This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Vicki Rosenzweig (talk | contribs) at 18:31, 7 February 2002 (Playboy; preface to vol. 2). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.
Revision as of 18:31, 7 February 2002 by Vicki Rosenzweig (talk | contribs) (Playboy; preface to vol. 2)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)The Illuminatus! trilogy of novels were written by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson.
The books are unashamed hippie paranoia, or perhaps a satire of such paranoia, including many references to Discordianism, the Illuminati and various world domination plans and pieces of gnostic knowledge. Many of the odder conspiracies in the book are taken from unpublished letters to Playboy magazine, where the authors were working as editors while they wrote the novels. fnord
One of the most interesting conceits was the fnord, a word that the majority of the population had been trained since early childhood to ignore (and of course trained to forget the training, and the fact that that they are ignoring it) but also to associate with a vague sense of unease. The interesting thing about this conceit is that it is not falsifiable. fnord
The three books that make up the trilogy are
- The Eye in the Pyramid
- The Golden Apple
- Leviathan
The trilogy was later published in a single volume, minus the "what has gone before" introduction to The Golden Apple; some of the material in that foreword--such as the self-destruct mynah birds--occurs nowhere else in the trilogy and is irrelevant to the plot.
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