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Robert Anton Wilson (1932–) is a psychologist, futurist, and novelist. He is best known for The Illuminatus! Trilogy (1975), a novel written with Robert Shea that attempts to include as many conspiracy theories as possible, particularly the Bavarian Illuminati, from whom the title derives, an organization frequently blamed in right-wing literature for all that is wrong with the world, although no one seems sure that it exists. With conspiracy theories as its basis, the novel deals with sex, drugs, rock & roll, anarchism, and another alleged conspiracy known as Discordianism, which does exist, having been made up by friends of Shea and Wilson's in the '60s as both a religion and a parody of a religion. While Shea and Wilson remained close friends for life, they had philosophical and political disagreements, and these enriched the book, helping to make it a dialogic novel in which no single point of view is privileged. The authors have stated that half of the book is lies, but they are not sure exactly which half. It was originally published as three novels: The Eye in the Pyramid, The Golden Apple, and Leviathan.
Wilson has written further novels, in which, as in Illuminatus!, supposed truths of consensus reality are open to question. Schrodinger's Cat (also originally published as three volumes, The Universe Next Door (1980), The Trick Top Hat (1981), and The Homing Pigeons (1981)) is based on three different paradigms of quantum theory. Masks of the Illuminati (1981) is a historical mystery solved by James Joyce and Albert Einstein. (Joyce is a leading influence on Wilson's writing, and all his books contain references to Joyce's work. Wilson also lists William S. Burroughs, Philip K. Dick, and Aleister Crowley, among others, as influences.) The incomplete Historical Illuminatus Chronicles (The Earth Will Shake (1982), The Widow's Son (1985), Nature's God (1991)) tell the story of Sigismondo Celine and other 18th-century ancestors of the characters in Illuminatus!
Wilson has written a number of nonfiction books exploring alternate views of the universe, including Prometheus Rising (1983), Quantum Psychology (1990), and the Cosmic Trigger books (1977, 1991, 1995).
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