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Summary: The carnival of weirdness continues
Review: Robert Anton Wilson, the "last Scientific shaman of our age" provides us with a guide to illumination in this series of three books that are one book. Each volume here collected is a different view of the same world, a ride through the most radical theories of modern physics. Many characters from the Illuminatus! Trilogy reappear, including Simon Moon and the midget Markoff Chaney. They all take slightly different forms, except for Chaney, who appears as the ever constant Random Factor. And when Ulyses return to Ithyca, we get a peak at what Wilson's imagination is capable of. The book may be slightly perverse. But then, he's writing about the state of the human race. I assume that it is only Wilson's positivity that keeps him from writing us all into a novel that would make Sade cringe. The point here is to enjoy, observe, and learn. Readers of Illuminatus! will certainly enjoy this book. Moralists, of course, will weep in their beds. But that's the best part of all...
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Summary: Politics, science, fiction--uh, fiction?
Review: Since I'm in my own reality-tunnel regarding whether or not I happen to be fictional, I'll allow there might be some who can't take this book seriously--good on them! If you want to undo your sense of "here and now"--and attempt to get "what could have been"--here's a book for you. A look at culture, semantics, politics, in other eigenstates--with some familiar faces! Check it out, and check everything else a little closer.
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Summary: just say know
Review: This book is perfect for the Here-n-Now. Read, ponder, freak freely. Enjoy. Get this book if you like to question reality. There are many answer within and without. Good stuff. Surf's up!
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Summary: This book is even better than the Illuminatus! Trilogy!
Review: This book is so funny, and so outrageous despite the fact that it demonstrates a mastery of quantum causality, which Wilson must have. This book is, personally, my favorite. For it to be truly appreciated, though, the reader must first read the Illuminatus! trilogy, to which this Trilogy is a sequel. Anyone who actually thinks that he/she is smart will be surprised at how little he/she actually knows after reading this tome.
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Summary: one of my top 2 sci-fi books
Review: This is a work of genius. First of all, any book that mentions Jan Dismas Zelenka has already won my heart. But more importantly, this book is a masterpiece of structure. It is a perfect example of the principle of "what goes around, comes around," every little incomprehensible detail being resolved perfectly in a way that makes the book into a circle, just like the stages of society in the less-satisfying _Illuminatus Trilogy!_ Less in the Celine spirit, perhaps, but in my opinion a far greater work.
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Summary: Not an easy read
Review: This is not a book you can just read, your really need to pay attention to what is going on and try to understand what is happening. I found this book hilarious. The concept behind this book, as far as I can see, is like the Schrodinger's Cat Theory - which is this: if you are to place a cat in a box / room / enclosed space and put an element in the same enclosed space that could kill the cat in an hour and leave it (for an hour), several universes branch from that point - one in which the cat lives, one in which the cat dies, and an infinite amount of others where other occurances happen (such as the cat escapes or grows wings and turns into a bird - these universes are just not probable). In the same sense, a lot of the characters from the orginal Illuminatus! Trilogy are in this book, but with different personalities - where one universe broke off to create the Illuminatus! Trilogy, another broke off where the characters are totally different and the world is affected by disasters and terrorist groups that aren't even mentioned in the original. I highly reccomend reading this, but as I said - you WILL be lost if you don't pay attention. Very stream of concious, many random occurances (to give you an idea - one of the characters is a midget named Markoff Chaney - for those of you who don't know, a Markov Chain is a randomly occuring set of events - the book is a veritable Markov chain, jumping from character to character on a whim), and a tendency to switch universes mid-paragraph. I would reccomend reading the Illuminatus! Trilogy first, but this should definitly be on your list.
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Summary: If this book doesn't change the way you think, you're dead!
Review: This is one of the most profoundly stimulating books I have ever encountered. It is also a damned funny and entertaining
story in its own right. Robert Anton Wilson is an absolute
genius... not just for his ability to synthesize new concepts, but for his uncanny talent for explaining them in such a lucid and entertaining manner. I've read many of his works, and I believe that overall, this one is the best.
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Summary: If this book doesn't change the way you think, you're dead!
Review: This is one of the most profoundly stimulating books I have ever encountered. It is also a damned funny and entertainingstory in its own right. Robert Anton Wilson is an absolute genius... not just for his ability to synthesize new concepts, but for his uncanny talent for explaining them in such a lucid and entertaining manner. I've read many of his works, and I believe that overall, this one is the best.
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Summary: Far beyond Illuminatus!...
Review: This is the most provocative, most disturbing, most entertaining, most thought-provoking, and most mind-bending book you will ever read. Don't miss it!
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Summary: Pynchon+Adams=Wilson?
Review: This trilogy is essentially a cross between "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" and "Gravity's Rainbow." It is an extremely quick read, narrated with a dry humor and interpersed with various musings about the nature of reality. I can't say that the author introduced me to any new philosophical or scientific ideas. Partly this is because many of the ideas have since seeped into pop culture where they became oversimplified and degraded. For instance the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics is by now old hat, and has formed the subject of several other books. Also, the similarity of human sociology with that of other primates is not really news to anybody nowadays. The trilogy's main worth therefore seems to be in the humor, a humor which is intensified by the intelligence behind it.
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