[A vintage 1990s-era disinformation® essay-interview with Robert Anton Wilson by Disinfo former site editor, Alex Burns]
Author’s note: This interview was originally published in REVelationmagazine (#13, Autumn, 1995): 36-40.
A most illuminating read...
A startling revelation for RAW fans are his future projections for the fictional Illuminati series as a whole. “I eventually plan to continue The Historical Illuminati Chronicles. Right now I’m more concerned with the future again. I’m working on Bride of Illuminatus which takes place in 2026, a more congenial place for my mind to roam than the Eighteenth Century. If I live long enough, I hope all my novels will form one continuous saga from 1750, when Bach died and Sigismundo Celine was born, up through the democratic and industrial revolutions, on to Darwin and Nineteenth Century rationalism, then linking in the outbreak of Relativity (Einstein, Joyce, Crowley) in Masks of the Illuminati, jumping forward to the psycehdelic age in Illuminatus and quantum/computer revolutions inSchroedinger’s Cat and then finishing up with my hopes for the future in Bride.”
He hopes that readers will gain a new perspective by being able to read the series sequentially. “After the first Illuminatus! trilogy with Shea, I noticed that some of the negative responses indicated an ignorance, not just of modern science, but of the Enlightenment philosophy of the 18th Century. Many people who can read are still living, mentally, in the dark ages. So thats when I began to think of a series of interconnected novels that would take such readers through all the revolutions of the past two centuries and prepare them for the 21st Century. The reason Sigismundo Celine, in The Earth Will Shake, is born in Naples is because the Inquisition still existed there in 1750. Taking him out of that fanatic Catholic world into the world of French rationalism begins the process of taking the readers from the Age of Aquinas to the Age of Space.”
Read the whole thing here.
Author’s note: This interview was originally published in REVelationmagazine (#13, Autumn, 1995): 36-40.
A most illuminating read...
A startling revelation for RAW fans are his future projections for the fictional Illuminati series as a whole. “I eventually plan to continue The Historical Illuminati Chronicles. Right now I’m more concerned with the future again. I’m working on Bride of Illuminatus which takes place in 2026, a more congenial place for my mind to roam than the Eighteenth Century. If I live long enough, I hope all my novels will form one continuous saga from 1750, when Bach died and Sigismundo Celine was born, up through the democratic and industrial revolutions, on to Darwin and Nineteenth Century rationalism, then linking in the outbreak of Relativity (Einstein, Joyce, Crowley) in Masks of the Illuminati, jumping forward to the psycehdelic age in Illuminatus and quantum/computer revolutions inSchroedinger’s Cat and then finishing up with my hopes for the future in Bride.”
He hopes that readers will gain a new perspective by being able to read the series sequentially. “After the first Illuminatus! trilogy with Shea, I noticed that some of the negative responses indicated an ignorance, not just of modern science, but of the Enlightenment philosophy of the 18th Century. Many people who can read are still living, mentally, in the dark ages. So thats when I began to think of a series of interconnected novels that would take such readers through all the revolutions of the past two centuries and prepare them for the 21st Century. The reason Sigismundo Celine, in The Earth Will Shake, is born in Naples is because the Inquisition still existed there in 1750. Taking him out of that fanatic Catholic world into the world of French rationalism begins the process of taking the readers from the Age of Aquinas to the Age of Space.”
Read the whole thing here.
1 comment:
Very cool! I love the idea of RAW's literary universe extending from historical fiction through to modernity and onward to futurist sci-fi. I remember at some point reading that he wanted the Historical Illuminatus Chronicles to continue all the way to a distint future space colony, populated by decedents of the Celines, Moons, Babcocks, etc.
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