Brad LInaweaver has died

Brad Linaweaver. Creative Commons photo.

Science fiction writer Brad Linaweaver has died. Best known for Moon of Ice, Linaweaver was a two-time winner of the Prometheus Award; Mike Glyer has posted a well-done obituary at File 770. 

The Widow's Son online reading group, Week Two

King Louis XVI

By Gregory Arnott
Special guest blogger

This week: Pages 21 to 33 of the Hilaritas Press edition, chapters Three and Four of all editions) 

This week we get to read Signor Duccio’s beginning of an account of the Upheaval of ‘89 and after the irascible yet clear-minded stonecutter runs through the usual factions blamed for the Revolution- King Louis XVI, the Duc de Orleans, and the ever-present Illuminati- provides a rudimentary lesson in sociological analysis. (Note Duccio’s profession and rank in conjunction with the faux-quote from The Gospel of Mary and Masonry.) Duccio seems to me to be another Wilson alter-ego whose cynicism is borne from seeing beyond the conventions of his time and presenting a very Wilsonian idea of technological advancement as freedom from poverty.

On page 27 (Hilaritas edition) there is a footnote mentioning the Gordon Riots- obviously we are meant to consider the property damage of the Riots comparatively with the French Revolution in a negative light. One person in his young twenties had fond memories of the Riots who I think bears mentioning: William Blake. The young Blake stood with the crowd and happily watched Newgate Prison burn to the ground, set ablaze by King Mob. I can’t really bring myself to shed a tear for the unfortunate land-owners of London myself.

Finally Chapter 3 ends with the second direct mention of Sigismundo by name, this time not being sized up for murder but instead in the same breath of conflicted Robespierre. Something to think about.

The next chapter is a short missive from the A.’.A.’. which wasn’t formally announced until the dawn of the Twentieth Century- I imagine most of us reading the book are familiar with Crowley, the Golden Dawn, and the A.’.A.’.. (If not, everything in the first footnote to this chapter is absolutely true and it's been around since Atlantis, also real, controlling everything behind the scenes.)  There are a number of fascinating ideas brought up over the course of the three pages that make up Chapter 4- the A.’.A.’.’s original purpose of protecting the Widow and the Widow’s Son, the complete transformation of the human mind, the rejection of dogmatic doubt in favor of uncertainty, another Bible quote, this time from the Gospel of Luke, and cave-dwelling enlightenment. I’m sure someone will have an interesting take on all of this in the comments.

Finally, our de Selby for the week: “The more we know, the less we sense, and the true rationalist would be autistic, narcissistic, and strictly senseless.” (Similar qualities to de Selby’s rationalist are routinely ascribed to my generation.)

Next week I’d like to cover three chapters, please let me know what you all think!

'Dadtown' coming out soon

Adrian Reynolds reports that his Dadtown comic book will be released soon. (I read the first parts of it and posted about it, for example here.)  He writes,

"We discovered at a comic convention the quickest way to get across Dadtown is with the phrase “Toddlers with shotguns!”. That element of high-octane weird mayhem comes from being exposed to the shock of 2000AD at the right age, just as it was launched. It’s a story about family messed-up to Greek tragedy levels; whether a clone has an identity beyond the person they’ve duplicated; and how the human inhabitants of an alien world can get beyond colonial thinking. Peek closer and you’ll see environmental and mythic themes too – it all comes together on the subject of monsters... "

A limited edition print that will launch Oct. 19 is for sale (UK only, for now). Details here.

Castle Perilous 23 starts soon

I can't show you a picture of the secret castle for Castle Perilous 23, but here is Trifels Castle in Germany. Maybe it looks a little bit like the secret Discordian castle in England. 

An update on Castle Perilous 23 (which begins Friday at a secret castle in England): Apparently a few tickets might still be available, check the Twitter account for updates.

A document has been published listing some of the programming, including "Daisy Campbell My Full Confession" and "Pop Culture Magic Workshop With Cat Vincent." I don't know what an "Amatory Artist" is (Sarah Kershaw), nor can I tell you much about "Discordian Resistance Training" or the "Naked Grace Missionaries," but it sounds interesting.

New Widow's Son link list

Donatello's "The Penitent Mary Magdalen"

I've created a new links list at the top right to archive posts for the new Widow's Son reading group; if you miss the first couple of weeks, it should be easy to get caught up. The quality of the discussion so far is pretty good, so jump in. 

Adam Gorightly on the 'Lone Gunman' podcast

Adam Gorightly (left) with Robert Anton Wilson. 

“Deep diving back into the New Orleans underbelly with noted author and crackpot historian, Adam Gorightly! We discuss his multipart article on the antics and associations of the shotgun toting Pastor himself.”

The podcast covers the Rev. Raymond Broshears business.

Link here.  Adam also links to all of his Broshears material.

'Lost' Orson Welles play to be published

Orson Welles at work on 'The Magnificent Ambersons,' 1942 (public domain photo). 

Marching Song, a play about the militant abolitionist John Brown co-written by Orson Welles, has just been published as a new book.  It was never produced on Broadway, never published before, but did get a performance in Woodstock, N.Y.

You can read an article about it. The article is on wellesnet, "the Orson Welles web resource."

RAW interviews P. L. Travers

P.L. Travers in 1924 (as Titania in "A Midsummer's Night Dream")

Robert Anton Wilson interviews P.L. Travers (author of the Mary Poppins books) and it's a remarkable dialogue, covering myth, Irish writing and Zen, among other topics. Another fine discovery from Martin Wagner. A couple of bits to give you the idea:

Wilson: Why are myths so important?
Travers: Because they are always being reenacted in the ordinary diurnal world. The whole terrible Patricia Hearst story, for instance, is a reenactment of the Persephone myth, the maiden who disappears into the underworld. Mrs. Thatcher is another goddess figure—a very stern one.

***

Wilson: In the film of Mary Poppins, something got lost. There is a stern or forbidding side to Mary that just was not in the film. She was a less interesting character.
Travers: The film was not true to her at all. It was very glamorous and colorful entertainment but it wasn’t Mary Poppins.

Wilson: Why is that element of sternness or authoritarianism necessary?
Travers: That’s her ordinariness.

Good work, Martin!

The Widow's Son Reading Group: 1

Mary Magdelene. Painting by Artemisia Gentileschi

Week One: Pages 1-20, Chapter One and Chapter Two

By Gregory Arnott
Special guest blogger

I believe we can begin our conspiracy on the first page. The Gospel of Mary was an early Christian writing that was first rediscovered in the late nineteenth centuries. After reading it I can’t find the quote, although the translations I looked at mentioned that the first pages of the manuscript were missing when it was found. I would recommend reading the Gospel if you have the time and inclination: here is the translation I preferred.

“The stone that the builders rejected” is a phrase that is derived from the 118th Psalm of the Old Testament, “The stone that the builders rejected has become the capstone” (KJV), and is used repeatedly throughout the proper Gospels, Acts, and the first epistle of Peter. It is relatively well known, or as well known as any of these things are, that the phrase is a part of Masonic ritual and symbolism. I can make a crack at what the mysterious phrase might mean but I’d enjoy everyone else’s interpretation more -- please share in the comments! Later this line will be of particular importance to Sir Babcock’s story.

The next page begins with an authenticable quote from one of Robespierre’s letters. One of the more controversial figures in French history, Robespierre did have some pretty good ideas but is mostly, or at least it seems to me to be the case, remembered as an example of bloody demagoguery. The novel begins with an example of the wretchedness of most of the French citizenry in the years preceding the Revolution and in Chapter 3, which we will read next week, the reader is introduced to Luigi Duccio, a former compatriot of Robespierre. The historical ambivalence of Robespierre, and the fatalistic sentiment of this excerpt from his letters, is another piquant flavoring to the novel.

The quote from de Selby, whose works we’ll be visiting, isn’t in any of the studies by Flann O’Brien that I have on hand. Here is a quote from the philosopher that begins O’Brien’s The Third Policeman for comparison:

“Human existence being an hallucination containing in itself the secondary hallucinations of day and night (the latter an insanitary condition of the atmosphere due to accretions of black air) it ill becomes any man of sense to be concerned at the illusory approach of the supreme hallucination known as death.”

This is a novel concerned with the cycles of life and death, great mysteries, and hallucinations --hopefully this quote gives some context to why RAW spends so much time exploring de Selby’s ideas throughout.

The final quote is a sadly benighted sentiment from Professor Hanfkopt’s Werke that suggests man should aspire to be disinterested and objective- anyone familiar with Wilson’s work can go ahead and laugh. On RAWilsonFans an article written by Hanfkopt is available “Art as Black Magick and Moral Subversion” from 1988. Two letter writers who must have been very real wrote back in response and both give some helpful analysis of the Professor’s name:

“By the way, HANFKOPF is a rather unusual German name. HANF is the German expression for the now illegal substance you can use for making paper, cloth or joints. KOPF just means head.”

and

“My elation felt over the new shape of “Critique” Journal was shortened by finding in it the deplorable article by “Hanfkopf” “Art as Black Magick.” Well, what can you expect from a “Hanf-” (cannabis, hemp, hashish, marijuana) “-kopf (head), an “acid head” plain and simple.”

Another essay at the site, “The Persistence of False Memory,” contains another one of Wilson’s cracks at de Selby, here classified as a thinker of the Pataphysical School of writers, and a brief mention of Professor Hanfkopt and his book The CIA: Pawn of the Interstellar Bankers.

Finally we can read another account of Wilson’s of an ominous meeting he attended with J. R. “Bob” Dobbs, Professor Timothy Finnegan, and de Selby in “The Horror on Howth Hill” from Email to the Universe (pg. 193 Hilaritas Press) where Hanfkopf is identified as a foe of de Selby’s and a particularly rabid member of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, CSICOP, which is now known as CSI or the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. The current name of the organization is truly hilarious since they certainly seem to have no need for skepticism, considering how they’ve figured everything out.

Which brings us to the narrative proper:

Armand, Georges, and Lucien seem like a cheerful lot, don’t they? Wilson analyzes each peasant present in the opening scenes, including the innkeeper, over the first two chapters. It’s a good thing we’ve progressed so far since this time since people are no longer paranoid, hold those in power as unassailable, blame problems on foreigners and women, or live their lives without ever realizing how hard the boot on their neck is pressing down. Our President certainly doesn’t sound like an advanced syphilitic who spouts dangerous nonsense all the time. (As de Selby says in Golden Hours “an idiot who has found people more ignorant than himself and knows how to bewitch them.”)

“But the fuck, you know, everything is scary in this world. Guys like us, we don’t get hanged for one thing, sure as shit we get hanged later for something else, maybe something we didn’t even do, you know?” As the recent history of the death penalty and Texas can indicate, no one from the lower classes is ever killed for crimes they didn’t commit anymore. Nor do we have a class of people desperately clawing their way through an uncaring world. Thank God for our glorious civilization.

On page 17-18 you can see the bane of my copy-editing: the incredibly detailed footnotes. However, this is highly indicative of how O’Brien documents de Selby’s ideas and controversies.

We know less about Pierre who seems to dislike his charges and dogs. As he enters the inn he puts the speculation about the King’s pox and Sartines mouches temporarily to rest with a more urgent complaint about dogshit on his shoe. It reminded me of this passage from Masks of the Illuminati:

“We were talking about socialism when I went to the bar," Einstein remarked, "and now we are flying perilously close to the clouds of solipsism. Jeem, at once now, no cheating: What do you really believe is real?"

"Dog shit in the street," Joyce answered promptly. "It's rich yellowbrown and clings to your boot like an unpaid landlord. No man is a solipsist while he stands at the curb trying to scrape it off." Le bon mot de Canbronne.” (pg. 9 in my 1981 edition) 

Thursday links

Jo Walton's An Informal History of the Hugos: A Personal Look Back at the Hugo Awards, 1953-2000 is just $2 for Kindle this month. 

Tyler Cowen's version of Maybe Logic.

Opiate deaths do not correlate with pain pill abuse.

Jason Louv interviews Erik Davis.

Michael Grasso on High Weirdness. 

A bit about John Dee. 

Bobby Campbell's new brand

Bobby Campbell's announcement on Twitter:  "Introducing OMNIBUS 777! Your Passport to the Weirdoverse :)))

Bobby, a frequent illustrator for Robert Anton Wilson's books (including The Widow's Son) and a prolific comics artist, has launched Omnibus 777 as a handy catalog for all of his comics, available in both digital and paper editions. Bobby often simply gives his stuff away; please look at his Patreon account and consider providing some modest support.  See the benefits he lists; it's another way to interact with "the others."

New movie invokes RAW

In Bright Axiom - Trailer from Spencer McCall on Vimeo.

Branka Tesla wrote to me to tell me about a new movie, In Bright Axiom, which she told me opens up with a Robert Anton Wilson quote: “You should view the world as a conspiracy run by a very closely-knit group of nearly omnipotent people, and you should think of those people as yourself and your friends.”

Alfred Korzbyski and William Burroughs also are quoted in the movie.

The description on the official website says, "Under a code of ABSOLUTE DISCRETION, guests are invited into the House of the Latitude, a place where truth and fiction are indistinguishable. This docu-fantasy follows participants through the dark mazes, to a place where a powerful spell is cast, and ultimately broken, as we witness the unforeseen consequences of a daring social experiment."

Branka tells me that the movie premiered at the Berkeley City Club June 19, within walking distance of where Wilson used to live. The official website mentions other screenings in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Cincinnati and Butte, Montana.

Here is the IMDB listing.

Thanks Branka!

More news from the RAW Trust

Yesterday's blog post about the latest newsletter from the RAW Trust focused on our upcoming The Widow's Son reading group (starts Friday!)  but there are some other items I need to highlight. If you haven't signed up for the email newsletter yet, you can read the latest one here. 

The newsletter from Rasa recommends two new RAW books, Robert Anton Wilson: Beyond Conspiracy Theory edited by V. Vale, and Beyond Chaos and Beyond, edited by D. Scott Apel. Rasa writes about one of his favorite RAW anecdotes in the Apel book. He's also gotten permission to reprint Andrew Bishop's well-down introduction to the Vale book, and published it as a blog post.  Rasa also links to my review of the Vale book, and I've posted many times about the Apel tome, including this review.

Rasa also writes that Hilaritas "has been simultaneously working on our next four reissues of RAW titles on our list."

According to the Hilaritas website, the next four titles scheduled to be republished are Sex, Drugs and Magick: A Journey Beyond Limits, The New Inquisition, Ishtar Rising and Reality Is What You Can Get Away With. Of course, when these reissues become available, I will be reporting on it here.