Schrodinger's Cat Trilogy (Paperback)

by Robert Anton Wilson (Author)
Key Phrases: tooth fairy, legged majority, domesticated primates, Schrodinger's Cat Trilogy, The Homing Pigeons, The Universe Next Door (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
The sequel to the cult classic The Illuminatus! Trilogy, this is an epic fantasy that offers a twisted look at our modern-day world--a reality that exists in another dimension of time and space that may be closer than we think.

Product Details

• Paperback: 560 pages
• Publisher: Dell (October 10, 1988)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0440500702
• ISBN-13: 978-0440500704
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.4 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (39 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #54,201 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

37 of 40 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Not an easy read, January 15, 2001

By	gnossos poppadopoulis "gnossos poppadopoulis" (Land of the Anonymi) - See all my reviews

This is not a book you can just read, your really need to pay attention to what is going on and try to understand what is happening. I found this book hilarious. The concept behind this book, as far as I can see, is like the Schrodinger's Cat Theory - which is this: if you are to place a cat in a box / room / enclosed space and put an element in the same enclosed space that could kill the cat in an hour and leave it (for an hour), several universes branch from that point - one in which the cat lives, one in which the cat dies, and an infinite amount of others where other occurances happen (such as the cat escapes or grows wings and turns into a bird - these universes are just not probable). In the same sense, a lot of the characters from the orginal Illuminatus! Trilogy are in this book, but with different personalities - where one universe broke off to create the Illuminatus! Trilogy, another broke off where the characters are totally different and the world is affected by disasters and terrorist groups that aren't even mentioned in the original. I highly reccomend reading this, but as I said - you WILL be lost if you don't pay attention. Very stream of concious, many random occurances (to give you an idea - one of the characters is a midget named Markoff Chaney - for those of you who don't know, a Markov Chain is a randomly occuring set of events - the book is a veritable Markov chain, jumping from character to character on a whim), and a tendency to switch universes mid-paragraph. I would reccomend reading the Illuminatus! Trilogy first, but this should definitly be on your list.

17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The carnival of weirdness continues, May 12, 2002

By	J. French "93 93/93" (Oakland, California United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Robert Anton Wilson, the "last Scientific shaman of our age" provides us with a guide to illumination in this series of three books that are one book. Each volume here collected is a different view of the same world, a ride through the most radical theories of modern physics.

Many characters from the Illuminatus! Trilogy reappear, including Simon Moon and the midget Markoff Chaney. They all take slightly different forms, except for Chaney, who appears as the ever constant Random Factor. And when Ulyses return to Ithyca, we get a peak at what Wilson's imagination is capable of.

The book may be slightly perverse. But then, he's writing about the state of the human race. I assume that it is only Wilson's positivity that keeps him from writing us all into a novel that would make Sade cringe. The point here is to enjoy, observe, and learn.

Readers of Illuminatus! will certainly enjoy this book. Moralists, of course, will weep in their beds. But that's the best part of all...

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Strange Changes of Schrodinger's Cat, August 22, 2002

By	J. C. Smith "Hello, I'm Bimp." (Laurel, Maryland United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

When I first encountered the Schrodinger's Cat Trilogy, it was
in the form of the original Bantam paperbacks, now out of print.
The first volume I saw, "The Universe Next Door," scared the
bejeezus out of me with its quirky way of seeing reality, so
badly that I hastily put down the book and did not explore the
works of that author again for at least five years more. The
second encounter I had was with the paperback "The Trick Top
Hat," which I bought from a used book store. It opened me up
philosophically AND sexually--it had some very explicit erotic
references. Sadly, though the full text of "The Universe Next
Door" seems to have made the journey from 3-volume paperback to
1-volume Dell softcover intact, the same cannot be said of the
erotic passages in "The Trick Top Hat." Additionally, a great
deal of the material in the original paperback "The Homing
Pigeons" does not appear in the Dell softcover . . . although
Wilson had abandoned much of the frank eroticism of the "second"
book by then.

The disappearance of these words from the newer edition, and
the subsequent ventures of Wilson into being published by other,
much less well known publishers, are as mysterious to me as the
enigmas of Rennes-le-Chateau and the life of Sir Francis Dash-
wood. The Dell trade paperback version does not really suffer
in its creative genius by losing those many passages. But it
is simply inexplicable to me why they are not there.