Schrodinger's Cat Trilogy by Robert Anton Wilson
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Book Reviews of Schrodinger's Cat Trilogy
Book Review: Not Free SF Reader
Summary: 3 Stars
Parallel universes are certainly not a stretch, when you think aboutall the bizarre stuff that Robert Anton Wilson comes up with. Here we
have another Illuminati trilogy style collection, even with some of the
same characters. However, these are alternate universe versions of
these people, hence the title of the trilogy.
If you don't like that original trilogy, you are probably not going to like this.
Book Review: An extreme disappointment
Summary: 2 Stars
Here's where all the charges leveled against Robert Anton Wilson turn out to be utterly true. This book is confusing, stupid, pretentious, self-indulgent and not that funny. Mostly its a book about alternative universes where the characters change their jobs, sexual orientations and outlooks depending on what world they happen to inhabit. There is no plot, merely an amalgamation of scenes that illustrate everything that Wilson believes. This works in some books, but this book isn't one of them.The problems are numerous. You don't like any of the main characters. If they are from the original trilogy their personalities have been sucked out. The humor isn't all that humorous and most of it is just rehashing of the original.
This seems to have been written shortly after the original trilogy without Robert Shea. It seems that Shea and Wilson had an argument over the original work with Shea yelling that they needed plot and structure and Wilson arguing for disjointed scenes. If that is true then Wilson won the argument with this book and the reader loses.
Later Wilson work is really good after he's learned to control the manic energy inhabiting his writing. This book is an example of what happens when someone is allowed to run rampant with the ideas and doesn't bother putting them into any structure. Like a 3-year old with a box of crayons - all color, no substance.
Besides that ths book is kind of boring. For all the reasons cited and more. Read the original Illuminatus Trilogy and then read Masks of the Illuminatus. Even if you want the manic stream of conscious writing you'll like it better with Masks or Historical Illuminatus 3 if you can find a copy.
Book Review: Marginally psychotic balderdash?
Summary: 2 Stars
At the risk of sounding like a literary philistine, I must say that I didn't get it. There was some really neat stuff, but it rambled on and on and I didn't catch the connections. Is this one of those works where you need to be warmed up on some good acid, or maybe a devotee of obscure occultist literature? Maybe my problem is that I've been clean and sober over ten years, or maybe because I have a Ph.D. in psychology. I don't know. I plan to read Illuminatus and see if I can make sense of that one. I think I gave it a good run for the money--I read the entire first part basically in one sitting while waiting for my wife to shop for clothes, partly in a Starbuck's coffee shop and partly on a sunny patio outside a Middle Eastern deli during an unseasonably warm day in January, in Austin, Texas. I usually make marginal notes in the books I read, and in this one all I could find, scribbled inside the front cover, was: Marginally psychotic balderdash?Book Review: Marginally psychotic balderdash?
Summary: 2 Stars
At the risk of sounding like a literary philistine, I must say that I didn't get it. There was some really neat stuff, but it rambled on and on and I didn't catch the connections. Is this one of those works where you need to be warmed up on some good acid, or maybe a devotee of obscure occultist literature? Maybe my problem is that I've been clean and sober over ten years, or maybe because I have a Ph.D. in psychology. I don't know. I plan to read Illuminatus and see if I can make sense of that one. I think I gave it a good run for the money--I read the entire first part basically in one sitting while waiting for my wife to shop for clothes, partly in a Starbuck's coffee shop and partly on a sunny patio outside a Middle Eastern deli during an unseasonably warm day in January, in Austin, Texas. I usually make marginal notes in the books I read, and in this one all I could find, scribbled inside the front cover, was: Marginally psychotic balderdash?