RAW Semantics returns with new essay

The RAW Semantics blog returns with a new post, "Right Men, Natural Law & Platonic Free Markets – part 1." There's discussion of the concepts in both The New Inquisition and Natural Law. 

I have trouble sometimes finding a couple of sentences that will summarize an entire post, and indeed at one point Brian worries that "God, I hope that doesn’t get quoted out of context, making me sound like some weirdo Youtube influencer!"

But I will quote the paragraph that starts things off: "Robert Anton Wilson’s take on everyday hypnosis – that we drift from 'direct' experience into what we call the 'Real' World, a learned abstraction – emphasises the objectivity we attribute to this 'Platonically Real' realm. Thus we filter out what doesn’t conform to the abstraction as 'subjective', 'mere appearance', hallucination, illusion, dream, fiction, error, lies, etc."

Part Two is promised soon. 

As usual, Brian has some really good artwork with his piece, sample above. 

Joseph Matheny: The last interview?

 Billed as "the last interview I will do for at least a few years," Joseph Matheny appears above on the Why Files podcast. 

Here is the blurb:

"Joseph Matheny invented something in 1989 that nobody had a name for yet. He called it a story. The internet called it the first alternate reality game. The Navy called him to ask how he did it. He turned them down.

"Tonight he’s in the basement explaining how he built an early AI, game-mastered Robert Anton Wilson at Esalen, and why QAnon looks so familiar to him.

"Some things are better understood when you know how the trick works."

Mr. Matheny says, "Interviews have lost their appeal for me, and, frankly, you already have plenty of examples of me going on at length."

Meanwhile, free release of Ong's Hat: COMPLEAT continues as a podcast series details here. 

Joseph L. Flatley on 'The Occult Timothy Leary'

Joseph L. "Lenny" Flatley is an American journalist, author, podcaster, movie maker and private investigator who lives in Pittsburgh. He publishes the Failed State Update Substack newsletter. 

His new book, The Occult Timothy Leary: The Tarot, Magical States, and Post-Terrestrial Evolution, discusses Leary's Eight Circuit model and SMI2LE ideas and argues that Leary's system can be applied to tarot readings. It is available as a paperback and ebook from all of the usual online outlets, such as Barnes and Noble.  You can also check out his publisher's author page. 

Another book, New Age Grifter: The True Story of Gabriel of Urantia and his Cosmic Family was released by Feral House and his pieces have appeared in various publications, such as Please Kill Me, Postindustrial, The Verge, Pando, and CounterPunch.

I wanted to learn more about this interesting book, which I devoured quickly, so I requested an interview. It lasted for almost a half hour, and the bulk of it is transcribed here; I only deleted a few unnecessary bits, such as some kind remarks he made about my blog. 

RAWILLUMINATION: As somebody who reads a lot of books, there are certain books,  I hear about it or I see a description and I've just gotta read it. And your book was one of those. But as a writer who's trying to market your book, who do you see as your audience? Who were the "I have to have it" readers out there? Who do you think would run out and buy your book if they just happened to hear about it on a blog or somewhere on the Internet or from a friend or whatever? 

JOSEPH L. FLATLEY: You know, it's kind of a challenge writing a book about a historical figure, especially one that's been written about pretty extensively over decades at this point. I was very well aware as a reader, not only of Leary and Wilson and that whole cohort, but all the websites and newsletters and things over the years that have kind of kept the flame alive, so to speak. I was very aware that there is an audience for this book and also that I wanted to approach the topic differently, even down to the language of circuits and  the vocabulary that we kinda use in this field of endeavor. I see a lot of people kinda slipping into the same  language, the same descriptions. And, you know, Norman Mailer said that  -- because Norman Mailer is famous for kinda changing up his writing style with every book  -- when asked about it, he said that when you write in a different style or a different voice, you're attacking the subject matter from a different angle.

So I wanted at the word level, I wanted to approach the subject differently from all the other great books that have written about Tim and Robert Anton Wilson, precisely because I think people fall into these cliches of thought.  You talk about the circuits for 20 years, you stop thinking about it, you just kinda regurgitate what you're hearing. 

So my book is, it's both like a primer for new Leary readers, call it a "Timothy Leary for Dummies" type book. But also I think it's great for people who are already familiar with this stuff precisely because I took efforts to write a book in a different style or different angle than all the other ones. So anybody interested in the subject matter, obviously, but also there's this large untapped, and I barely touch upon it, I feel, but there's a large untapped populace of practicing occult occultists and ceremonial magicians who might be able to benefit from looking at the circuits from that angle. 

RAWILLUMINATION: Can you give me kind of a little short biography of yourself to kind of introduce yourself? I know you're a writer and I think I saw in your Substack you're a private investigator.  

FLATLEY: Yeah, I'm a investigative journalist and a private investigator. At least at my level being a PI,  it's not nearly as interesting as some might think it would be.

I make movies but my main focus is writing books. I've written several novellas and have had two nonfiction books published in the last few years, and I'm working on another one. 

Joseph L. Flatley (Linked in photo).

RAWILLUMINATION: Do you wanna say anything about where you live? 

FLATLEY: Oh yeah, I'm in Pittsburgh. Love Pittsburgh. I'm based here primarily because it's one of those places that the cost of living hasn't climbed so high yet that I can do these weird jobs like PI work and journalism and keep a roof over my head.  

RAWILLUMINATION: Well, we're kind of neighbors then, because I live in the Cleveland area. And, by coincidence, I have a friend who lives in West Virginia, not super far from Pittsburgh, and I've been planning to buy him a copy of your book, so that's awesome.

FLATLEY: That's interesting. Yeah, I actually grew up in Erie, so I know Cleveland pretty well. 

RAWILLUMINATION: And I've been to Erie, Pennsylvania, as you might guess.

Your dedication implies that you met Robert Anton Wilson and talked to him. Can you talk a little bit about that? [The dedication says, "For Robert Anton Wilson, who once told me he doesn't fear death. And for Antero Alli, who agreed with him."]

FLATLEY: I took the first Maybe Logic [Academy] class that he taught way back in, whenever that was, '98 or '97 and  one day we hadn't heard from him for I can't remember how long, but a notable period of time.

And then when he finally got back on, he said he had fallen in in his bedroom or his bathroom and couldn't get help and he sat there for like a day, and finally I think his daughter found him. And he told the class. "Guys, the good thing to come out of this is I realized that I don't fear death," and I always kinda kept that with me.

And then years later Antero Alli announced that he had cancer and that he wasn't gonna get treated and he was going to die too. And  we were emailing back and forth and I mentioned that, and he said, "Yeah, I don't think I fear death,  either."  And I was like, well, that's nice to know.

RAWILLUMINATION: That's a great anecdote. 

Did you ever meet Timothy Leary?

FLATLEY: No, no, that was just a little before my time. I've talked to Zach Leary quite a bit, but I never met Tim.

RAWILLUMINATION: It's funny how that works out. I met Robert Shea once, but I never met Robert Anton Wilson or even took a class from him. And now I wound up doing this blog.

Your book is dedicated to Wilson and to Antero Alli.  And I noticed you referenced The Starseed Signals quite a bit. Obviously that was a book that was not published until many years after Wilson's death. But do you see that as kind of a key book among Wilson's books?

FLATLEY: So that was a great gift really, that while I was writing this book that came out. Because if it wasn't for that -- I was doing a lot of time  tracking down old issues of  Green Egg and you know, all these  little magic newsletters that Wilson had contributed to as a freelancer. The Buckland Witchcraft Museum, I'm sure you're familiar with that in Cleveland, they have a collection of those in their archives. So I've talked to Steven [Intermill] quite a bit, the director, and  he was helping me out, but when The Starseed Signals came out, I was like, wow, it's all here. I can see why it wasn't published or why it wasn't going to be published by a major publisher unless there was some serious editing because it's very much a first draft.

But talk about a first draft of history. It's, you know, it's like really Wilson's man on the scene description of precisely him and Tim working through these ideas. And it was invaluable. 

RAWILLUMINATION: Kind of the way I would describe it is that in a sense it's sort of a first draft for Cosmic Trigger. But it has enough interesting material that  at least for a serious Wilson fan, it really kind of stands on its own. 

FLATLEY: Yeah. absolutely. You know it is a first draft in a lot of ways for Cosmic Trigger and also, for The Game of Life, Timothy Leary's book. 

There's kind of this question of why Leary stopped talking about magic so soon. I just really feel like he was always on the move. He was going so fast. He had 76 years on this planet, and in 1993, he's not gonna waste his time talking about what happened in 1973. So I totally understand, but I don't feel like any of it was disavowed. And that was the project of this book, kinda go through everything, everything I could get my hands on. See how Western esotericism as well as Eastern practices influenced Leary in the subtle ways that often didn't get pointed out just because Tim really didn't footnote it. He was putting that these fabulous ideas together. He wasn't really, I don't think, so concerned about a meticulous cataloging of where they came from.   

RAWILLUMINATION: The structure of your book, I thought was kind of interesting. I read every word from start to finish, but I kinda have the impression that chapters one through eight were meant to be read and that chapters 9 and 10 were really sort of like a reference section. Do you think it's a fair description of the book or do you want to modify that?

FLATLEY: I certainly think some people will use the book that way, which is totally understandable and totally valid. The way I was able to sell it was precisely because  Inner Traditions is an occult publisher. It's actually Destiny Books, an imprint of Inner Traditions. They're an occult publisher. Your readers are occultists. I know you've already done several Timothy Leary books, but this one's about tarot cards.

RAWILLUMINATION: The cover is credited to Adam Scott Miller. I don't know the artist, but it's kind of a witty cover with Timothy Leary as Aleister Crowley. Were you happy with the cover? 

FLATLEY: Yeah. You know, I'm really curious. I keep forgetting to ask my editor, but either that image or a very similar image was used in, I'm blanking on the name of the magazine, but John Higgs,  the author of I Have America Surrounded, before he wrote that biography of Leary, he had done a feature article about Leary and mysticism and Crowley and I know that that was the cover art for that going back, what, 20 years. And that was the magazine art.

So I don't know, it's the same guy that did the cover or if they got permission or what, but I think it's pretty clever. I really like it. 

RAWILLUMINATION: Yeah, I thought it was too. 

So are you a long time tarot reader and if so, how did your research for this book influence how you do readings? Did it influence you a great deal?

FLATLEY: I'm a long term tarot dabbler. I'm not gonna be able to sit down with nothing but a deck of cards and a burning question and be able to tell the thing,  tell what they're saying. But I can read a reference book. And partially I wanted to see if we examined the tarot cards, not in like the traditional A.E. Waite descriptions, but a Learian take. I wanted to see if it would still kind of give good, valid readings. And I have to say, it does. I think that what Leary discussed as far as the tarot goes doesn't replace anything, but it's a really good complement to anybody's tarot practice.

Leary always talked about the transaction, dimensionalizing to use that word, even though I don't really think that's a word. Dimensions of things like a single unit isn't very meaningful. But once you and I start talking and we can have an interaction, that's where you start to see the true nature of the individual. And that's how I approach tarot readings.

I do a kinda idiosyncratic method where I pull one Major Arcana card and I have a deck that I made myself that's like Leary's Trumps, because he added two tarot Trumps to the deck. So I  use that. I draw that and then I draw a Minor Arcana card. It's not like each card has a message, but what is the interaction between these two cards? What is that message?And  then also,  Brian Barritt taught John Higgs, how Tim read tarot cards and he had his own weird way of reading tarot cards.   He wrote about it in his book and I emailed him for some clarifications and then explained that in my book as well. 

 RAWILLUMINATION: John's really a great guy. He's very kind, the way he interacts with people and he seems like he's pretty busy since he's become  more of a major author, but he's always been nice to me.

FLATLEY:  Me too. I'm so grateful when people who have busy lives and are doing interesting things will take the time to talk to me. I reached out to quite a few people who knew Tim or had some expertise and a lot of people, I'm not naming names, I don't blame them, but a lot of people just, like, would not talk. I think it was like, 'I've been talking about Timothy Leary for 50 years. Leave me alone.'  But, you know,  who am I? Some guy they never heard of. But I am very grateful to the people who did talk to me. R. U. Sirius. Richard Metzger. Douglas Rushkoff.  Liz Elliott, Brian Barritt's partner. They're all in the book. I thank them all in the acknowledgments. It's been a real gift to be able to do this book and to be able to talk to so many cool people about a subject I'm so fascinated by. 

RAWILLUMINATION: I did a blog post on your Psychedelic Press interview, which I thought was quite interesting. And I  quoted a paragraph from that about the mission of the book.

You said Leary was very well educated and understood science, but his project wasn't scientific, even if it used the language of science. It was pseudoscience. "And I mean that the best possible way." Can you kinda clarify what you mean by "pseudoscience in the best possible way?"

FLATLEY: When you approach something using the scientific method, using the various tools of research in science that we've kind of developed over the years to come to theories that seem to answer some very big questions, that's science. When you take a bunch of drugs and  think and have great thoughts and write them down, even if you're a brilliant man like Leary, who is a systems thinker who's able to rigorously think through these ideas and put pen to paper and create a very fascinating world view out of it, one that holds up to scrutiny, you don't actually have proof of any of it, that's not science, it's just not. 

Tim writes very convincingly about humankind eventually not only getting off this planet, but going to the cosmic center, engaging in some sort of communion with the black hole there and becoming part of the cosmic consciousness. OK! What the hell's that? I mean, it's great, but  I don't think any of us are gonna be around to see that happen. I'm not entirely convinced that entering a black hole would be good for anybody. That's science, right? 

RAWILLUMINATION:  It seemed to be pretty clear to me that you probably read all the available Leary biographies or books about Leary that you could get your hands on. I've read some of them, but I'm probably not as up to speed as you are. Do you have a favorite Leary biography or a favorite book about Leary that you thought was especially good?

FLATLEY: You know, they all have their value. Like Robert Greenfield wrote the kinda the big standard tome that's  just called Timothy Leary: A Biography.  It's the size of a phone book. And Greenfield's one of these writers that it's like, I've read a few of his books and he doesn't seem to really like or appreciate anybody he's writing about.  And I know for a fact that Tim's family was pissed off by that book. And I understand why because you read it and  there's kind of impeccable research, but he always spins everything in the worst possible light. That was probably the most valuable book for me precisely because it had all the sources. 

But if somebody's hoping to get into Timothy Leary for the first time or just because they find him fascinating, that's probably not the best book. John Higgs' book, I Have America Surrounded, it's fast, it's fun. He's a great writer. He had some great access.

There's a journalist, John Bryan, Whatever Happened to Timothy Leary? This book came out, this is a amazing book. It came out in 1980. John Bryan was a journalist who ran an alternative press syndicate, underground press guy on the West Coast of the 70s and was like one of the big movers there. And he covered Tim in real time and he put out a book in 1980. Someone that was in there in the thick of it, it's really invaluable. But he also seemed to like misunderstand or dislike Leary. 

So they all have their virtues. I would definitely urge the reader to buy my book.  

RAWILLUMINATION: Well, it's actually quite a nice biography of Leary among its other virtues. You kind of covered the high points and kind of cover his evolution.

FLATLEY: It's easy to write something 30 years after somebody dies.  My point in delving into this was like, really,  what are the footprints? You know, what are the bread crumbs of Leary's occult interests? So when I read Flashbacks and he's recounting talking to his grandfather in the 1930s or whatever, I'm looking at that. I'm like, what's the esoteric angle? Is there an esoteric angle? And so I don't know if you would call what I wrote revisionism or just like following bread crumbs, but I strongly feel that he had an esoteric evolutionary perspective from the very beginning, even if he didn't realize it or didn't have the words for it. Because you know what 14 year old does?

RAWILLUMINATION: His explanation of how he was the reincarnation of Crowley is hilarious in your book. I love that particular anecdote.

I only have a couple more questions. I feel like I've gotten a lot out of you.  I kind of wondered if you had like an origin story, if you wanted to explain how you got interested in Leary or Wilson or the Eight  Circuit model in the first place, if there was a particular instance or a particular book that turned you on on.

FLATLEY: In 1989. I was like an eigth grader on computer bulletin board systems interacting with all these weirdos. This was like pre Internet and one of my friends was  bought Neuropolitique from Loompanics, the old underground publisher and book seller and he was like, You gotta read this. So I read the hell out of it and I was in the eighth grade. I didn't understand any of it, but I did have a sense like all the writing about the Eight Circuit model, which I don't think he even used that term, but you know about circuits and psychological,  different states of consciousness. It really resonated with me. I was like, I think this is how the world works, even at that early age. And I've always seen that is how the world works. So it's like it was either a privilege to discover that stuff  at such an early age or maybe it was a curse. I don't know. But it's been with me kind of my whole life.

RAWILLUMINATION: BBS is such a fascinating thing, kind of a really early decentralized Internet. I loved dialing into them exploring them  it's kind of a lost culture and I wonder how many people remember that anymore. 

FLATLEY:  Oh, I know At the time it seemed very annoying, but now looking back, there was so something so wonderful about all the things in our technology that made us stop and wait. Like, yeah, yeah. 

A lot of these BBS's were, it was like their home phone during the day, but you could call at night between like 10 p.m. and 8 a.m. or something. Not all of them had dedicated phone lines.   

Maybe Day celebration returns

 

Bobby Campbell, perennial Maybe Day organizer, has announced the plans for the July 23 celebration this year. As always, Bobby encourages everyone else to also have a project and/or organize an event, too.

Bobby will hold an art show for his art in Wilmington, Delaware, and he plans a 24-hour broadcast. He also invites everyone who does something to email him so he can publicize it. 

Here's what Bobby has to say:

"MAYBE DAY 2026 is our 7th annual celebration of the lives and ideas of Robert Anton Wilson and the spirit of Maybe Logic! This year we are continuing our incursion into real world spaces with a pop up bc art show (LOCAL) and adding a new twist to our maybe logical information distribution with an experimental 24 hour multimedia broadcast! (GLOBAL)

"And as always, in the spirit of Discordians sticking apart, do please feel free and encouraged to create Maybe Day happenings, whether online or offline, using your own ways and means. A decentralized and self-organizing Maybe Day would be just the thing to keep the lasagna flying onward and upward to ever greater glory.

"The idea is simple: Do something cool on July 23rd • Include other people • Enjoy the day!

"If you are planning a public event, and/or have a link/artwork you'd like to share, please feel free to send over the details, so we can feature it! Send Maybe Day celebrations to weirdoverse@gmail.com

"Also! Make sure to check out the brand new Maybe Day infinite scroll! We have accumulated an incredible bounty of novelties and curiosities over the years, a bottomless rabbit hole that cascades endlessly through idea space, mind your hats going in!" 

[See for yourself,  if you scroll down on the page, you can check out past celebrations.]

The Ginsberg centennial [UPDATED]

 

This is the music film for Bob Dylan's great song, "Subterranean Homesick Blues," from the great Bringing It All Back Home album (the one that has the cover of the young lady in red stretched out on the couch, behind Dylan). 

If you watch the video,  you probably will mostly focus on Dylan holding the cue cards, but the guy on the left, who can be seen gesturing and talking, and who walks across the scene with his cane at the end, is Allen Ginsberg, the famous poet.

As Eric Wagner has pointed out, today is Ginsberg's centennial, i.e. he was born on June 3, 1926.  

In his book Coincidance, Robert Anton Wilson writes about Ginsberg in the piece "The Poet As Defense Early Warning Radar System." RAW refers to Ginsberg as "our major living American poet."

Ginsberg has a long Wikipedia biography.  Here is the Allen Ginsberg Trust website.  You can also see the calendar of Ginsberg centennial events, one is tonight in New York City, but there's stuff all over the world. 

Ginsberg is best known for his poem "Howl," and (in the comments) Van Scott mentioned in yesterday's post reading in April Ginsberg's Howl and Other Poems. 

UPDATE: Ed Sanders on Howl.  Link via Eric Wagner. 

What we read last month

 

What Mark Brown read (reads and re-reads):

The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen  5/8
The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Leguin  5/10  
The Citadel of the Autarch by Gene Wolfe  5/22   
Reflections by Walter Benjamin   5/25   
The Book of Forbidden Words by Robert Anton Wilson  5/29   
Wyst: Alastor 1716 by Jack Vance 

Here's what I read (reads and re-reads)

The Infinite Mistress, D. Scott Apel
When the Sacred Ginmill Closes, Lawrence Block
Mary, Vladimir Nabokov
Ghost Town, Tom Perrotta
The Occult Timothy Leary: The Tarot, Magical States, and Post-Terrestrial Evolution, Joseph Flatley
Epicureanism, Tim O'Keefe 

As usual, everyone else is invited to report what they read in May in the comments. 

'The Classical Style' reading group, Week Two

 

Week 2: Preface to the First Edition, A New Preface, Acknowledgments, Bibliographic Note, Note on the Music Examples. 

By ERIC WAGNER
Special guest blogger

Welcome back my friends to the show that never ends. I laughed out loud on pg. xviii when Rosen wrote, “But we know that performers of weak moral principles did not observe all written repeats.”  

Some of you have expressed concerns about not understanding this text. I hope you will enjoy the book anyway. I don’t understand everything that Rosen writes, but I think I understand some of it, and I enjoy it immensely. It seems to me that playing the music provides the greatest tool for understanding it. I don’t play piano much anymore, and I never played that well. I feel lucky that I got to play Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven works while playing bass in student orchestras. However, I disagree with Rosen sometimes, and with other musicians who can actually play this music. We all experience the music in our own way.  

Listening to the music provides the second best way to experience and learn about this music. Hearing it live seems a wonderful tool, but listening to records or watching recordings also help us understand the music. Reading about it also helps. I remember hearing Andre Previn talk about the privilege of conducting music “that is greater than we are”. Now, spiritually, I don’t know if I fully agree with this, but I love the line from the Upanishads Bob Wilson quoted in Masks of the Illuminati, ”Remove infinity from it and infinity still remains.” I keep coming back to late Beethoven, week after week, year after year, decade after decade, and it keeps bringing new delights. 

This brings up the question of opera. Some people go to the opera regularly. James Joyce, Charles Rosen, and Stendhal went to opera regularly, and this experience seems central to understanding their works. I have not attended an opera in person since hearing Die Fledermaus in Vienna in 1985 from the highest, cheapest seats. (Or did I stand? I think I sat. Memory fails me.) Mozart’s great operas play a significant role in this book. I highly recommend Bergman’s film of The Magic Flute. Because of watching that film over and over again over the past 41 years, as well as listening to various recordings and getting to teach that film in various classes, I know that opera pretty well. In the mid-1980s I expressed my yearning to own more opera cd’s to a friend who kindly said they would pay for half of a three cd opera recording for me if I would pay the balance, so I got Solti’s recording of The Marriage of Figaro which I have listened to a ton over the decades. I feel familiar with the music of that opera, but I don’t understand the plot very well. I have started watching a YouTube recording of the opera, but I don’t have much appetite for watching opera on TV, alas. 

A Philip K. Dick prank

 The above is the back cover of a British reprint of Philip K. Dick's classic, Hugo-winning novel, The Man in the High Castle. There's an author photo on the back cover of a bearded author. Except it's not Dick -- it's Ted White, the science fiction editor, author and fan who recently died. 

White tells the story in The Amazing Editorials, a collection of the editorials White wrote while editor of Amazing, a science fiction magazine. I bought the book and began reading it after I heard of White's death.

White explains that in a 1965 visit to see Dick,  he showed Dick a photo of himself that made him look a little like Dick. Dick asked for a copy of the photo, explaining that as a joke, he wanted to send it to his agent to fulfill a request for an author photo for the British Penguin edition of High Castle. 

Both authors then forgot about the matter, but in 1966, White thought to bring it up, and Dick said that yes, the photo had been used, and he gave White a copy of the book.

There is other Dick material in White's book, including a plug for Confessions of a Crap Artist, the first publication of a mainstream Dick novel. It was published by David Hartwell, the famous science fiction editor who went on to edit some of Robert Anton Wilson's work.  (And if you follow that link, here is part two of that interview.)

Ansible Editions is the catchall name for all books published by David Langford; some are free as ebook downloads, some (like the Ted White book) cost money, at least some are available as paperbacks. The titles are worth a look if you are into fandom or science fiction. 

A 1985 article about Robert Shea

Robert Shea

[This article is copied from a reprint in Robert Shea's zine, "No Governor." If you look under "Robert Shea Resources" at the right side of this page, you will see links to PDF files of all of the issues, which have material from Shea, Robert Anton Wilson and others. If you get interested in Shea, please take a look at my Robert Shea book, if you had not heard about it yet. -- The Management.]

Robert Shea has the write stuff

The Glencoe News, Jan. 3, 1985

Reprinted in No Governor No. 7, March 1985

By VIRGINIA GERST

If Robert Shea gets bored while reading a novel, he puts down the book, and tries to figure out what  has gone wrong.

"Usually, nothing is happening in the story, or I don't like the main character because he's not taking charge the way he should," the author said recently.

For the 51-year-old Glencoe resident, literary analysis is more than an intellectual exercise. It is a means of ensuring that his own plots remain lively, that his own heroes seize control.

Since he sold his first story to Fantastic Universe magazine for $10 in 1958, Shea has earned at least a part of his living as a writer. A former editor at Playboy, he has been at it full time since 1978.

His first novel, "Illuminatus!," a three-volume science fiction tale he wrote with Robert Anton Wilson, was published in 1975, while "Shike," a historical work set in medieval Japan, appeared in 1981. Two other novels, both rooted in French history, are in various stages of completion.

All are produced in a small, cluttered office just off the kitchen of the two-story home he shares with his wife, Yvonne, a Chicago advertising agency executive, their 11-year-old son, Michael, and two family dogs.

The room is crammed with books, magazines and stacks of correspondence. A copy of "Dune" rests on a bookcase next to a volume titled "Zen," while the hum of his Apple IIe mingles with music from a cassette player on a shelf upon the wall.

"I can't say that every day I just rush to the word processor, but that's the ideal and it does happen sometime," he noted. "Other days, I have to cultivate habits."

Beginning at 9:30 a.m. today, and continuing for the following three Thursdays, Shea will help other writers cultivate professional habits when he appears as guest lecturer at the Off Campus Writers  Workshop in the Winnetka Community House, 620 Lincoln Ave. Admission to each three-hour session is $5, or $14 for the complete series.

Meetings, Shea said, will be devoted primarily to discussions of the participants' manuscripts ("Honest criticism -- I've heard they've got built-in baloney detectors," he said.)

The gregarious writer also will  spend time revealing "everything I know about magazine writing and writing historical  fiction."

In the latter category, he is sure to place a great deal of emphasis upon plot.

"Authors have got to realize that the main thing is to be a good storyteller," he said over coffee in his living room, filled with Victorian antiques and framed photographs of Shea family ancestors.

"Particularly when you're writing historical fiction, it's easy to get carried away showing off how much you know, dragging a thing in just because it is an amazing fact. But it can't get in the way of your story."

Accurate portrayal of fact is important in fiction, said the writer, who researches his novels  carefully, and plans a trip to France for his latest book, set in the Napoleonic period.

But accuracy is not always critical. Saul Bellow's "Henderson the Rain King," he pointed out, is set in an Africa that has nothing to do with the continent as it really is. "And nobody cares," he said. "It is such a wonderful piece of storytelling."

Shea takes best sellers very seriously. "They are fun to read, and that is the bottom line." And, while the long hours he has spent reading his way up and down best seller lists have not revealed any formulas for instant success, they have turned up some common characteristics among the published blockbusters.

"People are always in trouble and it is pretty bad trouble," he said. "Take 'The Thornbirds.' People suffer all the way through that."

The people, too, are crucial, particularly the hero, who had better act the part.

"Look at 'Shogun.' The main character is in a foreign land, he doesn't speak the language and everybody is hostile. In a situation like that, most people would lay down and die. But he doesn't. He is thinking all the time, about how to survive and prevail."

He has equally strong opinions about the villain.

"I want to like him as much as I like the hero," he said. "In real life, there really are no villains who set out to be villains. No one ever thinks they, themselves, are doing evil, and that is one of the truths I like to convey."

A graduate of Manhattan College, with a master of arts degree in English from Rutgers University, Shea has been reading and writing science fiction since he was a child growing up in New York City.

"I was the only kid in the neighborhood who read the stuff," he recalled.

He started selling stories, "at a penny a word," while in college, and met his "Illuminatus!" collaborator while at Playboy, where both were employed.

For their amusement, the men used to pass notes back and forth detailing the activities of the citizenry of an imaginary land of the future. One day, it occurred to them they might be on to something.

They were. The book, a combination of political satire, science fiction and fantasy, has developed what press releases call "a small, but highly intelligent cult following." Even better, when reissued as a single, very fat, volume in 1984, it earned a place on the trade paperback best seller list.

Shea planned his second novel to deal with a civil war in a faraway galaxy, but when his agent showed the five-page outline to a publisher, the publisher had other ideas.

"He said he liked the story, but that he couldn't bring out any more science fiction at that time," Shea recalled. "He said, 'How about moving it to Japan?' "

His wife recently had completed a course in Japanese  history, and Shea leafed through some of her books, coming upon an historic period that paralleled the one in his outline. The result, "Shike," (pronounced She-K), has sold well, both on this side of the Atlantic and in nine foreign countries.

He may have changed his idea to get  his story published, but he insisted he never would have done it had he not become fascinated witih feudal Japan. He counsels other writers to be equally intrigued by their subject matter.

"Many people see that romantic novels are selling, so they rush out and start writing romantic novels,"  he said. "But they're going to spend a year or maybe two or three on this work, and, if they are not interested in the subject, they are not going to be very happy."

If readers notice some elements of mysticism in his writing, it is no accident. Shea has been involved with mysticism ever since he read Ray Bradbury's "Zen and the Art of Writing," in Writer Magazine several years back. He now meditates 20 minutes a day, as a means of "getting close to whatever is out there, of trying to make contact with the ultimate reality.

"In his article, Bradbury implied that there was something about Zen that, if studied, could help people become more creative writers," he recalled. "So, like a lot of people, I got involved in mysticism thinking it would give me some practical benefit. But once you get into it, you lose that motivation. Writing becomes a way of getting closer to mysticism."

His basic goals, however, have not changed. He advises all writers to write as much as they can. Even if the work is not to be published, they should take pleasure in the process.

"I've never written for the literary critics, or to make a whole lot of money," he concluded. "I've always thought, 'Can I have fun writing this'?"

Robert Shea not only has fun, but he's managed to make a living at it as well.

An AI explains Robert Anton Wilson

 

I recently mentioned that the official Robert Anton Wilson website has obviously been updated and recommended checking it out if you haven't done so recently. 

Rasa has now sent me an AI analysis, above, of the official page. He explains,

"Ted Hand on Facebook suggested I do something with Google’s NotebookLM program, so I made this video. I basically just loaded in the URL for rawilson.com and asked Notebook to make a video…

"I’m not a fan of all AI stuff like this. Some I’ve seen was good. This one seems both interesting and weird."

Ted White has died

Ted White in 2007. Creative Commons photo, source. 

There has been quite an overlap between RAW fandom and science fiction fandom, so I occasionally publish news that might be of interest. Today, I'm noting that Ted White has died. 

White was a science fiction writer and magazine editor, also very active in science fiction fandom. He also was a musician. Amazing is the oldest science fiction magazine, and White was the editor for years. I regularly read the magazine when I was in college in the 1970s. The SF Encyclopedia entry for White gives a good description of his tenure: "He became the sometimes controversial editor of Amazing Stories and Fantastic 1969-1979; he noticeably improved both magazines, buying original stories and artwork, phasing out reprints, contributing sometimes lengthy editorials and emphasizing matters relating to sf Fandom including lively letter columns and Fanzine reviews."

I always enjoyed his sometimes contentious editorials in the magazine. When I learned of White's death, I bought an ebook of White's Amazing editorials from Ansible editions, and I am reading it now. 

White was extremely active in fandom for decades; he won a Hugo Award for best fan writer back in 1968. Here he writes about the late Arthur Hlavaty, prominent RAW fan and multiple Hugo nominee for best fan writer. Robert Shea was active in SF fandom, so I suspect he and White crossed paths, but I don't have any evidence. I never spoke to White at a convention but heard him once at a discussion on fandom. 

Related: The February 1977 issue of Fantastic magazine, one of the issues Ted White edited, published a review of The Eye in the Pyramid written by SF and fantasy great Fritz Leiber, does anyone have text of that review that can be shared with me? 

Mark Fraunfelder plugs 'Prometheus Rising'

Mark Frauenfelder of Boing Boing fame puts out more than one newsletter. His Book Freak newsletter focuses on nonfiction books with ideas that can be applied to your life. There are paid and free versions of the newsletter.

I previously wrote about Mark's discussion of Robert Anton Wilson's Natural Law. That one was behind a paywall, and I had to buy a one-month subscription to be able to read it.

But Mark's latest, on Prometheus Rising, is a free issue, and everyone can read it here. 

Mark keeps his Book Freak newsletters short, but he squeezes in a lot of content. The Prometheus Rising newsletter covers four core concepts -- Whatever the Thinker Thinks, the Prover Proves, You Live in a Reality Tunnel, Society Is a Brainwashing Machine and The Nervous System Can Be Reprogrammed -- and then suggests four "try it now" exercises. There's also a brief summary of the book and an explanation of the eight circuit model.

This blog's Prometheus Rising discussion group remains available on the right side of this page (scroll down). 

Hilaritas Press published what I suspect is the definitive edition of the book. It is the only title in the Hilaritas catalog available as a hardcover, as well as the usual paperback and ebook editions. 

Bonus link: In the last few years, I've become very interested in Epicureanism. It's a powerful philosophy and rather different from what most people think the term means. I was surprised to see that Mark also had a recent issue covering Living For Pleasure by Emily Austin, which I recommend and which is usually considered the best modern introduction to the philosophy. 

Scott Apel discusses his Philip K. Dick book

D. Scott Apel's book Philip K. Dick: The Dream Connection is a key document for Dick fans. The anthology includes a very long interview with Dick and pieces by Robert Anton Wilson, R. Faraday Nelson and Dick himself. Lawrence Sutin, author of Divine Invasions: A Life of Philip K. Dick, says Apel's book is "Hands down the most joyous and entertaining book on Philip K. Dick."

For some useful background on the book, see below for an interview with Scott conducted by his friend, ej "Jami" Morgan. 

This interview first ran in PKD OTAKU #22, 14 May 2011. 

ej Morgan is a writer based in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Among other books she is the author of the novel A Kindred Spirit. Scott describes it as "A brilliant novel about a woman who believes she's getting post-mortem messages from PKD." You can visit her official website. 

Here is Ms. Morgan's original introduction to the interview:

Never underestimate the “Phil factor.” And if you wonder what that means, D. Scott Apel’s Philip K. Dick: The Dream Connection is as good a place as any to dive in for a big dose. For instance, just as Editor Gregg Lee and I were discussing pulling the 1987 book out of mothballs and taking another look at it, Scott announced he is re-releasing the book as a trade paperback this spring. That’s synchronicity.

Who among us has not thought of a favorite PKD book, and had it turn up at a used book store? But, the more you dig in and learn about Phil’s real-life experiences, the freakier the Phil factor gets. Synchronicity becomes deeper and more Dickian. Scott found out first hand – with both real Phil and post-Phil encounters – and those accounts are the essence of The Dream Connection.

Morgan further reports (in 2026) " I did a lengthy telephone interview with Scott in the late 1990s that was supposed to  appear in Issue #8 of Radio Free PKD. Sadly, there was no Issue #8.  Greg Lee stopped printing the ‘zine after Issue #7." But OTAKU editor Patrick Clark agreed to run it, she says. 

This interview is reprinted here by kind permission of ej Morgan. 

JAMI MORGAN: Some RFPKD [Radio Free PKD] subscribers read your book when it first came out, and serious Dickheads may recall that you were a contributor to the original PKDS newsletter. Others will discover you and TDC in this second release. So, let’s start by going back to those early days in 1977 when you first met Phil. You were just a kid then, right? 

SCOTT APEL: Well, I was 25, just out of college and my friend Kevin Briggs and I had been working on a book project called Approaching Sci Fi Authors for a couple of years. To put the time frame in perspective, this was pre-Star Wars; a time when sci-fi was still pretty much a cult interest. We were sending out letters and lining up interviews with several authors who lived in or near the California Bay area. So, one day I come home and my Mom (I was living at my parents’ house at this time) said your friend Phil called. I said, “Who? I don’t have a friend Phil.” Mom said, “He just said, ‘Tell Scott his friend Phil Dick called.’” Of course, I was blown away. We still had some trouble getting the interview set up, because he tried to back out a couple of times. But his girlfriend at the time, Joan Simpson, helped convince him. I remember she told us it would be the best thing for him right now, since he had been brooding and melancholy and was having trouble writing at the time. Anyway, he finally agreed to let us come to his home in Sonoma and do the interview. It turned into a 2-day session with us staying overnight at his house. I described the whole experience in detail in the book. 

JM:  You intended to just ask basic questions about how he wrote his science fiction, but this led into an entirely different area when Phil began talking about his experiences with psychic phenomenon, something you didn’t anticipate when you set up the meeting, right? 

APEL: First of all, we didn’t anticipate the enormous length at which he wanted to talk about these things. Secondly, we never anticipated the enormous depth at which he wanted to approach some of these subjects. Science fiction and literature became just a jumping off point to talk about religion and philosophy. With most of the other writers [interviewed for the project] we were lucky to get an hour interview. With the really good ones, like Ted Sturgeon and Norman Spinrad, we were doing 2 hour interviews just because they had so much to say. But Phil, by comparison, had four times as much to say. Sturgeon was pretty well tapped out after the two hours, but with Phil we had over eight hours on tape. And we just decided that was the place to stop because it became obvious we could do a whole damn book just on Phil. So, yes, we certainly were taken by surprise by the depth at which he wanted to discuss the material. 

JM: You were interviewing him in 1977 and Phil’s life-altering event occurred in February/March 1974. The incident he called the “2-3-74” event. So, all of this was pretty fresh at the time, right?

APEL:  Exactly. In fact, the interview in The Dream Connection is THE most complete and most in depth description of those experiences that has ever been published anywhere. He may have had longer conversations with closer friends of his, like Paul Williams, but as far as what’s lasted on paper and anyone who wants to understand those experiences and doesn’t read TDC isn’t getting the full story. I’m very proud of that fact. That this most controversial part of the man’s life is the part we took most seriously, seriously enough to print it in its entirety. 

JM: And it certainly is controversial, because many of his original hard-core fans are really uncomfortable with his later works and believe he had some kind of physical or biological episode or that he was even insane. There’s the whole gamut of how people react to that part of his life. But, in TDC you came away feeling he was quite sane.

APEL: Oh yeah. There is no question about it in my mind. And, I can make a claim like that if only because I have a degree in psychology and I’ve worked in mental asylums. They train you to tell the difference between people who are sane, people who are insane and people who are acting insane. Phil was not in any way crazy. There may be some biological explanation for some of his experiences; you know a brain embolism or over-medication. I’m not a medical doctor. But, I do know the man was absolutely sincere in his belief that he had an experience that was in some way outside the realm of normality. He did his best to describe it and devoted most of the rest of his life of his life trying to put it in some kind of perspective and context. 

Now, if you turn to a book like Cosmic Consciousness by [Richard] Bucke, I believe his name is, a classic in the field, he writes descriptions of any number of people who claim to have had some kind of unusual experiences. They’re pretty much all the same and they’re very much like Phil’s. They all feel they’ve had some type of revelations. Now whether they’re medical or chemical, physical or spiritual, or all of the above – nobody knows exactly what that stuff is, yet the experiences all have similar characteristics. I’d say Phil is just another one. He had the gates of perception open, given whatever cause and for whatever reason. But, it certainly was not something that should be considered insane. It may be the next step in human evolution to get people of their minds and into the cosmic consciousness.

JM: Phil ranged all over the place, not only in his conversations with you but also in the Exegesis and in VALIS, trying to decide if his experiences were extra-terrestrial or contact with some disembodied entity. 

APEL: Yes, was it a disembodied spirit, was it his own reincarnation memories, was it totally drug-induced, was it aliens contacting him – this was a man with an enormous imagination. So, when he came up with a theory he tried to match it to the facts, because he did have some kind of scientific training. He would think of a theory and then he’d compare it to the facts and eventually discard most of it, which I think maybe a lot of people who read about Phil’s later life fail to understand. He was approaching all this stuff in a very scientific manner by applying his theories to the data and then discarding most of it as irrational. I like to think of it as entertaining an idea. He wasn’t convinced that aliens were affecting his mind or that Russians were transmitting works of art into his head. That was a theory. The way he tested a theory was to try it out – wear it like a suit of clothes for awhile and see how comfortable it was. Eventually the flaws would appear. In fact, he used the clothing metaphor. He would find a loose thread and pull on it until the entire suit came apart. Then he’d discard that and get a new set of clothes.

JM: You devote about 75 pages to the interview that took place and then conclude with an Afterward on the conspiracy-cloaked Russian Xerox Missive. In it Phil, or actually Joan (his then-girlfriend) referred to that particular theory as the “really important part.” Can you explain what that was all about? 

APEL: (pause) No, I really couldn’t. (long laughter from both of us.) That was just another piece of data in the hopper. Who knows what that was all about? I couldn’t even begin to explain it. [NOTE: Paul Williams does delve into the Xerox Missive extensively in his book Only Apparently Real for anyone who wants to further explore that point.] 

JM: And, what state was VALIS in at the time of your interview with Phil?

APEL: Well, that’s a complicated subject, but it is all spelled out in great detail in TDC. He had written a book called Valisystem A which I believe became, in part, Radio Free Albemuth. By the time he released VALIS, his thinking had changed so radically that the two books appeared to be completely different. At the time we interviewed him, he had finished Valisystem A, but wasn’t happy with it. He knew there was more to it, but didn’t know what and he wanted to take it in a different direction, but wasn’t sure where.

According to Russ Galen, Phil’s agent for many years, Phil told Russ that it was our interview that helped unlock his creativity and made him think in different directions, and actually enabled him to throw it aside and start from scratch and rewrite VALIS. 

JM:  Wow, now that’s heavy. (pause) That really brings up the issue about David and Kevin and your feelings that at least in part, you and Kevin Briggs were incorporated into David and Kevin of VALIS. 

APEL: There’s a couple of lines right out of our interview with him that comes right out of the mouths of David and Kevin in VALIS. Plus, most of the exploits in VALIS took place in Sonoma. Kevin [Briggs] called me and said, “Guess what! We’re characters in the book.” Then I read it and it was very clear to me that he did use us as characters. And, then I talked to Phil – I called him on the phone – and I said, hey, I know how you work, that you use real life people. And I know how you combine people occasionally into characters in your fiction, but I want to know is this David in VALIS actually David Scott Apel? And, is this Kevin really Kevin C. Briggs. And he said, “Sure are.” So, I got it directly from him that these characters were at least partially based on us. Now, Tim Powers and Kevin Jeter have also claimed that the characters are based on them. And I know they’re the more famous ones – the better and longer term friends of Phil’s than Kevin and I were. Yet, when I asked Phil about it, he was confirming that he at least used us in part, combining me and Tim Powers into David and Jeter and Briggs into Kevin.

You know, I hate to make a big deal out of this. I don’t want to sound like one of those people who is waving their hands for attention, yelling “Me, Me.” I just want people to know the real story. Because I’m sure at the time, even Jeter and Powers didn’t know the whole story. That’s all. And, I’m very proud to be associated in Phil’s mind with Tim Powers. He’s an enormous talent. We’ve since exchanged letters and it’s a point of honor for me that Phil would connect us in that manner. 

JM: EJM: Ok, let’s discuss what you call Phase Two – the second section of the book – dealing with dream telepathy. Do you recall who first mentioned the topic? Did Phil mention dream telepathy or did you?

APEL: No, I think I did, because a good friend of mine wrote a book called Dream Telepathy and we wanted to know if Phil had read that. Actually, Phil mentioned the concept and I said what you’re talking about sounds like the same thing in the book by Alan Vaughan where he covered experiments by several scientists who actually transmit and receive material in the dream state. So, it was something Phil was definitely aware of. 

JM: I bring it up because it’s crucial to the next phase of what happens in your book, AFTER Phil dies. 

APEL: Well, any condensation of those experiences runs the risk of sounding crazy. Which is why I took the time and the effort to detail the entire range of experiences in the book. Any kind of summary here will make it sound like something from the psychic friends network or a bad movie, some psycho-thriller made for cable TV. But, yes, a year or so after Phil died I began having dreams about him and about subjects he had talked about. And, as someone who had been keeping a journal of dreams for over 20 years, I paid a great deal of attention to them. I was able to identify them as very different from any other type of dream I had ever had and therefore paid even more attention to them. They all seem to revolve around these ideas of Phil communicating with me. So, you know, I’m fairly open-minded, and decided, OK, I’ll entertain the idea. But, what really made my mind up to even pursue this was the tremendous number of “synchronicities” that started to cluster around Phil Dick related activity. I couldn’t ignore the links between what was happening inside my mind and outside in my own environment. So, at the risk of looking like a fool – something I excel at – I decided Phil had some kind of message that he wanted to get through. So let’s just go ahead and take the next step and try to find a medium – which for some people is perhaps a contradiction in terms. But, since I knew Alan Vaughn who wrote the book Dream Telepathy, I contacted him and set up meetings with a number of different mediums and eventually I got some decent evidential data. 

[Note: Now, I won’t attempt to cover this vast amount of “evidential date” here. That is Phase 3 and takes up nearly half of the book. That’s for you to fully explore, if interested, in Philip K. Dick: The Dream Connection. What I can say is that just as Scott believes Phil was completely sane and rational, I found Scott to be quite convincing, incredibly honest and sincere— both in the book and during this interview — discussing his experiences with mediums and attemps to contact Phil on the other side. And Scott wondered aloud about why so many people had similar experiences.] 

APEL: You know, I thought it was very interesting that after Phil died, others wrote about Phil making contacts... [Michael] Bishop, [Richard] Lupoff...was this same psychosis affecting them? Maybe because he WAS making a big splash in a psychic pond and ripples were going out to his friends. I just happened to be close enough to get doused. Others were far enough away to just see the ripples.

JM: And now looking back on it, what do you think the message was?

APEL: He wanted his friends to know he was OK, that he loved them and here’s some evidence that there is life after death. In some sense the whole story, in true Phil Dick fashion, transcended even the idea of interesting experiences, he wanted to come back and prove his philosophy, the stuff he spent his adult life writing about. In some sense, it’s like a footnote to say: “By the way, I’m back and I was right.”

[Note: I first read TDC in 1997 while engaged in my own series of Dickian synchronicities—“meaningful coincidences” as Scott described them. It was truly weird since I was working on a concept for my own novel which deals with Phil making contact from the hereafter [A Kindred Spirit]. When I started writing it, I had no idea so many others had tackled the topic of Phil “coming back.” Of course, I was just learning how pervasive the Phil factor is. TDC includes an essay by Ray Nelson, co-author with PKD on The Ganymede Takeover, in which Phil visits him in the dream state urging him to write a sequel to The Man in the High Castle, based on notes they once developed in a writer’s group. Just good essay material? Nelson later confirmed to Scott that he started working on the sequel because the experience with Phil was “so real.” I’ve since learned that Paul Williams, former literary executor for Phil’s estate and founder of the PKD Society (and rock historian extraordinaire), experienced untold synchronicities, at the least, and at times actual feelings of contact with Phil, during the years he spent on the PKD project. I mentioned some of this to Scott during our conversation.]

APEL: Now, what you’re saying about you and Paul Williams and other people, that’s what I’m talking about. Synchronicity is not unusual among writers or among creative people. It’s actually quite common in the creative fields. What IS unusual is that so many people who knew Phil, or were fans of Phil, have these experiences clustered around Phil Dick material. Most writers, when they experience synchronicity, think it’s a sign that they’re on the right track, discovering meaning somehow and doing what they should be doing. But, what interests me is how many people, who are fans of Phil, have experiences like this related directly to Phil Dick material. It’s another step beyond just synchronicity. It’s the added Phildickian element and the real sense that life is becoming like a Phil Dick novel. You know, am I dealing with Palmer Eldritch? In Phil’s afterlife is he a benign interfering god or like Palmer Eldritch who is going to haunt me for the rest of my friggin’ life?

[Note: Scott says the experiences stopped once he published the book in 1987 and he felt closure to that ten-year period of his life. He went on to other projects, writing nearly 600 video and movie reviews for the San Jose Mercury News, writing plays and even appearing in some Killer B movies he became notorious for reviewing. So, why re-visit the book and the strange PKD experiences now?]

APEL: A whole new generation of readers are discovering Phil on their own or thorough the Internet. The first time I published the book it was truly a labor of love, my tribute to the man—Philip K. Dick and I didn’t care if I made a dime of profit. This time my motives are a bit more mercenary—I would like to make some money.

I’ve started up this new web-based independent small press publishing business. In addition to the Phil Dick book, I’m offering Chaos and Beyond, an anthology of Robert Anton Wilson material, my own Killer B’s video guide, and a real Phildickian science fiction comic novel called MFU, which I think is one of the funniest damn things I have ever read. And, finally, I do intend to publish that collection of interviews with the science fiction authors. There is so much brilliant material from the writers, material that should not be lost or forgotten. So, for now, I just hope to get my small press off the ground and make a success of it.

[This interview was originally written in 1999 for Greg Lee’s ‘zine Radio Free PKD. Scott Apel did republish TDC as a trade paperback in July of 1999.]