Friday links

Nice promotional graphic for the Cosmic Trigger play. 

Many of these are worth a separate blog post, but things are kind of busy lately:

Greg Hill's confuse yourself in five words contest. From Adam Gorightly's Historia Discordia site. I'm hoping for book news from Adam soon.

Speaking of the Rule of Five. (Via Philosopher of Eris on Twitter.)

Alan Moore's top five mystics and magicians. Some names you will recognize if you read Robert Anton Wilson.

Music featuring Alan Moore released. ("Mandrillifesto")

Trump wants to change libel laws. 

Prometheus Award finalists announced

The Libertarian Futurist Society has announced the five finalists for the Prometheus Award; I'm pleased to report that I nominated two of them, the Shriver and the Sinisalo. The L. Neil Smith is one of his better books, IMHO, and there's a reference to Illuminatus! in it. Here is the official press release. — The Management. 

The Libertarian Futurist Society has announced five finalists for the Best Novel category of the 37th annual Prometheus Awards:
* The Corporation Wars: Dissidence by Ken MacLeod (Orbit)
* The Corporation Wars: Insurgence, by Ken MacLeod (Orbit)
* The Mandibles: A Family, 2029-2047 by Lionel Shriver (HarperCollins)
* The Core of the Sun, by Johanna Sinisalo (translated by Lola Rogers) (Grove Press/Black Cat)
* Blade of p’Na, by L. Neil Smith (Phoenix Pick)

The 2017 awards will be presented during the 75th annual World Science Fiction Convention Aug. 9-13, 2017 in Helsinki, Finland. The winner will receive a plaque and one-ounce gold coin.

Sixteen novels published in 2016 were nominated for this year’s award, among the largest slates of nominees in the past two decades.

The other Best Novel nominees: Morning Star: Book III of The Red Rising Trilogy, by Pierce Brown (Del Rey); Speculator, by Doug Casey and John Hunt (HighGround Books); Dark Age, by Felix Hartmann (Hartmann Publishing); Kill Process, by William Hertling (Liquididea Press); Through Fire, by Sarah Hoyt (Baen Books); Too Like the Lightning, by Ada Palmer (TOR Books); Written in Fire, by Marcus Sakey (Thomas & Mercer); Arkwright, by Allen Steele (TOR Books); On to the Asteroid, by Travis S. Taylor and Les Johnson (Baen Books); Necessity, by Jo Walton (TOR Books); and Angeleyes by Michael Z. Williamson (Baen Books)

Here is a description of the finalists, which were chosen by a 10-member LFS judging committee:

* The Corporation Wars: Dissidence – Robots attain self-awareness and develop a pro-freedom philosophy while dead humans are revived in digital form to fight an interstellar virtual-reality war against the robot rebellion in the first novel in MacLeod’s projected trilogy, which raises intriguing questions about autonomy and free will.

* The Corporation Wars: Insurgence – A ghost soldier and several new characters are introduced in the action-oriented second novel in MacLeod’s trilogy, which dramatizes a more complicated three-sided war between the freedom-fighting robots and two groups of humans.

* The Mandibles: A Family, 2029-2047 – Shriver’s cautionary dystopian drama, informed by an understanding of free-market economics and how coercive government can undermine civilization itself, is set in a 2029 debt-driven apocalypse in which a once-rich family and a once-powerful America have gone bust but the family’s least-successful members prove the most resilient in the face of disaster.

* The Core of the Sun – This dystopian novel, written by well-known Finnish writer Sinisalo and translated by Rogers, is both libertarian and feminist in depicting an alternate eugenics-dominated Finland where the heroine battles an oppressive, manipulative and male-dominated regime that makes women subservient housewives and mothers and bans alcohol, mind-altering drugs, caffeine and hot peppers.

* Blade of p’Na – A wide variety of intelligent alien creatures co-exist in a free and free-wheeling society on an alternative version of Earth – including a sapient dog and his human tracking down a missing bridegroom while investigating mysteries and trying to prevent an interdimensional invasion – in this action-adventure-oriented prequel to Smith’s Prometheus-winning The Forge of the Elders.

The Prometheus Award, sponsored by the Libertarian Futurist Society (LFS), was established in 1979, making it one of the most enduring awards after the Nebula and Hugo awards, and one of the oldest fan-based awards currently in sf. Presented annually since 1982 at the World Science Fiction Convention, the Prometheus Awards include a gold coin and plaque for the winners.

For more than three decades, the Prometheus Awards have recognized outstanding works of science fiction and fantasy that dramatize the perennial conflict between Liberty and Power, expose the abuses and excesses of coercive government, critique or satirize authoritarian ideas, or champion individual rights and freedoms as the mutually respectful foundation for civilization, cooperation, peace, prosperity, progress and justice.

For a full list of past Prometheus Award winners in all categories, visit www.lfs.org. Membership in the Libertarian Futurist Society is open to any science fiction fan interested in how fiction can promote an appreciation of the value of liberty.

Paperback release of 'Email to the Universe' announced

Not quite St. Francis preaching to the birds, but still interesting: Rasa presenting the new edition of Email to the Universe to California deer. 

Hilaritas Press and the Robert Anton Wilson Trust have officially announced the release of Robert Anton Wilson's Email to the Universe.

What that amounts to is you can buy it on Amazon and be assured  you'll be getting the new and improved Hilaritas Press edition, with new material by Michael Johnson and Paul Krassner, improved graphics and careful editing.

Excerpt from the announcement:

Dear friends of Bob,
The new Email to the Universe Print Edition is now available! This Hilaritas Press edition features a new introduction by R. Michael Johnson, a new Afterword by Paul Krassner, and intrepid assistance with editing and proofreading from Gary Acord and Tom Jackson. Amoeba's Fearless Scott McPherson has created another wonderful cover, and through the wonder of a good print job, for the first time the paperback of Email to the Universe has graphics that don't make the illustrator cringe. I know that for a fact because I was the illustrator (Rasa). The first printing in 2005 was disappointing, to say the least. I was thrilled to see the first proof of this new edition. After comparing the old with the new, I felt compelled to make an illustrative graphic.

We're really excited about this new edition for all of the above reasons, but also because it's just a fantastic read. The chapters, Left And Right: A Non-Euclidean Perspective and The Relativity Of “Reality” seem urgently relevant in our current socio-political maelstrom. And before all the pasta-elevating ideas begin to congeal, you get to the only fictional essay in the book (or is it?), The Horror On Howth Hill, and suddenly nothing is an absolute reality, all is permitted . . .

Thanks so much for all your love and support! 

Lots of love and lasagna to you all!

Rasa, Christina and Olga


Full announcement here. Note the new video and an announcement from the Cosmic Trigger Play folks

Here is the Cosmic Trigger play announcement:

Help Cosmic Trigger Play: Send a Message to RAW from the Future...

Have you ever wished you could tell Robert Anton Wilson something? Maybe what his writings and thoughts have meant to you? Or something like 'thanks for that thing about ePrime' or even just 'thanks' or 'we love you, Bob'? If so, Daisy Campbell would really appreciate your help! Robert Anton Wilson's Cosmic Trigger, the play, is currently in pre-production. The team are beavering away, gearing up for their 23-date run in London in May. They want to hear - literally - from anyone who has something they would've liked to say to Bob. The message will be used as a vocal overlay on a scene where (spoiler alert!) an elderly RAW is in need of help with his medical bills and the love is pouring in through his letterbox in the shape of $23 checks. If you are up for helping to create this audio Bob Lovebomb, please leave a short message ...

Go to this link for the phone number and information about getting your tickets for the play, which will be in May in London.

One more important note: While you can buy the book from Amazon now, you will provide a higher royalty for Robert Anton Wilson's heirs if you buy the book from the CreateSpace link. The price is exactly the same at both locations, $15.23.

What's going on? Three possible answers

One of the things I loved about Illuminatus! was the sense that all of the characters were trying to figure out what the hell is going on.

I generally feel I don't quite know what's going on, either. I try to stay open to ideas and new information. There's a limit to my open-mindedness to be sure — I'm not likely to sit down and read a book by a Marxist-Leninist, or someone on the alt-right — but I also try to listen to a variety of voices.

Three new books have recently gotten my attention:

Tyler Cowen has a new book out, The Complacent Class. Cowen, one of the few writers who can persuade me to read any book of his that has just been released, apparently argues that complacency, in the sense of an unwillingness to take risks, is one of the biggest problems in the U.S. right now. I have it on my Kindle, and as soon as I finish the next couple of books I feel I must read, I'll read Cowen's book.

Butterfly Language's Val recently reviewed Gordon White's new book, The Chaos Protocols, and recommended it:

I am deep in my second reading of The Chaos Protocols, the 2016 book written by Rune Soup’s Gordon White. It is, quite frankly, the best contemporary book I have found so far to give practical advice and perceptive forecasting on the strange newish world we are quickly finding ourselves immersed in—the world I have given a brief overview in my post “The Road to 2020.”

The Chaos Protocols is a book about finance. It is a book about futurology. It is a “self-help” book of the “career and success” genre. And it is a book about chaos magic.

I've bought it and put it on my Kindle, so we'll see!

Gordon White is interested in RAW; I wrote last year about a podcast he did with Cat Vincent.

Tyler Cowen's blog recently pointed me to a blog post by Ryan Avent, which argues that the main effect of automation is not to leave people unemployed, but to leave them worse off.  “Given the structure of our social safety net, automation tends to increase poverty and inequality rather than unemployment.”  This sounds like an argument for a UBI.

I did not know who Ryan Avent is, but reading his piece convinced me I should get to know him. It turns out he has a book out, The Wealth of Humans: Work, Power, and Status in the Twenty-first Century. I didn't buy it, but I have it on hold at the library.

Robert Anton Wilson, by the way, was very interested in the effects of automation, and I suspect he would be interested in Avent's work.

RAW memorabilia auction adds more items

Book of selected letters of Philip K. Dick, signed by Robert Anton Wilson 

As expected, the auction of RAW memorabilia on Ebay has added more items, and the auction is supposed to go on for awhile longer with additional things being offered.

I'm not going to keep doing blog posting after blog posting about this, but I did want to make another attempt to make sure people know about the auction. Obviously, when these items are gone, they're gone.

I'm not letting Trump ruin my life

Robert Anton Wilson used to write a lot about how your level of happiness and productivity depended a lot upon you, and not outside events. For example, see this post in which he talks about choosing the novel you live in. 

Now, obviously, you don't have much of a choice of novels unless you are reasonably healthy and have a decent standard of living. But there are also plenty of people who manage to ruin their lives for no apparent reason.

Val, the Butterfly Language writer, has a post from back in December that I relate to. 

I do know, however, that if you go into 2017 believing that things will be shit and awful and etc., the Universe will kindly oblige you on that notion. And unfortunately, this seems to be the mass zeitgeist at the moment—and many people will help manifest that energy into reality, regardless of whether they ever consciously wanted to.

Note that it's not as if Val is a Trump fan.

I really dislike Donald Trump. His budget, which seeks to increase defense spending by $54 billion by slashing domestic programs, many of them actually useful, seems absurd to me. You don't have to remind me that he says a lot of dumb or terrible things.

But I've told my wife that I don't have to hear about every dumb thing Trump has ever said. Who would have enough time for that? More to the point, I want to write, read, listen to music, cook food, travel, and do other things I enjoy, without having to focus all of the time on what Sean Spicer said earlier today. I'm doing my bit to publicize the bad things Trump is doing, through my journalism and social media activity, and I joined groups such as the ACLU and Electronic Frontier Foundation this year as a direct reaction to Trump. But I'm not going to allow Trump to control my life.  

Robert Anton Wilson in the Los Angeles Times

One of my favorite writers and pundits, Jesse Walker, has succeeded in putting a quote from Robert Anton Wilson into the Los Angeles Times.

Jesse's op-ed piece, "Is the Trump-Russia story an octopus or spaghetti?," attempts to make sense of the current furor over Russia's alleged manipulation of the U.S. election and Russia's alleged ties to officials in the Trump administration. Some good sentences: "It’s not just evidence that’s driving the belief in a Trump-Putin plot. A lot of people really, really want such stories to be true. If you’re one of them, you probably belong to at least one of two groups: people who strongly dislike Trump, and Russia hawks. Conversely, if there comes a point where the evidence of collusion is overwhelming but you’re still strenuously denying it, then you’re probably a Trump supporter and/or a Russia dove."

The piece would rate a mention here because it's about conspiracy theories, a big topic for RAW and for Jesse, the author of the book The United States of Paranoia: A Conspiracy Theory. 

But there's also this paragraph (after a paragraph arguing that conspiracies are "like a bowl of spaghetti"):

"I stole that pasta metaphor from Robert Anton Wilson, a novelist who alternated between espousing and satirizing conspiracy theories. Like spaghetti, he wrote, conspiracies 'contain endless entanglements and overlaps; but to mistake the spaghetti for a coherent and intelligent organism is like mistaking the debris and flotsam on the beach for the outline of an invading army.' It’s relatively easy to find connections, harder to determine whether they’re innocent or shady, harder still to figure out if they add up to a larger master plot."

I didn't recognize the Wilson quote. Jesse explains:

"It's in "The Spaghetti Theory of Conspiracy," his intro to Donald Holmes' THE ILLUMINATI CONSPIRACY: THE SAPIENS SYSTEM. It isn't on the Web -- well, it sort of is, but the person who posted it cut it off midway through, so a great deal of it is missing:

http://worldtradecenter911.blogspot.com/2002/01/spaghetti-theory-of-conspiracy.html

Cosmic Trigger warning! Get your tickets now!

Michelle Olley has checked in to remind everyone, in an email newsletter, that tickets for the Cosmic Trigger play in London (May 4-27 at the Cockpit) will be going up in price soon. She writes:

COSMIC TRIGGER WARNING! If you've not got around to booking your seats for the play yet, the Early Bird tickets are taking flight in fourteen days' time (not 7 yet - apols for earlier math SNAFU).
Grab one (or 23) for the crazy-reasonable price of £15 - before they go up to £22 on Thursday April 6th.

SUNDAY SALONS
The two Special Event Saturdays are sold out, but we still have some tickets left for our Sunday Salons on May 14th and 21st, hosted by the fine folks from Festival 23 and Breaking Convention respectively. More details on what cosmic goodies are on those days can be found HERE

Buy your tickets here. More information here. 

Fiction notes

I recently finished up serving as a member of the judging committee for the Prometheus Award. Our committee is charged with coming up with a slate of nominees (after reading a pile of books). That will produce a list of finalists, akin to the finalists announced every year for the Hugo and Nebula awards, and then the general membership of the Libertarian Futurist Society will vote on those five (or so) nominees, and select a winner of the Prometheus.

I can't talk about our deliberations and I won't tell how I voted on the nominees, but  after reading a bunch of science fiction novels, I can recommend a few books without giving you a ranking:

The Core of the Sun, Johanna Sinisalo. An unusual dystopia about a totalitarian Finland which bans not only drugs and alcohol, but also hot peppers. The Worldcon is in Helsinki this year, and Sinisalo is the local star. You can read my interview with her. 

The Mandibles: A Family, 2029-2047, Lionel Shriver. Leftists got to see what a prominent mainstream novelist could do with science fiction with Margaret Atwood wrote The Handmaid's Tale. Now libertarians get to read an offering from prominent novelist Lionel Shriver (We Need to Talk About Kevin). Her fine novel depicts a family's struggle for survival after the collapse of the U.S. government.

Too Like the Lightning, Ada Palmer. I found the advocacy of censoring in Palmer's utopia problematic, but I liked some of her other ideas, and I thought this was one of the best SF novels I'd read in the past few months. Read my review. The sequel to this has just come out, and I plan to read it soon.

Arkwright, Allen Steele. An old-fashioned SF novel about a science fiction writer from the Golden Age who leaves his estate to a foundation that pursues interstellar travel.

The relevance to this blog (other than the fact that readers of a blog about an American writer might want to hear about other books to read) is that the only literary award Robert Anton Wilson (and Robert Shea) ever received, as far as I know, was a Prometheus Hall of Fame Award for Illuminatus! The Libertarian Futurist Society welcomes new members; find out more here. 

RAW auction on Ebay continues

The Robert Anton Wilson auction on Ebay is continuing. As I write this (Wednesday morning), I see three items listed, two items of clothing and a pillowcase set, but many other items have been promised, so keep an eye on the space.

About some of the items listed: Christina Pearson says, "There are several things I have to locate but here are a few items going up soon:" One very cool thing coming soon – right out of Bobs wallet! His OTO card:

And Christina's short list . . .

1 - Bob’s favorite white twill jacket with his Amnesty Int’l button still attached

2 - Bob’s favorite brown jacket

3 - More Guayabera shirts

4 - A little resin buddha

5 - A swiss army knife

6 - My moms watch

7 - The Orson Wells masterworks vinyl collection of Julius Caesar copyright 1938 or so

8 - More teeshirts

9 - A bunch of random books

10 - Hand of God

11 - Odds and ends

Email to the Universe paperback now out

The new Hilaritas Press paperback of Email to the Universe has now been published, making it available to those of you who want the paperback rather than the ebook.

Please note that it will take a couple of days or so for it to replace the New Falcon edition on Amazon's website. But if you want to order it right away, you can do so now at the Amazon CreateSpace link. 

And if you are planning to buy the book, even if not right away, you should probably go ahead and use the CreateSpace link, rather than buying it from Amazon's main website. Richard Rasa says, "The RAW Trust receives a much higher royalty for all sales through the CreateSpace store. No idea why. It certainly is not as fancy a page as the regular Amazon Sales Page, so maybe there’s a lower overhead? That’s one piece of pasta I can’t get a focus on."

RAW Trust royalties benefit RAW's heirs. The new edition is superior to the older New Falcon edition — it has new material by Michael Johnson and Paul Krassner and better illustrations — so you'll want to make a point of making sure that's the one you buy.

When the book becomes available at Amazon's main site and other locations, there will be an announcement and I'll note it here.

RAW auction resumes on Ebay [UPDATED]

Robert Anton Wilson, wearing an Escher t-shirt currently being offered for sale on Ebay. 

The auction of Robert Anton Wilson's personal items has resumed on Ebay. As I write this, seven items are being offered, including clothing and other personal items.

UPDATE: More information from Rasa:

Christina gave me a short list and some photos of items. She says, "there are several things I have to locate but here are a few items going up soon:" One very cool thing coming soon – right out of Bobs wallet! His OTO card:

And Christina's short list . . .

1 - Bob’s favorite white twill jacket with his Amnesty Int’l button still attached

2 - Bob’s favorite brown jacket

3 - More Guayabera shirts

4 - A little resin buddha

5 - A swiss army knife

6 - My moms watch

7 - The Orson Wells masterworks vinyl collection of Julius Caesar copyright 1938 or so

8 - More teeshirts

9 - A bunch of random books

10 - Hand of God

11 - Odds and ends

   Many many thanks and may your lasagna fly high!

News from Steve "Fly" Pratt

Steve Fly, creator of the amazing RAW 360 tribute website, recently put up a new blog post that summarizes his RAW-related activities over the years. There's a lot to relate, as Fly is an active musician, a writer of books, a blogger, is musical director for the Cosmic Trigger play, traveled to the U.S. to interview RAW and has done other things I'm probably forgetting. I own two of his albums: Robert Anton Wilson meets Steve 'Fly Agaric' Pratt (his interview with RAW, set to music) and Occupy by Dr. Marshmallow Cubicle (e.g., one of Steve's bands.) I can't keep up with all of Steve's blogs, but I've added another one to the Sangha section.

See also the tracks Steve created with the NinjaJamm app.