James Davis Nicoll on 'The Universe Next Door'

As we are going to do an online reading group pretty soon on Robert Anton Wilson's Schrodinger’s Cat Trilogy (I don't have details  yet, I need to discuss them first with Eric Wagner), I thought I would share something I had missed: A review of the first book of the trilogy, The Universe Next Door, by  the prominentt science fiction fan and book reviewer James Davis Nicoll. The review was posted in January 2024, but I missed it at the time. 

Here is a sentence that seems to capture his views: "I don’t regret rereading this book despite it being a dated hot mess." There are other mixed comments in the review.

Obviously, i like the book better than he does, but it's something else to discuss . 

'The Classical Style' reading group, Week Seventeen

Beethoven in 1818, i.e. around the time his Piano Sonata No. 29 was written. (Source). 

Part VII  BEETHOVEN 

Beethoven 

By ERIC WAGNER
Special guest blogger

 We have entered the Hammerklavier Zone. We will not leave until the Schroedinger's Cat study group finishes, if then. For the last six years I found myself dwelling in an exercise in the fifth circuit chapter of Prometheus Rising where Bob told the reader to attend a Sufi weekend seminar . Now I find myself in a dinner party in Schroedinger's Cat surrounded by concert pianists, all of whom got invited so the host could discuss the Hammerklavier with them. Steven De Groote got invited, and he brought along a few of his students including my friend Jai Jeffryes. Steven kindly allowed me to tag along. I recognize Charles Rosen, Vladamir Horowitz, Glenn Gould, Maurizio Pollini, Martha Argerich, Alfred Brendel, Murray Perahia, Arthur Rubenstein, Sviatoslav Richter, Radu Lupu, Rudolf Serkin, Peter Serkin, and Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli.  

 I remember when Jai first told me about the Hammerklavier back in August 1980. He saw a Rudolf Serkin LP of the Hammerklavier in a used record store. A week or so later Jai, his friend Jim, and I sat in Jai's dorm room listening to either the Serkin or Brendel recording of the sonata. Jim commented that every pianist but Pollini sounded like "they were about to fall off the end of the piano bench at the end of the sonata." In 2005 Rafi Zabor turned me on to Solomon's recordings of Beethoven's late piano sonatas. I mentioned Jim's comment about the Hammerklavier to Rafi, and he said Solomon didn't sound ready to fall off the piano bench at the end of his recording.  

Would RAW and Tim Leary be optimistic about AI? [UPDATED]

 

I used ChatGPT to make this picture depicting Atlantis shortly before they discovered advanced AI and destroyed themselves. 

Robert Anton Wilson and Timothy Leary were very interested in computer technology, and typically technology positive,  but alas they left us before AI really got going. I wish I knew what they would  have said.

I have been reading many articles lately about the purported dangers and benefits of AI. One article I would particularly recommend is a Substack piece by Tracing Woodgrains, We Will Never Have “Normal Times” Again.  Here is a bit of it:

Forget your instinct to dismiss, honed by years of promises of a crypto revolution or NFTs or another Next Big Thing, while all that changed in your life was a new iPhone and the social media takeover of the world. Forget all of that, and just look. Five years ago, you probably did not know what OpenAI was, and Anthropic barely even existed. Five years ago, if you wanted to get a computer to do something, you wrote by hand in machine-tailored language.

The article pairs well with the Fareed Zakaria piece I mentioned in this earlier blog post.  I got zero comments, but I am happy with that post.

If you want optimistic takes on AI, you can read Richard Hanania and Deep Left Analysis  For pessimism, there a new Michael Johnson and Ted Gioia. 

In a comment for the Hanania piece, one of my favorite bloggers, Scott Sumner, wrote: "While I am pretty dismissive of the jobs fears associated with AI, I am agnostic on the safety issue. I don't know enough to have an intelligent opinion, but FWIW my biggest fear is not misalignment, it's alignment. More specifically, AI alignment with a rogue scientist that wishes to produce a global pandemic--the virologist equivalent of that Malaysian pilot that ditched his plane in South Indian Ocean. Again, I have no idea if that's possible, but I worry more about evil people working with cooperative machines than I do about evil machines."

UPDATE: AI safety update posted Sunday by Scott Alexander. 

Questions about cuts in 'Schrödinger's Cat Trilogy'

 

The one-volume omnibus editon of the Schrödinger's Cat Trilogy, which I suspect is the one we will have to use for our upcoming discussion group, has considerable cuts in comparison to the original three books that were published separately. The Wikipedia article references the cuts, but the best detail I can find is in Eric Wagner's very useful An Insider's Guide to Robert Anton Wilson. 

Eric's book (in the Lexicon section, in the entry "My favorite Wilson book," says, "The one volume Schrödinger's Cat has about 212 pages cut, plus some slight revisions." So the cuts are considerable.

While there has been a lot of discussion from Wilson and Shea about the cuts made in Illuminatus!, I would like to know more about the cuts in SC. Why was the omnibus edition cut so much? Did Wilson himself make all of the decisions on what to cut, and what did he think about having to make the cuts? Was there any principle about the sorts of cuts that were made? I regard SC as a major work of fiction, and I am baffled that I know so little about these questions. Can anyone help? 

Time for the Cat?

 

With the ongoing discussion group for Charles Rosen's The Classical Style winding up soon, I thought it it be time to talk about another reading group I want to begin:  The Schrödinger's Cat Trilogy by Robert Anton Wilson. It seems to me that would be the major RAW work we haven't covered with the various online discussions here. It's a work that RAW apparently was particularly pleased with. 

I still have my three paperbacks for the trilogy titles, e.g. The Universe Next Door, The Trick Top Hat and The Homing Pigeons.  But if we are going to do a discussion, I think we have to use the one volume omnibus edition, as that is the one most easily available for everyone.

Eric Wagner and I have started talking about this. We are both willing to do blog posts to held lead the discussion. As per usual, everyone is invited to participate in the comments. But I also am open to blog posts by other folks; I'm not looking to exclude anyone who might want to talk about favorite sections of the trilogy, or favorite ideas discussed in it. 

I am willing to listen to other ideas about the discussion group. 

'Chapel Perilous' audiobook hits goal

 

After a relaunch on Kickstarter, the Chapel Perilous audiobook has hit its goal. "The Campaign is not over yet however, and there is still time to get first dibs on the Chapel Perilous Audiobook," Prop Anon/Gabriel Kennedy notes. More details here. 

"Cosmic Trigger' movie offers UFO lore

 

A new documentary, The Cosmic Trigger, connects the invention and test of the atomic bomb in the Southwest United States with the appearance of "flying saucers." Above is the trailer from YouTube. Here is an article about how the movie is currently showing in Scottsdale, Arizona.  None of the articles I have been able to find explain where the filmmaker, Larry Sheffield, got his title. 

Joseph Matheny's new project: 'Art is War'

Having finished putting out his broadcast of Ong's Hat: Compleat, Joseph Matheny is ready to announce his new project, Art is War: Fear and Loathing on the Internet, a current work in progress with a projected release date of late 2027, "An art manifesto for our changing times."

Here is a description of the project from his personal website:

At the end of the movie Apocalypse Now, after hacking Kurtz to death during a ceremonial ritual, Willard picks up Kurtz’s manuscript and walks past the awestruck indigenous tribe who now view him with deity-like reverence.

The manuscript contains Kurtz’s dark summation and inner thoughts on the war, famously featuring the scrawled or written phrase: “Drop the bomb. Exterminate them all!”

What did the manuscript say, and what did it have to do with art?

Watch my Substack for release announcements.

The latest newsletter has lots of interesting links. The plan is to put out a newsletter every month. 

'The Classical Style' reading group, week sixteen

3. Church Music 

By ERIC WAGNER
Special guest blogger

Like many people my age, I used to love hanging out in record stores. Occasionally an album cover would catch my eye, and I would contemplate buying it. This didn't happen too often with classical albums, but it did with Jame Levine's 1991 album of Haydn The Creation. After years of reading Robert Anton Wilson, the eye in the pyramid design jumped out at me. I thought about buying it for decades, but I never did. Spotify doesn't seem to have that recording. Instead I put on one conducted by Kurt Moll. That album's cover uses a close-up of God and Adam's hands from the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Oh well. I do plan to listen to it this week.  

My friend Father Tim Lamm once gave a talk focused on Beethoven's Missa Solemnis for Catholic school teachers which I really enjoyed. Father Tim lent me Beethoven: His Spiritual Development, and I lent him Kerman's The Beethoven Quartets. I enjoyed Sullivan's book, and my copy of the Kerman still has a few softly penciled notes by Father Tim.  

Ben Graham announces completion of new novel

Ben Graham, the British Discordian writer, has announced he's completed his new novel, Savage Jubilee, and is taking preorders from his small press operation:

"Savage Jubilee is the second book in my ongoing American Underground sequence, a psychedelic odyssey through the 20th Century’s magical counterculture. The first book, Electric Tibet, dealt with the 1967 Human Be-In, treating it as a consciously magical act or hypersigil expressly designed to manifest the Summer of Love that followed. Savage Jubilee jumps back a generation to explore the less well-documented world of 1940s psychedelia, and charts the early adventures of one Lucien Bright Starr, black sheep scion of a wealthy white Hawaiian family, whose show-business ambitions are dashed when his budding psychic abilities bring him to the attention of the US wartime intelligence agencies, as well as more mysterious forces. Alongside encounters with Crowley, Gurdjieff, Krishnamurti and Aldous Huxley, we discover why Cole Porter’s Begin The Beguine is the secret theme song of the 20th century. It’s perhaps a more traditional novel than Electric Tibet, and over twice the length, but there’s still plenty of weirdness going on. It can be read as a prequel to Electric Tibet or as a standalone novel in its own right (though the next American Underground book, provisionally titled High Magick, will pick up directly where Savage Jubilee leaves off)."

Graham also is putting out a new edition of Electric Tibet and you can save if you order both books together. More details here. 

What we read last month

What Mark K. Brown read:

Crome Yellow by Aldous Huxley  8/2 
The Towers of Toron by Samuel R Delany  8/14   
Zohar: The Book of Splendor  ed. by Gershom Scholem 8/21 
Coincidance: A Head Test by Robert Anton Wilson 8/28 

What I read last month:

The Odyssey, Homer (Robert Fagles translation).
A Phone Is a Cow: How Pioneers of the Mobile Revolution Helped Millions Lift Themselves Out of Poverty, Philip E. Auerswald.
Thieves' Sky (Rich Man's Sky #4), Wil McCarthy.
On Moral Ends, Cicero (Raphael Woolf translation, Julia Annas editor). 

Please tell us in the comments what you read in August. (Comments are working again after being down Friday). 

Comments not going through [UPDATED]

UPDATE: Comments finally are fixed after being down for much of the day Friday. 

Google's Blogger website is apparently having major technical difficulties; for several hours, comments posted to this blog have not been going through. It's not under my control, apparently it's some kind of Google problem. I will update when this has apparently been fixed. 

Housekeeping and note to readers

The subject of yesterday's late blog post. 

I have gotten behind on putting up links to the various areas on the right side of the page to notable websites and blog postings, but I have added three: "Free Timothy Leary books on the Internet," under "More Feature Articles and Interviews,"; "Reading About RAW: Biographies and Criticism," under "Robert  Anton Wilson Resources," and "Robert Shea: A Reader's Guide," under "Robert Shea Resources." I probably need to work on that some more. This blog has been published for years, and I would like to think there are few topics concerning Wilson or Shea that have not at least been touched upon. The blog has a search box at the top, and if you get interested in a particular topic, it's worth a try. I ran a search for T'he Magic Flute, Mozart's opera influenced by Freemasonry, and a bunch of postings came up. 

Also: In my semiretirement, I am late to bed and late to rise, which explains why many of these postings show up around noon most days, in the Eastern U.S. time zone. But yesterday, I was unusually late. I had planned to go see the Cleveland Guardians play the Toronto Blue Jays in an early afternoon game, and I knew I would not have time to write a blog post that morning. So late Wednesday night, I duly wrote a post about the Small Press Expo, excited that Bobby Campbell and Todd Purse would be there. The idea was to post it Thursday morning. Alas, in the rush to get to the game, I forgot. I was sitting in the bleachers during the eighth inning, enduring a 6-3 loss, when I suddenly realized I hadn't posted it. So I posted it at 4 p.m. I hope everyone finally saw it.

Speaking of sports, I believe Bobby is a fan of Philadelphia sports teams? I have heard allegations that Philly sports fans are the grumpiest in the world. It is claimed that after the 2025 Super Bowl --  final score Philadephia 40, Kansas City 22 -- Eagles fans were calling the sports talk shows in Philadelphia to complain about the offense.

Perhaps this is an apocryphal story, but Cleveland sports fans should have such problems.

Bobby Campbell replies! [Comments did not work Friday, but this is what he wanted to post in the comments].

I am indeed a Philly sports fan!

I think that there probably is a bit of a "the finder finds what the seeker seeks" dynamic to the Philly sports reputation, where every story that reinforces it gets added to the canon, but also it is undeniably a powerfully passionate culture, with dizzying highs and abysmal lows.

I would guess the story of people complaining about the Eagles' performance after winning the Super Bowl is either apocryphal or they were just kidding. The general psychology of Philly sports is unrestrained transcendent jubilance in success and all-consuming bitterness, sadness, and anger in defeat, or even just mediocrity! Negativity after a championship win is basically impossible, the maniacal pendulum is stuck in the upright position :)))

Celebrating in the city the night the Phillies won the World Series in 2008 was one of the most magical experiences of my life. The entire city was under a spell that made us all best friends.

My son and I were at Game Six of the Sixers vs. Celtics series this year, and it really felt like the crowd had full control of the game, the energy in the building was WILD.

One of the fav examples of Philly sports energy is when the crowd willed Bryson Stott to hit a playoff grand slam by singing his walk up song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIu2Wtnl5uE