in Zuckerman was the role in played as Wilson and Shea's agent. He was not involved in selling Illuminatus! to Dell, but after that work's success, he became their agent.
I spoke to Zuckerman briefly in 2012, here is part of that blog post: "Zuckerman told me that he sold all of Wilson and Shea's subsequent novels, but that the two had sold Illuminatus! on their own, without using an agent."
Dell editor Fred Feldman, one of the editors who worked on Illuminatus!, introduced Wilson and Shea to Zuckerman. It was early in Zuckerman's career, as Feldman told me in my 2013 interview with the editor:
"Now, of course today, Al is one of the premiere agents in the business. He had a new client at that time, a young untested British guy by the name of Ken Follett. That seems to have worked out for them. Of course, Al has many other very important clients, a thriving agency, Writer’s House, and I think is a patriarch of the business at this point.
"But at the time, he didn’t have any clients. At the time, believe it or not, I’d sometimes vacate my office for a little time so he could use my phone. It was just a different time. He was just starting out. He got his first office, Writer’s House, and I remember going over to see it, I was so pleased. He’s older than me. He came from an academic background.
"But anyway, I introduced them both. I remember Bob Shea remembered doing a couple of historic Japanese sagas with Al that did very well, and then I kind of lost track of him."
I shared the news about Zuckerman yesterday with Mike Shea, Robert Shea's son.
"My dad loved him a lot. I worked with Al regularly as well as my dad’s heir," Mike told me.
"My dad really was in awe of him and changed a *lot* of what he did based on Al’s guidance. Shike was supposed to be a science fiction novel!"
Shike was Shea's first novel. It was written during a tough time in Shea's life. He had been laid off by Playboy magazine, a circumstance which got Shea to finally get serious about a career as a novelist. As Feldman relates, Shike was a big success and allowed Shea to pursue a career as a novelist until his death.
Here is an anecdote from Dan Brown:
"Not long ago, I had an amusing experience meeting the author of a book I received as a gift nearly two decades ago — a book that in many ways changed my life. Almost 20 years ago, I was halfway through writing my first novel, Digital Fortress, when I was given a copy of Writing the Blockbuster Novel, by the legendary agent Albert Zuckerman. His book helped me complete my manuscript and get it published. Two months ago, by chance, I met Mr. Zuckerman for the first time. I gratefully told him that he had helped me write Digital Fortress. He jokingly replied that he planned to tell everyone that he had helped me write The Da Vinci Code.”
F. Paul Wilson (Repairman Jack novels, The Keep) has a nice piece up about Zuckerman:
"After my third novel, he said I needed to expand my horizons: Send him three ideas I’d like to work on, and we’ll choose. We settled on one set in WWII with a Romanian castle and a strange, malignant occupant. I wrote it in about six months. Al was impressed, but said it needed work. So he got to work. His notes and edits shed new light on the book and I wrote the second draft with them in mind. The book was transformed. But Al wasn’t through yet. He decided to approach Hollywood before the publishers. It worked: We had a movie deal before he put the book up for auction. It landed on the NY Times bestseller list. And that is why The Keep is dedicated to Al Zuckerman."
UPDATE: If you want to get going on your bestselling novel, Amazon is selling a Kindle of Zuckerman's book for $3.
Brian Doherty. (Facebook photo. Source).
1. Two interesting new pieces have been posted about Brian Doherty since I ran the obituary Sunday. Nick Gillespie has written a remembrance: "On the way out of the talk, as valets pulled up our old, beat-up cars (mine a Toyota Tercel with 200,000 miles on it and a padlock on the trunk, his a decrepit Ford LTD station wagon he'd bought from Jacob Sullum), Brian mentioned to me that what he really liked about capitalism wasn't the way it punished anyone but just how many free riders it enabled."
Also, a new piece by Bryan Caplan, longer and better than what I linked to Sunday.
2. I got a comment some days ago that the links to Robert Anton Wilson's "Serpent Power" piece on this site were all dead links. I think I've fixed it and the link under "Feature Articles and Interviews" on the right side of this page now works.
3. I also recently blogged about RAW meeting Ted Sturgeon, the famous science fiction writer. Sturgeon's More Than Human currently is a $2 Kindle ebook. Still $9 as a Nook ebook at Barnes and Nobel, unfortunately.
4. When Dan Simmons died, I ran a notice and complained that the New York Times did not run an obit. An obituary has now in fact finally run. I still think the paper should have run one for Greg Bear.
Brian Doherty. Facebook photo posted by Sherry Wong).
Brian Doherty, 57, has died. He was the top modern historian of libertarianism, but also a genuine expert on Robert Anton Wilson, as I will remind everyone shortly.
Here is the obituary at Reason magazine, where he was a senior editor, working with other libertarian RAW fans such as Jesse Walker. The review gives full credit to his scholarship --- he wrote a long book called Radicals for Capitalism that is the definitive history of modern capitalism and also has material putting Robert Anton Wilson's politics in context with the libertarian movement -- but check out how he got interested in libertarianism: "Born in Brooklyn and raised mostly in Florida, Doherty first caught the libertarian bug at age 12 by gobbling up the Illuminatus! trilogy by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson."
The Reason obituary by Matt Welch delves into Doherty's libertarian scholarship and journalism but also has lots of details about how Doherty founded a record label and played in various rock bands, and his interest in avant-garde art happenings, Burning Man, underground comix and other pursuits.
It's perhaps not the most important thing about him, but Doherty wrote one of the best guest posts ever published on this blog. "Robert Anton Wilson: A Conspiracy of Silence?" is a piece which Doherty originally hoped to publish in the New York Times Book Review. He gave me permission for me to run it in July 2015. It's very good, please take a look.
See also that when Hilaritas Press published A Non-Euclidian Perspective, a new collection of RAW's political writings, Jesse Walker assigned Doherty to review the book.
I hope some of you will go ahead and read Doherty's RAW piece published on this blog. I could not remember how I got my hands on it, so I checked my email.
One of my best blog posts here is my "Illuminatus! vs. Cryptonomicon" post, listing various parallels between the two works. I got a few nice comments, but in general I was a little disappointed it did not make more of a splash.
But I did get a nice email from Mr. Doherty, who wrote, "Very smart and thorough comparison of the two; I noted a much more casual resemblance between the two when desperately, and in the end fruitlessly, trying to convince an imagined NY TIMES BOOK REVIEW audience that they should give RAW a second thought.
"On his death I queried NYTBR about writing an appreciation essay on RAW; they said yes to the idea but rejected the actual essay, which was written in a rush and without much time to re-read RAW, and I think I was too scrupulously trying to connect him to "important" lit stuff. Or I just did a shitty job. At any rate, I append the still unpublished essay in case you are interested. (Nothing for a serious fan or scholar to learn from it, of course.)"
Of course I was pleased to get his feedback, but I also liked the attachment. Naturally, I immediately asked if I could run it, noting that he might still be trying to sell it and might have a better place for it, and he replied, "Oh, that piece is completely dead as anything sellable; if you think it has anything to offer the specialist audience at your site, please run it, I'd be delighted."
So I ran it. Mr. Doherty asked only, "If you choose to run it, do note the purpose for which it was written: to explain RAW to the generalist audience at NYTBR on the occasion of his death."
Here is a post on Facebook by Sherry Wong. Bryan Caplan has posted an appreciation of Doherty's magnum opus. I learned about the bad news when I saw Jesse Walker's posting on Facebook. There's also an appreciation by Nick Gillespie, and one from Sheldon Richman.
During his lifetime, science fiction writer Theodore Sturgeon (1918-1985) was known as a "writer's writer," revered by other writers and also very respected by the more literate science fiction fans. He is probably best known for his book More Than Human. Older science fiction fans still read. He was a renowned short story writer, and I read Sturgeon's Selected Stories in 2019. Mark Brown read Sturgeon's Venux Plus X a few months ago.
D. Scott Apel's Famedroppings, a memoir of his encounters with famous people, he describes how he arranged for RAW to meet with Sturgeon. The two writers were fans of each other -- RAW once said, "My favorite science fiction writers have long been Stapledon, Heinlein, Clarke and Sturgeon" -- and the pair had a nice meetup.
As for Famedroppings, it don't see it as a major Apel work, but the Kindle is only about $2, and you can get your money's worth skimming it and reading the entries about the people you are interested in. Apel's reflections at the back of the book also are worth a read. There is a really good section on Philip K. Dick, more substantial than many of the entries. There's also a biographical essay on RAW, although it's a shorter version of what Scott wrote in Beyond Chaos and Beyond. The more than 100 entries are divided into actors, directors, Star Trek figures, businessmen, politicians, public intellectuals, musicians, disk jockeys, astronauts, scientists, "specialty acts," vehicles, women "best known for displaying the proof they are women", writers and "I Am Known by Them." "L'Envoi: Why? Three Cautionary Tales" is the piece at the back of the book I recommend reading, even if you only skim the rest of the book for the good parts.
Incidentally, the book may make you think about the nature of fame. Apel writes that he almost left out Sturgeon for not being famous enough, although for me, a science fiction fan, Sturgeon is much more "famous" that the actors he mentions I never heard of.
Sandycove, Dublin. Peter Quadrino photo
In new post for his Finnegans, Wake! blog, Peter Quadrino posts "So This is Dyoublong? Living Inside the World of the Wake: Part 3," explaining, "Continuing my American-spectator-in-Ireland, wandering psychogeographical exploration of Finnegans Wake and relevant sites, jumping around the map of Dublin and the Emerald Isle, recalling my time staying there a few years back."
Peter has lots of photo illustrations. If you want to read the posts in order, here is part one, and here is part two.
[This is the only accurate, complete bibliography for D. Scott Apel that I know of. A link to this is available at the new "D. Scott Apel Resources" section on the right side of this page. Books are available at Barnesandnoble.com and at Amazon.]
Bibliography: D. Scott Apel
Including initial publication/copyright dates
PRINT MEDIA
FICTION
Alec Smart Comic Mysteries
The Uncertainty Principle? (1979, 2015) (Footnote 1)
The Infinite Mistress (2014)
Detective, Comics (2015)
Jobs of Work (2023)
Hollywood, Ending (2023)
Stand-alone novels
Exemplary Lives of Impossible Men (2021)
Unfriendly Takeover at OzCo: A Fairy Tale for Aging Children (2025)
E Attraction (Limited Author’s Edition) (1976)
Escape from 50sville (2021) (editor) (Footnote 2)
Humor
Mein Summer Kampf (2014)
Plays
Fourplay (2018) (Footnote 3)
NON-FICTION
Scholarship on authors (Editor and Contributor)
Science Fiction: An Oral History (2014)
Philip K. Dick: The Dream Connection (1987)
Beyond Chaos and Beyond: The Best of Trajectories, Vol. 2 (uncollected Robert Anton Wilson writings) (2019) (Two editions, Apel's original edition and the 2025 Hilaritas Press edition)
Memoirs
NO PLAN B: The Adventures of a Carbon Unit in Silicon Valley (2020)
Famedroppings (2018)
Movie reviews (Footnote 4)
Freelance video columnist for the San Jose Mercury News (1985-1995); published 534 consecutive weekly columns and more than 50 feature articles
Published more than 200 articles on film and video in numerous newspapers and magazines (including Video and Video Review)
Contributing Editor at Reel.com (1996-2005) writing over 1,000 movie synopses for its film database, more than two dozen articles for its online editorial content, and more than a dozen reviews of current films as a film critic. Also developed several courses for Reel U., the world’s first online film school
Killer B’s, Volume 1 (1980-1996): The 237 Best Movies on Demand You’ve (Probably) Never Seen
Killer B’s, Volume 2: Son of a Killer B (1996-2016): 237 MORE Great Movies On Demand You’ve (Probably) Never Seen
Killer B’s: The Hive: The 487 Best Movies* On Demand You’ve (Probably) Never Seen *(and a few TV Shows) (2016)
Killer B’s Action & Thriller: 123 Great Action Movies On Demand You’ve (Probably) Never Seen (Killer B’s Movie Guides)
Killer B’s Comedy: Mild: 101 Quietly Comic M ovies On Demand You’ve (Probably) Never Seen (Killer B’s Movie Guides)
Killer B’s Comedy: Wild: 101 Insane Comedy Movies On Demand You’ve (Probably) Never Seen (Killer B’s Movie Guides)
Killer B’s: Sci-Fi, Fantasy & Horror: 113 Great Imaginative Movies On Demand You’ve (Probably) Never Seen (Killer B’s Movie Guides)
Killer B’s: Drama: 117 Great Dramatic Movies On Demand You’ve (Probably) Never Seen (Killer B’s Movie Guides)
Screenplays (unproduced) (Footnote 5)
Big Talk (1990)
Such a Deal! (1991)
If I Knew Then (1986)
Sleep of Reason (with Will Jacobs) (1992)
Unpublished Novels
Daughter of the Wind (1980)
A Night at the Space Opera (1981)
THEATER
“A Night in the Graveyard” (1991)
“Trouble Is My Career Path” (1992)
“Me and My Shadow” (1992)
“Pledge Night!” (1993)
(All collected in the volume Fourplay)
VISUAL MEDIA (Footnote 6)
Film Roles (per IMDb)
Night Terror (1989)
Almost Hollywood (1994)
The Gospel According to Philip K. Dick (2001)
Maybe Logic: The Lives and Ideas of Robert Anton Wilson (2003)
Television
“The Prisoner” Wraparounds (1985-1996), KTEH-TV, PBS for Silicon Valley
VJ/Host “Sunday Science Fiction Night” (1990-1996), KTEH-TV, PBS for Silicon Valley
FOOTNOTES:
1) You ask about the double copyright date on The Uncertainty Principle? While this is legally unnecessary, I wanted to add the date of the first version (entitled The Coincidence Caper at that point) to establish that I’d been working on that book for 35 years before publishing it. I also wanted to make sure no one could come around and say, “Oh, you stole that plot/character/scene/location from a novel published in 1980/85/90 (or whatever.)” Just a touch ultraparanoid (like most authors), but I do want credit for being there first, in case anyone finds similarities between UP? and anything published since 1979. I didn’t bother to do this with the two sequels (The Infinite Mistress and Detective, Comics), both of which were written in the 1980s (but unpublished until the 20-teens), or Science Fiction: An Oral History, which was compiled in 1978, since the dates of the interviews are included in the book.
2) Escape from ‘50sville is a novel “written by Casey Bragg,” who is a character in my novel Exemplary Lives of Impossible Men. A sample of the work of each writer in Exemplary Lives is included in that book, except for one by “Bragg.” I simply had no detective story to include as an example of his work. But when I foraged my files for something I could use, I came across a file of notes for 50sville that I’d shelved in the late ‘80s, since there were plot problems I couldn’t solve at that time. But when I read the notes 30 years later, the solutions became immediately apparent, and I decided to write 50sville as a “lost novel” by Casey Bragg. (The backstory becomes clearer if one reads Exemplary Lives.) So I take credit as the editor of this novel but attribute its creation to one of my characters. I love fun author shit like this.
3) Fourplay consists of two three-act plays and three one-act plays, all of which (except one one-act) were produced in the early 1990s by Stage One, a theatrical training and performance organization in San Jose, Calif.
4) A few additional notes: I don’t really count the genre film guides as separate books, as they are collections of the genre entries lifted directly from the two volumes of Killer B’s rather than original writing. (My theory was that if readers were reluctant to purchase the full KB books from an unknown film critic, they might opt for less expensive volumes focused on their specific genre interests. To date, I don’t believe a single copy of any of these genre guides have ever been purchased.) I don’t count The Hive either, since it contains the contents of KB 1 & 2 combined into a single volume rather than being original writing.
5) I’ve also included unpublished/unproduced works.
6) I’m including my film and TV work, since I wrote my appearances.
D. Scott Apel (2024 Hilaritas Press podcast photo)
Many of you know D. Scott Apel as Robert Anton Wilson's friend and business partner. Apel co-produced the Trajectories newsletter with RAW, handling the production chores while RAW served as the editorial director. Material from that newsletter is collected in two books: Chaos and Beyond, and also Beyond Chaos and Beyond, both available from Hilaritas Press
But aside from that, Apel also is a prolific author; he has published about 20 books (getting an exact count is complicated), including 11 books of fiction.
My impetus for seeking a new interview with Scott came a few weeks ago, when I finally got around to reading his novel The Uncertainty Principle? It had been on my Kindle for years, but lots of stuff have been on my Kindle for years -- I read dozens of books every year, but it's hard to get around to everything I want to read!
Anyway, I did finally read it, and it was a good read, hard to put down. It concerns a detective, one Alec Smart, who is hired by a veteran science fiction writer. The client wants to know why the predictions in his fiction always come true. As with Illuminatus!, what seems at first like a straightforward detective story quickly gets very weird. The book includes portraits of Robert Anton Wilson, Arlen Riley Wilson and Philip K. Dick, and a character who is a self-portrait of Apel himself. (The ebook is only 99 cents from Amazon, the paperback is $14.95. And if you don't want to buy from Amazon, the Nook ebook from Barnes and Noble, which you can read on the B&N Nook app on your phone or your Nook tablet, also is 99 cents.)
After I discovered I liked The Uncertainy Principle?, I had some questions about it and about Scott's fiction, which Scott agreed to take via email. So here it is.
I will soon publish the only publicly-available, accurate bibliography of Scott's books (the Wikipedia article is very incomplete.)
So here is my interview. See also my 2017 interview with Apel about Robert Anton Wilson, and also my interview with him about the book Beyond Chaos and Beyond. See also the Hilaritas Press podcast interview.
RAWILLUMINATION.NET: You have written quite a few works of fiction, is The Uncertainty Principle? your favorite novel?
D. Scott Apel: This is a trick question, on a par with asking a mother which of her children is her favorite. Like most writers, I tend to believe that my latest effort is not just my favorite, but also my best work. So, while I have a fondness for UP? if only because it took 35 years to finish and publish, at this point, my favorite would be Unfriendly Takeover at OzCo, which I love and which I truly do believe is my best work.
But I also have a deep soft spot in my heart for my first novel, E Attraction, written in 1975, partly because it might be the best idea I've ever had; partly because it was my first novel; partly because I devoted two years to its creation, totally upending my life to concentrate on writing it (like moving from California to Virginia to avoid being sidetracked by my dissolute friends); and partly because no less a critic than Joseph Campbell read the original ms. and wrote me saying it was "obviously a serious work of modern mythology." (That quote would have gone on the cover if I could have gotten it published.) Alas, it will forever remain unpublished: about 10 years ago, I exhumed the ms. with the intent of rewriting it, but after rereading it, I came away baffled as to how to accomplish that. (I do love to refer to it in other books, however, like UP? and Exemplary Lives of Impossible Men, and even OzCo.)
Speaking of Exemplary Lives of Impossible Men, I'm quite proud of that one. It's incredibly dense with 50 years' worth of ideas; it works on several levels; and it incorporates virtually every trope of post-modern novels. In the same vein, I'm also quite pleased with Escape from 50sville, which exhibits a lot of literary tricks I've always wanted to use in a novel (like digesting entire chapters into a few sentences as the alleged editor, to skip boring exposition; including a Study Guide; and allowing me to make use of my extensive knowledge of the old TV series The Prisoner). And I think my other two recent comic mysteries (Jobs of Work and Hollywood, Ending) have the best endings I've ever written.
As for non-fiction, I am always proud of the two volumes of Killer B's movie guides. Deep research and fun reviews.
RAWIllumination.net: I am confused about the history of The Uncertainty Principle?, as it has a 1979 copyright and also a 2015 copyright. Did you revise the book, and if so, how?
D. Scott Apel: While this is legally unnecessary, I wanted to add the date of the first version (entitled The Coincidence Caper at that point) to establish that I’d been working on that book for 35 years before publishing it. I also wanted to make sure no one could come around and say, “Oh, you stole that plot/character/scene/location from a novel published in 1980/85/90 (or whatever.)” Just a touch ultraparanoid (like most authors), but I do want credit for being there first, in case anyone finds similarities between UP? and anything published since 1979. I didn’t bother to do this with the two sequels (The Infinite Mistress and Detective, Comics), both of which were written in the 1980s (but unpublished until the 20-teens), or Science Fiction: An Oral History, which was compiled in 1978, since the dates of the interviews are included in the book.
RAWIllumination.net: What did Robert Anton Wilson think of The Uncertainty Principle? Did you get feedback from Arlen Wilson and from Philip K. Dick?
D. Scott Apel: Well, PKD died before I could get him a copy. He wasn't even a character in the book until a 1981 rewrite, when I realized that at only 60,000 words, The Coincidence Caper needed to be expanded, and his story fit nicely into the original plot. But oddly, I recently ran across a photo of PKD from about 1980, standing in front of one of his bookcases, and I recognized a copy of E Attraction on the top shelf, next to his head. I never had a chance to discuss it with him, however, for whatever reason.
Arlen Wilson had also passed before I finished the final version. I read much of this version to RAW when he was bedridden, and he gave me this quote: "Brilliant, original, and damned funny as well!" Bob also served as an inadvertent inspiration, since I intuited the whole backstory sipping Jameson on the terrace of his Capitola apartment.
RAWIllumination.net: The descriptions of the slightly fictionalized Robert Anton Wilson, Arlen Wilson and Philip K. Dick are accurate and affectionate as far as I can tell (I never met any of them), but the portrait of the Robert Heinlein is not very flattering and noticeably wrong on some details; was this driven by the need of the plot, or were you unhappy with Heinlein?
D. Scott Apel: When I was a teen, like all teen boys who discover sci-fi, I read everything sci-fi by everyone writing sci-fi, from the space opera of Doc Smith to the literary stylings of Ray Bradbury. It took several college lit courses before I began to develop some discrimination and taste about what constituted good writing vs. hack writing. Early on, I consumed everything by the Big 3: Clarke, Asimov, and Heinlein. And as I began to discover and appreciate good literature, I realized that most sci-fi would not be included. But that didn't matter as a teen: sci-fi was the literature of ideas, not literary style, and Heinlein had some great ideas. Eventually, however, I began to see the flaws in his work: wooden writing, two-dimensional characters, etc. -- not to mention his reactionary/Libertarian philosophy and his demeaning treatment of women, both of which made me cringe as a young liberal/radical. The personal enmity enters when my college friend and then-roommate Kevin Briggs and I were conducting interviews for what was supposed to be the first book of interviews with sci-fi authors. Our agent insisted he couldn't sell the book without an interview with one of the Big 3. Well, Clarke was in Sri Lanka, and Asimov was in Boston, which required travel that was out of the question for a couple of poverty-stricken young wannabe authors to accomplish. (How much easier it is today with Zoom and FaceTime!). But Heinlein lived only a few miles away from our Silicon Valley home. We wrote personal letters to him and even had his peer and one of our interview subjects, Ted Sturgeon, call him, vouch for us, and encourage him to meet with us, all to no avail. So the book was never published until 35 years later as Science Fiction: An Oral History. (The whole story of the subversion that prevented that book from being published is included in the book.)
So to answer your specific question: I never knew Heinlein well enough to paint a realistic portrait of him in UP? The Harshlaw character is mostly based on the necessity of the plot -- I needed a famous old SF writer who realized everything he wrote has come true in some way, and an "alternate Heinlein" fit the bill. However, the analysis of his "works" roughly corresponds to my attitude towards his writing. (I mean, shit... Have you ever tried to read The Number of the Beast? I've tried three times, but always gave up in disgust. Absolute garbage.)
RAWIllumination.net: According to the Apel bibliography I am working on, you have written five books that feature private detective Alec Smart: The Uncertainty Principle?; The Infinite Mistress; Detective, Comics; Jobs of Work and Hollywood, Ending. Is that accurate?
D. Scott Apel: Yup. I have two more I'd like to write, but both are still in the research and brainstorming phase. You Killed Out There Last Night has Alec Smart hired in about 1981 by Don Rickles, who realizes that comedy is changing from his Old School/Catskill approach to a more observational approach, and who hires Alec to chauffeur him around to Bay Area comedy clubs to try out new material without the pressure of potentially bombing in a big city club. When he's still recognized and realizes everyone still wants the "old Rickles," he tutors Alec into delivering the new material, which provides the opportunity to discuss various theories and observations about humor and comedy. During the course of their comedy club gigs they cross paths with several rising standups of the time (which allows me the opportunity to use jokes I've written in their style). There is also a subplot concerning a teenage misfit who's built a dirty A-bomb in his garage, and a visit with Frank Sinatra, when Alec and Rickles urge him to use his connections to persuade the Mafia to buy the bomb and dispose of it so the kid doesn't sell it to foreign terrorists. (The Mafia was always patriotic -- and they'd have no use for an A-bomb. Would they?)
The second would be The Dating Detective, in which Alec's look-alike frenemy David Call (who shared an adventure with Smart in Hollywood, Ending) hires him to pretend to be him and go on dates he's lined up at a video dating service, to screen potential girlfriend candidates since he's too busy to do it himself. This assignment is complicated by the fact that Call's wife is pregnant, which results in him saying things like, "I can't go to Lamaze class with you tonight... I have a date." There's also a plot about video piracy. But unless I'm inspired, I'll probably never get around to writing those two. (I can only hope that last sentence comes back to bite me when I do, in fact, write both comic mysteries.)
At the moment, I'm researching a non-comic mystery -- a Sherlock Holmes story set in 1893, during the period SH was missing from London, after his alleged death at Reichenbach Falls. In my story, he's in Chicago to visit the Columbian Exposition and gets involved with tracking down missing women, all victims of the notorious mass murderer: H.H. Holmes, who lured single young women to his "Murder Palace" and disposed of them. (Hence the working title, Holmes vs. Holmes.) (Erik Larsen covers this story in depth in his wonderful bestseller, Devil in the White City.) Holmes combines forces with journalist and proto-feminist Nellie Bly to track down the killer. It's discouraging that dozens, maybe even hundreds of writers have penned Sherlock Holmes stories (some even seem to make a career out of this), but I'm slowly warming up to that idea that apres-Doyle Holmes stories are in fact a genre all their own, and I'd be in good company contributing a unique and original adventure for the iconic (shit, almost archetypal) character, Sherlock Holmes.
Darryl Hannah, getting arrested at a Keystone pipeline protest. (Creative Commons photo, source).
"I have never used cocaine in my life or hosted cocaine-fueled parties. I have never pressured anyone into marriage. I have never desecrated any family heirloom or intruded upon anyone’s private memorial. I have never planted any story in the press. I never compared Jacqueline Onassis’ death to a dog’s." Darryl Hannah. Has Hollywood gone too far with "based on a real story" lies? Is Robert Anton Wilson lucky he never became truly famous? I enjoyed Darryl Hannah's home movies of her husband, Neil Young, during the lockdown.
A New York Times reporter tries ibogaine. Compare with the recent Mike Gathers Hilaritas podcast.
Can psychedelics fix cluster headaches, "probably the most painful medical condition known to science"?
Hey, audiophile, is that an expensive cable or a banana?
"America has become a bit like a banana republic, where the government is now so overbearing that everything becomes seen as a political issue. Indeed, President Trump often goes out of his way to make everything seem to be about politics. I used to think of this as something that happened elsewhere, say in Peron-era Argentina. It’s a sad way to go through life." Scott Sumner, maybe my favorite blogger right now.
"Still, the point of the tale of the Boy Who Cried Wolf is not that wolves don’t exist, or that wolves are always easy to spot. Though I’m painfully aware of the ubiquity of false accusations of fascism, one glaring expression of fascism hides in plain sight all over the world: anti-immigration policies." Bryan Caplan, the piece cites Alan Moore.
Robert Anton Wilson, left, and Robert Shea.
An anecdote from Scott Apel, after I mentioned my Shea book to him: "How great you compiled a Shea tribute! I met him once, at the 12-hour Seattle performance of Ken Campbell's Illuminatus play. He was tall and thin with a high voice and RAW was short and round with his deep Brooklyn accent. Standing together, they reminded me of Mutt & Jeff, if it isn't heretical to say that. "
More soon, by and about Mr. Apel.
Eric Wagner has asked to lead a new online reading group for The Classical Style: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven by Charles Rosen and I have agreed, note that Eric recommends the expanded edition. We start in May with the usual format, i.e. Eric will write a blog post and anyone who wants to take part will be invited to weigh in with the comments.
Here is Eric's statement:
"It pleases me to announce that we will begin a reading group on Charles Rosen’s The Classical Style: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven. This book provides a great analysis of music dear to Bob Wilson, especially Beethoven’s Hammerklavier Sonata. Many people, including me, consider this book one of the best books on music ever written. We will begin on Monday, May 25. I recommend using the Expanded Edition of the text, but you may use the original edition if you would like to. I really look forward to this study group!"
I can't resist adding a couple of points. This book won the National Book Award, so Eric is not alone in his opinion.
I recently ran across a Tyler Cowen podcast that discussed music, and Tyler said that he believes the top three composers are Bach, Mozart and Beethoven. This is the received opinion, but I agree with it. Haydn also is considered an important composer; Sviatoslav Richter, my favorite piano player, once said that Haydn is better than Mozart. So if you are a music fanatic, this is a good opportunity to learn something.
Eric has more musicological knowledge than I do. I told Eric I was worried I would not be able to follow Rosen's points, and he assured me, "Yes, he has technical stuff, but he also has tons of entertaining nontechnical stuff." So apparently if you are as ignorant as me, you can still learn something.
If you are searching for a cheap used copy, it might help to know that the ISBN for the expanded edition is 9780393317121. Bookfinder.com is a good search engine for finding used books and I found a copy for less than $10.
Charles Rosen was a noted piano player as well as a scholar, as the Wikipedia bio explains. Eric has been bending my ear about him for years.
I am currently listening to all of Beethoven's 32 sonatas, concentrating on a particular sonata each week (I am at number 18, about to start on number 19). Eric currently has a similar Beethoven listening project, tying it to a re-read of Timothy Leary's The Game of Life.
Severe damage to Gandhi Hospital in Tehran after U.S. and Israeli airstrikes. (Creative Commons photo, Tasnim news agency. Source.)
[I try to avoid "politics" here --- you can get plenty of that everywhere else --- but given the longtime antiwar stance of both Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea, it seems false to simply ignore what's going on with the U.S. and Israel's attack on Iran and the ensuing war.
I am often not on the same page as Tom Woods, the conservative-leaning libertarian, but he's always been good on antiwar issues, his latest email is worth quoting at length. So here is an excerpt. -- The Management.]
This sh** is out of control.
The Wall Street Journal just released an op-ed called "An Urgent Need to Contain Turkey." Subtitle: "If the Iranian Regime Falls, Beware Ankara's Regional Influence."
It's echoing a former Israeli prime minister, who let us know a few days ago that Turkey "is the new Iran."
Turkey, a NATO member, is now the new Iran.
I am not looking forward to when you and I have to endure, in 2029: "Sure, everybody knows the Iran war was a fiasco, but there was no way we could have known that even though everyone tried to explain it to us. But it's urgent that we go after Turkey. That will be completely different. Not on board? You're an America hater!"
I wrote on my other list today that my Twitter feed has become almost intolerable, overrun by talking-point so-called arguments in favor of this Iran operation.
It's all one-liners that very suggestible people heard on TV:
(1) "They've been at war with us for 47 years" (in response to this one, Glenn Greenwald correctly comes back with: we've been in a war with Iran for 47 years but no prior American presidents remembered to wage that war against Iran or even mention to the American public that we've been in a decades-long war with Iran until about six days ago when Israel wanted to attack them?);
(2) Iran would have had a nuclear bomb two weeks from now if we hadn't acted (I don't hear this one so much because nobody really believes it);
(3) although we've been at war for 47 years, this is not actually a war and we shouldn't call it that because Speaker Mike Johnson told us not to, even though if anyone did these things to the United States we would of course describe them as acts of war, and even though up until the Iran intervention we all agreed that Speaker Mike Johnson was a lying weasel.
Ronald Reagan did the right thing in 1983 when the US Marine barracks was bombed and he got out of there, though of course Lindsey Graham and assorted other lunatics are implying that Reagan -- Reagan! -- was a wimp because he didn't respond with a rampage throughout the region.
You will have to forgive my impertinence -- I have a habit of asking questions that send a hush through cocktail parties -- but why the hell was there a U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut to begin with?
"USA! USA!" does not count as an answer.
None of this benefits the average American. That's not to say absolutely nobody benefits, but you and I are not among the beneficiaries, I regret to inform you, dear reader.
[More here, with a link to subscribe to the newsletter. You can view the official website. Here is antiwar.com. Reason Magazine is good on this issue, here is an example from Nick Gillespie.]
Mary Butts in 1919 (public domain photo).
Every once in awhile, I run into a writer and wind up being surprised that I did not know the name. The modernist writer Mary Butts (1890-1937) would be the latest example.
I am on the email list for Standard Ebooks, an outfit I've written about before that makes available excellent free editions of public domain books. The latest newsletter announced the publication of the "influential but obscure modernist novel" Armed With Madness by Mary Butts:
"Six friends are staying in a cottage in the English countryside when they discover a mysterious ancient cup buried deep in a local well. The cup seems to have a long history—could it be the legendary Holy Grail? Long-held tensions start simmering as the friends begin investigating the cup’s story, threatening the formerly peaceful retreat.
"Butts adapts the grail myth to early 20th century England in a highly modernist prose style that invites comparison to Virginia Woolf or Ford Madox Ford. The narrative resembles a kaleidoscope in its shifting perspectives, abrupt dialogue, and dreamlike feel, and close reading reveals densely packed allusions ranging from Greek mythology to English legend.
"The first edition of Armed with Madness was illustrated by none other than Jean Cocteau and won praise from her modernist contemporaries. Butts went on to write a companion novel in 1932 following some of the same characters, The Death of Felicity Taverner."
Who knows what I'll think of Armed With Madness when I get around to reading it, but I saw other indications that, at the very least, Butts was an interesting person who hung out with other interesting people. The Wikipedia bio records that she was a student of Aleister Crowley and spent time with him at the Abbey of Thelema in Sicily. She knew modernist writers such as Ezra Pound. A biography is available, by Nathalie Blondel.
A university professor in Canada provides the Mary Butts Letters Project online. And here is an interesting piece from The New Yorker, "Modernism's Forgotten Mystic." That 2021 piece by Merve Emre describes Butts as pretty much forgotten, so maybe I get a pass for not knowing the name until a few days ago. Read the piece for the William Blake connection!
Another reading log from Mark Brown and myself.
What Mark Brown read last month:
Trouble is My Business by Raymond Chandler 2/6
The Night Land by William Hope Hodgson 2/11
Two Hawks from Earth by Philip Jose Farmer 2/18
Domnei by James Branch Cabell 2/22
Land of Terror by Edgar Rice Burroughs 2/25
Turn on Your Mind: Four Decades of Psychedelic Rock by Jim de Rogatis 2/27
What I read:
The Uncertainty Principle?, D. Scott Apel
War By Other Means (Fall of the Censor Book 7), Karl Gallagher
The Workshop of Democracy, 1863–1932 (The American Experiment Book 2), James MacGregor Burns
Colors of Asia: A Visual Journey, Kevin Kelly
Forged for Prophecy (Forged for Destiny, #2), Andrew Knighton
As usual, everyone else is invited to share what they have read.
