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Robert Anton Wilson

Robert Shea

The Illuminatus! Trilogy: The Eye in the Pyramid, the Golden Apple, and Leviathan Hardcover – February 1, 1998

by Robert Shea (Author), Robert Anton Wilson (Author)

904 ratings

Book 1 of 3: Illuminatus!

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It was a deadly mistake. Joseph Malik, editor of a radical magazine, has snooped into rumours about an ancient secret society that turned out to be still alive and kicking. Now his offices have been bombed, he's gone missing, and the case has landed in the lap of a tough, cynical, streetwise New York detective. Saul Goodman knows he's stumbled onto something big - but even he can't guess how far into the pinnacles of power this conspiracy of evil has penetrated. Brimming with sex and violence - in and out of time and space - the three books of The Illuminatus! Trilogy are only partly works of the imagination. They tackle all the important cover-ups of our time - from who really shot the Kennedys to why there's a pyramid on the one-dollar bill - and suggest a truly mind-blowing reality.

Print length

816 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Fine Communications
Publication date

February 1, 1998
Dimensions

5.75 x 2 x 8.75 inches
ISBN-10

1567312373
ISBN-13

978-1567312379
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Thomas Pynchon
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Theodore Kaczynski
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Robert Anton Wilson
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Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Fine Communications (February 1, 1998)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 816 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1567312373
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1567312379
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.25 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.75 x 2 x 8.75 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #984,913 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #60,910 in Science Fiction (Books)

Customer Reviews:
904 ratings

About the authors

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Robert Anton Wilson
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Author of some 35 books including Cosmic Trigger, Prometheus Rising, Schrodinger's Cat Trilogy, and co-author of the Illuminatus! Trilogy, Robert Anton Wilson (RAW or Bob) was a futurist, author, lecturer, stand-up comic, guerrilla ontologist, psychedelic magician, outer head of the Illuminati, quantum psychologist, Taoist sage, Discordian Pope, Struthian politician . . . maybe. Bob described his work as an "attempt to break down conditioned associations, to look at the world in a new way, with different perspectives recognized as models or maps, and no one model elevated to the truth". His goal being "to try to get people into a state of generalized agnosticism, not agnosticism about God alone but agnosticism about everything." His "Maybe Logic" inspired the creation of the Maybe Logic Academy. Google "Robert Anton Wilson" for mosbunall info.
~~~
The Berkeley mob once called Leary and me “the counter-culture of the counter-culture.” I’m some kind of antibody in the New Age movement. My function is to raise the possibility, “Hey, you know, some of this stuff might be bullshit.”
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Robert Shea
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Customer reviews

5 star		78%
4 star		10%
3 star		5%
2 star		3%
1 star		4%

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J W

A literary adventure that dwarfs all others

Reviewed in the United States on September 24, 2020

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Forget Shakespeare, Tolkien, Seinfeld, Spielberg, Springer and that Game of Thrones guy...

THIS is a real masterpiece, a beautiful fusion of reality and modern day fantasy, a passionate, creative, colorful collision of empty smut and deep, meaningful analysis of the human essence. A real page turner that will make you laugh, cry, feel a little tingly in special places and have you looking at life in a whole new light.

Don't let the page count fool you - this is a very approachable, simple novel to read, which makes it all the more fascinating, dangerous, intriguing, entertaining and valuable in our era of "alternative truths" and "fake news".

And did I mention it has talking dolphins? Who doesn't love ----ing dolphins???

Give your mind that vacation it's been craving, let it explore the sunny beaches of this fantastical interpretation of our fractured world. Open your eyes to the fnords! Make the wisest financial decision you'll make this decade and get a copy for yourself today!

26 people found this helpful

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Christian Murray

Think for yourself schmuck!

Reviewed in the United States on February 11, 2019

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It's the hitchhiker's guide to the Galaxy for adults, it's also good the whole way through. I bought a second copy recently to highlight all of my favorite parts, I stopped on page four, I had highlighted every letter. This book has so many thought provoking quips, and ideals, that I believe it should be curriculum reading, in every other year of schooling, just so you can understand and relate to it better. You may not agree with RAW's philosophy, but he and Robert Shea have a lot of good points to make. I don't agree with a lot of their tenets, but they're made in such good ways that I'm curious if they even agreed with them, and just used them as counter-counter-culture

22 people found this helpful

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C-Money

Interesting and Fun!

Reviewed in the United States on February 27, 2018

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This 1975 trilogy tells a fictional story that blends social satire with myths, legends, conspiracies, and culture. It presents a lot of true material merged with fiction and a crazy end of world plot. The three books are together with appendices and the page count is just over 800. Although most if the beliefs and theories are from the 1960s and 70s, a lot remains valid or believed in today.

15 people found this helpful

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Rabbit the Reader

ONe of my favorites, it is both culture locked ...

Reviewed in the United States on March 26, 2017

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ONe of my favorites, it is both culture locked and time locked. It is a strange book, barrated by different people, sometimes more than one, sometimes more than one at the same time. Sometimes it is narrated by a giant whale, or at least I think it does. The big question is, "Can you see the fnords?" It also helps if you have done acid a few times, or even more than a few times. It is a very strange book. All Hal Eris...no wait, is that Maldonado in the WHite House?

17 people found this helpful

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Kass

Worth the read and money.

Reviewed in the United States on April 3, 2019

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Bought this for a friend who is very into conspiracy and Illuminati. She said it is amazing and she has read it over 15 in the past year and a half. She said it is worth the read. Plus it is an amazing price for 3 books in 1

7 people found this helpful

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Scott Collins

Deserves An Unabridged Edition

Reviewed in the United States on February 22, 2016

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The Illuminatus! Trilogy is a pretty weird book, even by postmodern conventions. The narrative jumps back and forth between 3rd person and any given character without warning. There are quite a few plot threads, and the transitions between these threads are practically nonexistent; nothing is really there to signify a change in scene, and sometimes one thread even jumps to another mid-sentence. Oh, and there are tons of characters, many of whom make low-key entrances only to show up again much later in the story. If this all makes Illuminatus! sound similar to Gravity's Rainbow, don't worry, the former is considerably easier to digest. Whereas Pynchon uses his vast wealth of knowledge to go off on tangents and add more historical background to any given event than what might be necessary (don't get me wrong, though, his books are very entertaining in their own way), Shea and Wilson essentially poke fun at all the insane (and not-so-insane) facts they dig up. Of course, half of these "facts" were made up, but that's where Illuminatus! really shines as an example of what postmodern literature can accomplish.

It is, to put it one way, the Skeptic's Bible, and if that sounds like an oxymoron, good job for noticing. Illuminatus! is filled with contradictions and outright lies, although unlike certain books that claim to be historically and factually accurate but are really not, the trilogy goes out of its way to make the reader question what he/she is reading. There is, of course, a lot of true information scattered throughout the book, and it becomes obvious that Shea and Wilson put a great amount of research and insight into writing this, but for every true story there are at least two false leads, two red herrings. Truly it doesn't take long to get why—for about 15 years—Illuminatus! was the quintessential work of conspiracy fiction, and the best part is that the book has so much fun with the genre; nowadays we're used to reading conspiracy thrillers that take themselves too seriously, but Illuminatus! satirizes such novels before they even became as famous as they are now. Not only that, but the trilogy takes shots at too many groups, individuals, and ideologies to count, but here are some notable examples: conservatives, communists, socialists, libertarians, feminists, Christians, cops, politicians, hippies, racists, not-racists, Satanists, spies, drug dealers, drug takers, prudes, college professors, the book itself...

Illuminatus! is arguably one the greatest philosophical novels ever written; it has a stance, sure, but it pulls the reader in numerous directions by presenting different philosophies. It then has the audacity to ask the reader, "Do you believe that?" Governments and authority figures as a whole get criticized, sometimes vehemently, but Shea and Wilson clearly had a message they felt needed to get out there, and even though the trilogy was first published back in 1975, its anti-authoritarian message still holds up today. In the post-Patriot Act United States, some of what happens in this book is eerily prophetic, and many of the socio-political issues being faced today were going on over 40 years ago. History repeats? I suspect that the more whacked-out portions of the book are Wilson's writing, although the man himself said that it's hard to tell who wrote what for the most part. The fact that this was written by two authors with differing writing styles and backgrounds and yet feels surprisingly cohesive for such a long and unwieldy tome is something to be praised, I think. 800 pages and I still feel like there wasn't quite enough to take in; it felt like we could be stuck in this huge fun-house of a book for a few hundred more pages. Of course, there was much more material written than ultimately published—about 500 pages were cut from the final product—but I kinda wish we eventually get an unabridged edition of the trilogy. Probably never gonna happen, though. Hail Eris!

55 people found this helpful

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The Angry Druid

a monster of a shaggy dog story

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 22, 2018

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"Its a dreadfully long monster of a book
The authors are utterly incompetent - no sense of style or structure at all. It starts out as a detective story, switches to science-fiction, then goes off into the supernatural, and is full of the most detailed information of dozens of ghastly boring subjects. The time sequence is all out of order in a very pretentious imitation of Faulkner and Joyce. Worst yet, it has the most raunchy sex scenes, thrown in just to make it sell. I'm sure the authors - whom I have never heard of - have the supreme bad taste to introduce real political figures into this mishmash and pretend to be exposinga real conspiracy. "

Well, I hope the authors don't mind my repeating their words. I found it a bit like I do Shakespear. I am sure there is a joke or a political dig in there, but I am just not sufficiently familiar with the necessary context to quite get much of it, and feel a lot is going right over my head.

I read it quite quickly, which probably says something good about it, but whether I enjoyed it ? I am really not sure. Perhaps I need to read it again. Perhaps you need chemical assistance, or perhaps you need a schoolboy sense of humour, and I am just too old.

It is without doubt a monster of a shaggy dog story.

Hail Eris !

9 people found this helpful

Dozy Shopper

Cult classic that I read for the fact marbled in

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 7, 2020

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There is a reason why mainstream success mostly eluded this pretty big trilogy.
Firstly I was reading this for the mysticism and insight into secret brotherhoods - and have to say the research done by the authors is clearly extensive and insightful, however historical fact is marbled in with invented history, fantasy and altered timelines, which you have to pick through.
Makes a device of modernist stream of consciousness flip flopping at breakneck speed and for it's time was clearly trying to be as edgy as possible. You're talking Ralph Bakshis' "Fritz the Cat" levels of 70s (incredibly awkward) sex and drugs and "I just said up yours baby" blacksploitation dialogue with Crowleyanity thrown in to boot.
The end result is really that the plot is hard to follow at times and swaps out intrigue and plot development for weirdness. Discordianism comes across as hard to like and the levels of introspection among the main characters as they have another weird ultra violence sex and supernatural future tech encounter is wearying. It's not bad but I haven't found it an enjoyable read after the first 100 pages or so and am kind of stuck in the middle of the book.
This is the originator of a lot of pop culture tropes and you probably should read it but it may not be enjoyable.
"Just then a giant woman stuffed into an apple tried to make love to the redneck hillbilly on ketamine and the dolphin flew the c++ missile into the moon as the big bopper used the mind ray from his recording studio to tell Mungo Jerry that this was one hell of a trip, as Adam weishaupt called a meeting..." it's like that.

5 people found this helpful

Broken Holmes

A rodeo for the mind...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 20, 2017

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The longest, strangest and most difficult novel I've ever read...yet really enjoyable. Comes with a free speedboat. Intentionally chaotic, the book draws you in with a mixture of facts and fiction (as favoured by the Discordians), covering nearly every conspiracy theory imaginable. I'm sure there's much more fnord going on than I could keep track of, but I learned to embrace the confusion and carry on. Handy 1:1 scale, perfectly sized for human hands.

5 people found this helpful

oldschool

A bit too weird but not without some charm.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 27, 2019

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I was intrigued that a book written so long ago , fiction or otherwise dealt with the illuminati, so thought i'd give it a try.
I've read a lot of offbeat books.
While in places this was funny, intriguing~ overall this one was a bit too weird even for my
sometimes oddball tastes &rather more gratuitous sex than was strictly needed.
Though slightly too young to remember the sixties i'm old enough & (just about!) educated enough to have a reasonable grasp on 20th century history.( with an emphasis on American 20th century history in this books case.)
I think if you were a somewhat younger reader,most likely a lot of the book would be completely lost on you.
I wanted to like this book, but overall don't care for it that much.

2 people found this helpful

Sheena

You don't have to be mad to read this, but if you are it helps

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 26, 2013

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I am reading this for the second time, and bought it for the Kindle because the paperback is so fat it was making my wrist and thumb ache. The Kindle version is very well presented. The first 300 pages are the most difficult, but it is worth plodding on. It is also worth looking up a lot of the references to other events - I was very surprised by what I read about John Dillinger, for example. I suspect that this is one of the best books ever written. It owes something to James Joyce, but has more depth of relevant meaning. Just try it. Look it up on the Web first, to get some signposts for understanding. Above all, have fun. Lots of it.

8 people found this helpful

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The Illuminatus! Trilogy: The Eye in the Pyramid, the Golden Apple, and Leviathan Hardcover – February 1, 1998

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Robert Anton Wilson

Robert Shea

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