Catching up with RAW
Metroactive has an article on Robert Anton Wilson.
Decades before the crossover cult film What the Bleep Do We Know!? popularized the idea that the principles of quantum mechanics could be applied to the world at large, Robert Anton Wilson had laid out much the same theory in his book, Prometheus Rising. Venture further into Wilson’s oeuvre and you’ll find equally prescient material on longevity research; you’ll likely even stumble across source materials that inspired Dan Brown to write The DaVinci Code.
“I think I’m the most ripped-off artist of our time,” says Wilson, seated in the living room of a modest Capitola apartment adorned with an array of pookahs, Buddhas and at least one Loch Ness monster. “People keep coming out with books 30 years after—books on things I wrote about—and they all become bestsellers.
“I wrote about them too early,” says Wilson, raising a thin arm and shaking his finger to emphasize his point: “Don’t be premature.”
Lance Bauscher agrees. “This whole DaVinci Code thing with Dan Brown, I mean, that’s all Bob’s material,” says Bauscher, who directed a film about Wilson called Maybe Logic and also runs an academy through which Wilson’s online course, “Tale of the Tribe,” begins on Aug. 14. “Dan Brown has read all of Bob’s books. But Bob doesn’t really compromise his storytelling—not that Dan Brown does—but it’s for a general audience, and Bob just doesn’t go there.”
If the Da Vinci code rips off anything, it’s Holy Blood, Holy Grail. That RAW wrote extensively about its hypotheses in at least one book doesn’t make him the ripped off party — one could just as uncharitably describe him as having ripped off HB, HG. And I’m doubtful that Prometheus Rising in 1983 was the first book to explore applying QM principles to the macroscopic world.
None of which is to say that RAW hasn’t been an important influence on a lot of people (myself included.) But the Illuminati game seems a much better candidate as an uncredited rip-off of his work than those above.
Sadly, he’s ailing.
In fact, one day this past spring, after Santa Cruz moviegoers had lined up to see What the Bleep Do We Know!? in sufficient numbers to justify its three-month run, Robert Anton Wilson was lying alone, conscious but unable to move, on the floor of this one-bedroom Capitola apartment for 30 hours.
“It really didn’t seem that long,” says Wilson of his collapse, which ended when his daughter arrived and broke down the door. “And I remember thinking, as I’m lying there trying to move and unable to move: Hey, I may be dying now. And it didn’t frighten me or bother me at all.” […]
“I know I’m going to die sometime soon: five weeks, five months, five years,” says Wilson. “I don’t know, maybe 50 years if stem cell research moves along. But I don’t know and I don’t care. And I can’t take it seriously anymore. If George Bush is president of the free world, who can take anything seriously?
(Via Corpus Mmothra)
Actually, Illuminati did explicitly acknowledge Illuminatus! as an inspiration... Steve Jackson Games never offered Shea and Wilson a cut, though.
Posted by Zed on August 24 2005 13:41
I'd be horrified if anyone associated me in any way with the cultists responsible for Bleep Do We Know!?, myself.
"And I’m doubtful that Prometheus Rising in 1983 was the first book to explore applying QM principles to the macroscopic world."
Oh, sure, there were a bunch in the Seventies. Although doing that thing is a highly dubious thing to do; it's not something one tends to catch actual physicists doing, as a rule.
Gee, I'm reminded of when those of us who did were living in Phoenix in 1978, and Pat Mueller was working for Steve Jackson. But you really should ask here about that, not me.
Posted by Gary Farber on August 24 2005 19:40
Does it really matter who was the first person to come up with a wrong idea?
Posted by Dave Lartigue on August 25 2005 05:30