The Illuminatus! - BokDraken

Paperback, 805 sidor

Publicerades 25 juni 1998 av Constable and Robinson.

ISBN:: 978-1-85487-574-7

The Illuminatus! Trilogy is a series of three novels by American writers Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson, first published in 1975.1 The trilogy is a satirical, postmodern, science fiction-influenced adventure story; a drug-, sex-, and magic-laden trek through a number of conspiracy theories, both historical and imaginary, related to the authors' version of the Illuminati. The narrative often switches between third- and first-person perspectives in a nonlinear narrative. It is thematically dense, covering topics like counterculture, numerology, and Discordianism.

The trilogy comprises three parts which contain five books and appendices: The Eye in the Pyramid (first two books), The Golden Apple (third and part of fourth book), Leviathan (part of fourth and all of fifth book, and the appendices). The parts were first published as three separate volumes starting in September 1975. In 1984 they were published as an omnibus edition and are now more commonly …

The Illuminatus! Trilogy is a series of three novels by American writers Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson, first published in 1975.1 The trilogy is a satirical, postmodern, science fiction-influenced adventure story; a drug-, sex-, and magic-laden trek through a number of conspiracy theories, both historical and imaginary, related to the authors' version of the Illuminati. The narrative often switches between third- and first-person perspectives in a nonlinear narrative. It is thematically dense, covering topics like counterculture, numerology, and Discordianism.

The trilogy comprises three parts which contain five books and appendices: The Eye in the Pyramid (first two books), The Golden Apple (third and part of fourth book), Leviathan (part of fourth and all of fifth book, and the appendices). The parts were first published as three separate volumes starting in September 1975. In 1984 they were published as an omnibus edition and are now more commonly reprinted in the latter form.

In 1986 the trilogy won the Prometheus Hall of Fame Award, designed to honor libertarian science fiction.2

The authors went on to write several works, both fiction and nonfiction, that dealt further with the themes of the trilogy, but they did not write any direct sequels.

Illuminatus! has been adapted for the stage, as an audio book and has influenced several modern writers, artists, musicians, and games-makers. The popularity of the word "fnord" and the 23 enigma can both be attributed to the trilogy.

3 utgåvor

Björn recenserade The Illuminatus! Trilogy av Robert Anton Wilson

None

3 stjärnor

Perhaps this is the only workable approach to writing a proper conspiracy thriller that is not Foucault's Pendulum: write it from a discordian POV. If everything true is false and vice versa and you cannot believe anything that is written, hail Eris etc, then the whole mishmash of ancient societies, 60s psychedelia, 70s politics, literary allusions and general weirdness not only makes sense, but makes total nonsense, which of course may be the point.

And for the first few hundred pages, I'm loving this. Shea and Wilson dive in and start connecting the dots between everything and anything so gleefully that you can hear them giggling. They throw everything in there, from ancient myths (real or made up on the spot) to modernist and postmodernist authors (Melville! Lovecraft! Joyce! Pynchon! Vonnegut!), to then-current affairs, mixing fact and fiction in an absolutely dizzying way, pulling together threads to show ideas …

Perhaps this is the only workable approach to writing a proper conspiracy thriller that is not Foucault's Pendulum: write it from a discordian POV. If everything true is false and vice versa and you cannot believe anything that is written, hail Eris etc, then the whole mishmash of ancient societies, 60s psychedelia, 70s politics, literary allusions and general weirdness not only makes sense, but makes total nonsense, which of course may be the point.

And for the first few hundred pages, I'm loving this. Shea and Wilson dive in and start connecting the dots between everything and anything so gleefully that you can hear them giggling. They throw everything in there, from ancient myths (real or made up on the spot) to modernist and postmodernist authors (Melville! Lovecraft! Joyce! Pynchon! Vonnegut!), to then-current affairs, mixing fact and fiction in an absolutely dizzying way, pulling together threads to show ideas and concepts shining through, and yanking the rug out from under you anytime you feel like you have a clue what's going on. They even make the weird structure - the POV shifts, the time skips, etc - seem perfectly natural.

But eventually, that's also what makes the book more of a chore to read than a pleasure. At some point, you realise that you're reading page upon page upon page upon page of exposition by characters who are, in-story, either mad, lying, or just plain wrong, and will be proven so in the next 20 pages of exposition by another character (or the same character), who in turn will turn out to be... The joke just goes on too long with no punchline in sight. It's all a bit like... well...

Mike: Rick, you've been looking out of that window for three hours now.
Rick: Yes, well it's hardly surprising, is it? Vyvyan put super glue all over the pane!
Vyvyan: Did I? That was a good joke!
Rick: I'll probably be disfigured for life, Vyvyan, and you'll have to pay! Ha! And then who will be laughing, ha! Not you, matey. That's for sure!
Mike: Yeah, well just don't break the glass when you tear your face off, that's all.
Rick: I won't. I won't because... [quickly moves away from window] it's not true! It was a joke I made up, and you fell for it like the fascists you are!

I'm reading this in 2016 as Complete Idiotism has suddenly become a valid political platform, and it feels oddly prescient, but not necessarily in a good way. I'm wondering where Trump, Gove, Putin, Erdogan, Åkesson et al would fall in the context of this novel. I thought I wanted to laugh at it all, but when bare-faced authoritarianism and ditto irrationalism turn out to get along fine, I don't want enlightenment, I just want to pull a blanket over my head and read something that actually makes sense instead, and doesn't end with the most worn-out cop-out cliché ending in literary history.

Ämnen

Science Fiction