RAW Rising

I just received word of the passing of Robert Anton Wilson -- author, futurist, optimist, cranky old man, philosopher, "guerrilla ontologist", teacher, and friend...

Robert Anton Wilson Defies Medical Experts and leaves his body @4:50 AM on binary date 01/11.

All Hail Eris!

On behalf of his children and those who cared for him, deepest love and gratitude for the tremendous support and lovingness bestowed upon us.

(that's it from Bob's bedside at his fnord by the sea)

RAW Memorial February 07

Bob left behind an remarkable body of work including his most famous Illuminatus! trilogy (with Robert Shea), the Schrodinger's Cat Trilogy, The Cosmic Trigger series, the play Wilhelm Reich in Hell, recorded lectures on James Joyce, and the astonishing Prometheus Rising. That was the first book of his I ever read, and I can still remember the night a dear friend put it into my hands with a mischeivous grin. "Here's something you might like." It was very much the kind of grin you might see when one friend gave another their first taste of LSD.

A first acid trip isn't a bad analogy. Better: coming across one of his books unexpectedly could be the philosophical and spiritual equivalent of getting kidnapped by pirates, or running off to join the circus -- you might get home again eventually, but you wouldn't be the same person who left.

Wilson asked questions that no one else ever thought to ask, and suggested answers that no one had ever thought of to questions that everyone has asked. But he always preferred the questions to the answers.

I'll add more later. It's not going to be the same without him. But, then again, after you'd begun to read his stuff, it wasn't ever the same anyway.