Customer Reviews

Sex, Drugs, Einstein & Elves: Sushi, Psychedelics, Parallel Universes and the Quest for Transcendence

5 star:		(41)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

Cliff Pickover's view of himself and his life are displayed in a simple, straightforward, crazy, twisty manner in this very original book. We get glimpses of Pickover's musings about language and words while at the same time learning about how other "unleash" their minds to have visions on DMT and LSD.

But don't let that scare you off, O anti-drug proponents. I consider myself to be one of the most rigid anti-drug nuts that I know, and I'm a huge prude as well. But let it be said here that Pickover never advocates drug use, but only describes the common, nearly Jungian archetypical visions that people have while high on certain hallucinogens. Very factual - it doesn't push either side of the envelope.

And it is well worth going against whatever apprehensions you might have. I learned a lot from this book, from the philological to the philosophical. The only problem with the book is how to explain it! So many topics are covered, and yet they are all held together by the thread-that-is-Pickover. A great read for anyone interested in expanding his mind (by reading).

I've read 90% of the book and felt that I just had to make a comment here. This book seems to be a wonderful departure from Pickover's other works in that it is part memoir. It also gives Pickover's opinions on various segments of culture and science. He discusses our perception of reality, which can be altered in various ways by reading Proust or by various chemical enhancements.

This is certainly a creative approach! He even has a wonderful "practical" chapter on the challenges of book publishing in which he discusses the route this unusual book took to getting published.

Here are some other topics: parallel universes, brain disorders, New York literary agents, strange Bibles, and the wisdom of Holiday-Inn founder Kemmons Wilson. Read the book, and pump up the neurons in your mind.

Here is the Table of Contents:

1. On Fugu Sushi and Transdimensional Reality Worms
2. The Quantum Mechanics of Hopi Indians
3. Bertrand Russell's Twenty Favorite Words
4. DMT, Moses, and The Quest For Transcendence
5. Brain Syndromes Open Portals to Parallel Universes
6. From Holiday Inn to the Head of Christ
7. The Business of Book Publishing: Unplugged, Up Close, & Personal
8. Neoreality and the Quest for Transcendence
9. Oh God, Einstein's Brain and Eyes are Missing
10. Burning Man and the Conquest of Reality

Wow, I should leave my review at just that one word, WOW.

This book is a unique gem. There is simply nothing else that is even remotely like this book. Pickover takes you on a tour of the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, DMT, parallel universes, quantum immortality, and Marcel Proust; just to name a few of the diverse and disparate topics he touches on. A comprehensive bibliography allows the reader to undertake a more detailed exploration of the topics he or she finds the most interesting. This creates a slight problem, as everything mentioned in this book is fascinating beyond belief.

Sex, Drugs, Einstein and Elves makes no hard assertions. It is left to you, the reader, to draw your own conclusions and form your own opinions. After reading this you will never look at the world in quite the same way.

Pickover's book is eminently readable. No background in science or math is needed to appreciate and enjoy this book, just an open and curious mind.

Remember when you we're young and could lay back on a grassy hill, look into the sky and imagine all the things that flowed from an unconstrained mind. That's what it's like to read this Pickover book. The ideas are interesting, all over the map while he tries to grasp the issue of "what's it all about?". The references are terrific and it's printed jazz for the mind. Greatly enjoyed it, but still not totally sure why.

I bought this book for my brother-in-law for Christmas, checked out a few pages and could not give it away until I had read every delicious word.

It triggered a creative stream of thought for me, and new ideas and thoughts about the world just keep flowing along. What if...?

I'm even considering checking Marcel Proust out of the library.

Don't read this book unless you're ready to step into the "shift". (Don't worry, there's hardly any sex in it.)

Sussi Gilbert

Very rarely do you see a book like this. Most books, especially non-fiction works, deal with a singular subject and branch off into sub-topics. You won't find that here. Sex, Drugs, Einstein, and Elves covers everything in the title... and God, and writing, and Burning Man, and aliens, and mathematics, and Proust, and further subject matter so diversifed that it could only come from the mind of Pickover.

Describing this book isn't easy, but picture the kind of book Carl Sagan would write after spending a week with Hunter Thompson and you begin to get the barest hint of what Dr. Pickover holds in store for you.

Incidentally, larger publishers passed over this book; probably because they thought it too risky. (That's covered inside too.) A smaller publisher, Smart Publications, picked up on it and lived up to their name. Brilliant work all around!

Yes, this is not another book talking about abstract mystical concepts, or never-ending speechs about new paradigms, or intellectual dissections of the nouminous.

Cliff Pickover gives you all the keys: he gathers all the new ideas that surely will inspire a new generation of researches, mixes them with his huge neo-scolastich knowledge and condenses it on an essential book for those who doesn't fear living the mistery.

It's a recommended book, well, to anybody who wants to face the future. It's Mind-blowing!

In this work, Dr. Pickover explores the nature of reality and our perceptions of reality. The first three chapters deal with the physiology and psychology of perception. He then goes on to explore special realities. For instance, users of the drug DMT experience a parallel universe filled with elves, palaces and cats. Certainly, the many-worlds interpretation, used to explain the probabilistic nature of quantum mechanics, holds that our universe is constantly branching into parallel universes.

I believe that we now have evidence that we do live in a very improbable parallel world. We can trace the branching of our world from the more probable universe to the ninth inning of fourth game of the 2004 ALCS playoff game when the New York Yankees, up by three games to none over the Boston Red Sox in the series and by one run in the fourth game, failed to retire the Red Sox and eventually went on to lose the playoff series four games to three. In the real universe, the Yankees won the playoff series in four games.

Those who associate with felines can have no doubt that they exist in more than one universe. (See "customer image" photo.) They seem to appear out of nowhere and then to vanish just as mysteriously. What are they looking at when they stare at some unseen (by humans) phenomenon so intently? Are they looking into another universe?

Pickover goes on to explore such diverse subjects as the life of Einstein, the nature of time, the existence of God, the significance of the Holiday Inn, and the ins and outs of the publishing industry. In some of his previous books, e.g. Wonders of Numbers, or Passion for Mathematics, Pickover alternated mathematical puzzles and oddities with amusing stories. This book mostly leaves the mathematics behind to let us peek into the mind of the genius author as he speculates about numerous subjects. Wouldn't it be great to sit down at a sushi dinner with Pickover to discuss his ideas in person? The only disappointment in this work is that the sex promoted in the title could have played a larger role.

For those Pickover fans who cannot get enough, he has two interesting web sites: Reality Carnival, and Godlorica. Pickover has also written a new book, A Beginner's Guide to Immortality: Extraordinary People, Alien Brains, and Quantum Resurrection, which continues with topics in the same vein as those in SDEE.

This book covers many diverse topics and C. Pickover does a great job of tying them together. An easy read without lots of technical jargon to get lost in, just concepts that challange our normal views of reality. An open mind might be the only requirement I could say is needed to get the most out of this book. Try to remember that people used to think the Earth was flat when you hit a topic that goes against your normal view of reality and you will have a mind expanding experience reading this very fun and informative book.

We must discover new frontiers... People have been standing for centuries before a worm-eaten door, making pinholes in it with increasing ease. The time has come to kick it down, for it is only on the other side that everything begins.-Raoul Vaneigem

Cliff Pickover (author and blogging Ph.D.) picks-up the torch of the late McKenna and continues to blaze a trail into yet nearly unknown realities. His new book Sex, Drugs, Einstein and Elves merges topics like Sushi, Sapir-Whorf and the Glass Chrysanthemum into a radiating jewel which surely transforms mental circuits into blossoming, dew-sprinkled padmas.