New Tales of Illuminatus! publication policy

Yesterday, covering Bobby Campbell's latest Substack newsletter, I highlighted the fact that the Kickstarter for Tales of Illuminatus! No. 2 ended today.  I also managed to get the cover artist wrong for the new alternate cover for the first issue, so please note that and I apologize to Leosaysays. I had a long day away from the computer Friday, out and about with my sister visiting from Oklahoma, and I was away from the computer, so I'm sorry I didn't fix that earlier. 

Update an onward, I hope. 

Bobby also had something else interesting I wanted to call attention to:

"I’ve been working on a lot of the big picture, heavy lifting, world building for TOI lately, and entirely delighted with the way the dots are connecting. Super psyched to share my discoveries, but also taking to heart the feedback from issue #1, which suggested folks would rather just enjoy the comic as a finished piece, rather than a constant drip of serialization.

"I’ve got two weeks of teaching left and then we’re off to the races!"

Thinking about it, I think that's how I feel, too, about the "constant drip of serialization"; I want the experience of holding the new comic book in my hands and experiencing it as largely new.

That apparently doesn't preclude Bobby posting bits to show us what's in the works; above is a "quick sneak peak to hold you over for a spell" from Todd Purse's work for the second issue. 

Kickstarter ends soon for next 'Tales of Illuminatus' [Updated with correction!]

Lots of news from Bobby Campbell in the latest Tales of Illuminatus newsletter, including a reminder that the Kickstarter drive for issue No. 2 ends Saturday.  Here's Bobby:

"Speaking of our Kickstarter Campaign! We are in the final few days of our pre-order campaign, which ends this upcoming Saturday! We are just short of hitting 200% of our funding goal. Not a bad showing for our scrappy indie production :)))

"We will indeed be accepting late pledges after the campaign ends, right up until we need final numbers to go to press, but the price will jump up a bit.

"So if you want to lock in those pre-order prices, order now!"

Above is Leosaysays's alternate cover for the first issue.  This is a correction, see the comments from Bobby and Spookah. Sorry about that! 

"Folks ordering Tales of Illuminatus! #1 from our current KS campaign for issue #2 will receive this wonderfully wild new edition :)))," Bobby says. 

Karl Hess on Robert Anton Wilson [UPDATED]

Karl Hess, center, at the Future of Freedom conference in 1981. Timothy Leary is on the left; I don't know who the person is on the right. Creative Commons photo via Wikipedia, information here.  UPDATE: The other guy is Manny Klausner, a former Reason editor who died  this year, see this obit.]

A followup to my recent post on Jesse Walker's article about Karl Hess and John McClaughry: Jesse sent me a link to a PDF of a libertarian newsletter, the Summer 1981 issue of the Libertas Review, and it has a passage I thought some of you might be interested in, from an article about a speech by Karl Hess:

After the complimenting the audience many times for their good grasp of libertarian principles, he stressed that they be put into action to form a libertarian community. "Everybody can tell you about liberty," he exclaimed, "now we need a place where we can see the damn thing." In this context, he points out, "A statement of principle should simply be an explanation of the way you live your life."

When asked afterward during the question and answer period if there were any authors that influenced or described his position, he mentioned Robert Anton Wilson. Since  he had quoted novelist/philosopher Ayn Rand, saying that reason is the best tool an individual can have, many in the audience were surprised when he quoted Wilson saying, "There is no truth and everything is permissible!" He went on to say that, "Even though there is no truth and everything is permissible, you still must, yourself, say things that you feel to be true, and you must not do things that you feel to be impermissable, and there is no power on earth except the power of your own volition that will lead you in these directions."

What's up with the Liverpool documentary?

Echo and the Bunnymen (photo via band's account on X.com)

Wondering what's happened to Pool of Life, the Grant McPhee documentary, mentioned previously, that documents the creative scene in Liverpool in the 1970s, including Ken Campbell's Illuminatus! play and a wave of various bands, such as Echo and the Bunnymen and The Teardrop Explodes? 

There's an update at The Post (of Liverpool), and there's good news and bad news, according to the piece by Laurence Thompson.

The good news: There's a " '95% done' rough cut of Pool of Life, and it already lives up to his previous works — and then some." (The "current plan" is that Pool of Life will be the first of a trilogy of films). 

The bad news? "Sadly, if you want to see Pool of Life, you may have to wait. 'Funding has collapsed in the last two years,' McPhee tells me, describing this as an industry-wide phenomenon. If, say, the Liverpool Film Office are looking for something non-crime-related to invest in, great — if not, much of this unique and fascinating material will remain untold, despite the increasing surfeit of excellent memoirs like Simpson’s. And that really wouldn’t be good for the city."

Finding the others, before the internet

Bing AI image. 

The internet is a great way to find the others -- I pretty much know all of the people heavily involved in RAW fandom -- but what about before the net showed up? 

My friend Tracy Harms told me that sometime in the 1980s, a libertarian from the East Coast moved to Boulder, Colorado, didn't know anybody and wanted to meet some local people. So he put up "Who Is John Galt?" posters giving a time and place, and it worked. Various local libertarians showed up.

This made me wonder where a "Who is Hagbard Celine?" poster would successfully attract attention. Tracy suggested maybe a science fiction convention. Maybe also a large gathering of libertarians? Or a festival featuring magick? 

Monday links

 Finnegans Wake podcasts featuring PQ. 

The discovery of life on another planet may not be holding up. Since I made a big deal of the original alleged discovery, I am sharing the follow up. 

Jesse Walker on "My Dinner with David Horowitz."

"San Francisco, June 7: Celebrate the cyberculture with Mondo 2000's RU Sirius" and other celebrity guests. 

Audio essay on "Blade Runner" from David Thomson. Hat tip, Eric Wagner. 

What should we think about AI?

 

Image from Bing.

I often wonder what Robert Anton Wilson would think about modern developments. In particular, I wish I could ask him, or read his observations, about how ubiquitous the use of AI is becoming, so that for example ordinary people can make images such as the one I made above. Would RAW regard this as he "intelligence increase" part of SMI2LE? 

A couple of recent AI stories that caught my eye: If you follow the news, you may have heard about the "summer reading" newspaper insert, which ran in a Chicago newspaper, that had a mostly fictional list of books that were about to come out. 

A friend of mine has a son to who works for Eliezer Yudkowski, who has warned about the dangers of AI. Yudkowski and Nate Soares have a new book coming out in September, If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies, which warns about the (alleged) danger, and which is aimed at people like me who aren't experts in the subject. I do plan to read it and to read discussion about the book when it comes out. 

Here is the book's thesis:

If any company or group, anywhere on the planet, builds an artificial superintelligence using anything remotely like current techniques, based on anything remotely like the present understanding of AI, then everyone, everywhere on Earth, will die.

We do not mean that as hyperbole. We are not exaggerating for effect. We think that is the most direct extrapolation from the knowledge, evidence, and institutional conduct around artificial intelligence today. In this book, we lay out our case, in the hope of rallying enough key decision-makers and regular people to take AI seriously. The default outcome is lethal, but the situation is not hopeless; machine superintelligence doesn't exist yet, and its creation can yet be prevented.

The authors are asking for people to preorder it to raise the visibility of the book and its issue: "I ask that you preorder nowish instead of waiting, because it affects how many books Hachette prints in their first run; which in turn affects how many books get put through the distributor pipeline; which affects how many books are later sold. It also helps hugely in getting on the bestseller lists if the book is widely preordered; all the preorders count as first-week sales."

'Testament' reading group continues

Over at Jechidah, the second episode of the Testament online reading group has posted,  with a link to the online version of the comic book. The first episode and the first issue of the comic book is still available, if you need to get caught up. The second issue is "Sodom and Gomorrah," and I'll be checking it out this weekend. 

Jesse Walker on RAW buddy Karl Hess and John McClaughry

 

Jesse Walker, speaking at a panel discussion about employee ownership (Facebook photo)

I finally got around to reading Jesse Walker's article "The Anarchist and the Republican: How John McClaughry and Karl Hess fought to decentralize power—one from inside the system, one ever further from it."  (Karl Hess in fact was both an anarchist AND a Republican in his lifetime, while McClaughry was a Republican with anarchist principles).

Both men had a whiff of Discordianism about them. Here's a bit about Hess' early days:

"Hess' media career began in 1938, when the 15-year-old son of a divorced D.C. switchboard operator decided he'd had enough of classrooms. So he registered at every high school in town and then told each one he was transferring. Having trapped the truancy officers in a bureaucratic strange loop, he went to work for a radio station and a series of local newspapers."

A bit about McClaughry:

"He amused himself by writing politicians absurdist crank letters under assumed names. He had a hobby of hopping freight trains, a pastime that acquired a Coen brothers quality the day a brakeman joined him in the caboose; McClaughry expected to be kicked off, but the fellow instead insisted they sing old minstrel songs together. He built a cabin in the Vermont woods with no plumbing or electricity, then had a more comfortable home erected on the property; in 1967 he became town moderator of Kirby, and he still chairs his community's annual meetings today."

It's a fairly long article, but if you read the whole thing, it may be the most interesting piece you read today. 

YouTube video: "Subversion for Fun and Profit: An Evening with Karl Hess and Robert Anton Wilson."

Thursday links

 

Illustration for 1878 edition of The Scarlet Letter. 

Finnegans Wake Reading Groups Global Database

Oz Fritz reads The Scarlet Letter. 

Cher vs. the Tulsa Zoo.

Banning lab-grown meat is stupid

The fake summer reading list. 

My Parents  Expected to Be Retired. Instead, They Are Raising My Sister’s Kids.

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Does the 'Ezra Pound rule' apply to Scott Adams?

A couple of days ago, when the news emerged that former President Joe Biden has prostate cancer that has spread to his bones and is therefore uncurable, you may also have noticed the news that Dilbert cartoon creator Scott Adams has the same cancer. 

Adams' case is apparently more advanced, and he said in his podcast that the pain was constant and intolerable and that he expects to live for only a few months (see this New York Times story for more). 

Adams of course is a "cancelled nonperson" whose comic strip was dropped a couple of years ago after he made racist remarks. He also has political beliefs that I don't care for.

But I still like his Dilbert comics, which Adams has continued to produce (they can be accessed by paying $3 a month for subscription on X.com). So in still reading the comics, I guess I'm treating Adams roughly the same way that Robert Anton Wilson treated Ezra Pound. 

A couple of Adams' comics from this year are above. I haven't gotten permission to reprint them -- I don't know how I would do that, I don't see how Adams would have the ability to respond to an inquiry, particularly now -- but I hope it's understood that I'm drawing attention to his paid subscription offering. 

Eric Wagner's master's thesis

A document that underpins much of the new book, Straight Outta Dublin, has become available. 

Eric Wagner's master's thesis, "The influence of Finnegans Wake on  Robert Anton  Wilson's Masks of the Illuminati," written to help Eric obtain his master's degree in English Composition from the University of California at San Bernardino, is now available online.  That 2004 thesis is the basis for the first part of the new book. 

Anthony Kaldellis on medieval crusades

One of my favorite novels by Robert Shea is All Things Are Lights, set mostly in medieval France. The hero of the book, a troubadour and knight named Roland, is dragged against his will into two bloody crusades: The attack on the Cathars in southern France, and King Louis' Seventh Crusade, an attack on Egypt. Those two wars, and Roland's complicated love life, are the novel's main plot. 

I have been reading The New Roman Empire:  A History of Byzantium by Anthony Kaldellis, an American history professor who has become the leading modern scholar of Byzantine history. It's the first long, comprehensive history of the Eastern Roman empire from beginning to end issued in many years. I recently finished the chapter that deals with the Fourth Crusade, i.e. the unprovoked capture and sacking of Constantinople in 1204. Aside from the killings and rapes that accompanied the capture of the city, Kaldellis writes that "Whole chapters of ancient history, art and literature were erased in mere hours," as the city was looted and large sections of it were burned down.  

Kaldellis shows the full horror of the attack but also puts it in the context of the crusading movement: After explaining why the attack on Constantinople was an unjustifiable crime, Kaldellis also writes about "the moral rottenness of crusading in general, which not only channeled hatred against perceived enemies of the faith but generated, armed and funded it .... Crusading may have been experienced by many as a pious pilgrimage for the expiation of sin, but it had quickly become a means by which to justify and drum up war against any opponent upon whom a crusade's leaders had set their sights, even for outright wars of conquest and against other Christians."