The biggest problem in describing Robert Anton Wilson may be trying to decide which of a long list of applicable epithets to attach to his name.

A college newspaper called him a "sage, a prophet, a psychologist, a guru, a futurist, a guerilla ontologist, an adept, and a postmodernist."

An audiotape company called him a "visionary, poet, futurist, and libertarian philosopher."

And a movie reviewer called him a "raconteur, gadfly, libertarian, conspiracist, stand-up comedian, poet, prankster, mystic, and madman."

Take your pick; they may all be true.

Perhaps more than anything, though, Wilson was a skeptic. In an interview with the TVI Times (May 15, 2001), he said, "The more things you totally believe in, the less thinking you're inclined to do. The less thinking you do, the stupider you get."

Wilson did his part to keep America thinking, most notably with the two trilogies for which he is best known: Illuminatus!, with Robert Shea (1975), and Schrodinger's Cat (1980-1981). Depending on your perspective, the books either exposed or satirized a vast, sinister, global conspiracy that runs the world. The trilogies mixed facts with imaginative speculation to create, in the words of one reviewer, a "paranoid, absurdist" blend of "satire and social commentary." Illuminatus! won the Hall of Fame Award for Classic Novel of Liberty from the Libertarian Futurist Society in 1986, and was later made into a touring stage production.

In all, Wilson wrote about 40 books -- including Prometheus Rising (1983), Natural Law (1986), The New Inquisition (1987), Quantum Reality (1990), and Everything Is Under Control: Conspiracies, Cults, and Cover-Ups with Miriam Joan Hill (1998). Their fanciful mix of solid science and wild flights of imagination led The Skeptical Inquirer to note: "Wilson operates on the principle that all claims should be treated as equals, whether prosaic or bizarre, and that only the dogmatic discriminate against something merely because it makes no sense." The books also showcased Wilson's libertarian skepticism of authority (although he generally eschewed the libertarian label, and instead called himself a "decentralist grassroots Jeffersonian").

In 2003, Wilson lived up to his reputation as an "iconoclastic comedian" when he ran as a write-in candidate on the fictitious Guns & Dope Party ticket in the California gubernatorial recall election. The party's tongue-in-cheek platform called for, among other things, equal rights for ostriches. The campaign may have been the ultimate validation of Wilson's advice to his fans: "Don't believe anything that I say."

Also in 2003, a documentary movie entitled Maybe Logic: The Lives and Ideas of Robert Anton Wilson was released. The movie, described as an "intimate, engaging, and informative portrait of one of the late 20th century's most valuable philosophers," examined Wilson's novels, theories, and influence. It also focused on his latest "social activist passion" -- legalizing medical marijuana.

Wilson died on January 11, 2007 after a long illness. He was 74.

-- Bill Winter

Quotable

"I'd like to see [government] limited. I'd like to see it pushed back to the level of the Constitution, what we usually call Jeffersonian democracy. I think it can be reduced even further. But I certainly don't like the continuous growth of the government interfering with everything." -- Robert Anton Wilson in a Utopia USA interview (February 22, 2001)

"I tend toward the libertarian... I think government has become our master too much, and I find a great deal of morbid humour in the right-wing talk show hosts who are blaming it on the liberals. Most of the things the government does which have annoyed me have been done by conservatives. The government has become a monster that pries into our private lives and harasses us; continually, the conservatives have had as much blame to take for this as the liberals." -- Robert Anton Wilson in FringeWare Review (August 20, 1995)

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Libertarians Remember Robert Anton Wilson

"He excelled as both novelist and essayist; he was a noble steward of the ideas he espoused, a brilliant and passionate popularizer, and the characters and scenarios and approaches to fiction of his novels reward constant reading with constant pleasure and insight -- he was a pop-Pynchon of sorts in his sprawling, comic-serious approach to Big Crazy Ideas, who got a thousandth of the respect and delivered a thousand times the joy and humanity. I, and many others, will continue to read his work with both intellectual and aesthetic pleasure from now and on into the limitless human future he helped so many of us to see." -- Brian Doherty, Senior Editor, Reason magazine

"There was always a wonderfully anarchistic, anti-authoritarian streak in his writing…and when he was funny, he was very funny as there was frequently truth at the heart of his satire, which, of course, is why we laugh at satire in the first place. He frequently described himself as a libertarian and an anarchist, though in other writings he described European/Canadian-style democratic socialism in rather glowing terms, so his politics often confused me. Perhaps he was sort of a libertarian, decentralist socialist?" -- Robert Kaercher, Strike The Root Blog

"His gleeful conspiracy novels anticipated both Foucault's Pendulum and The Da Vinci Code, but were a lot more fun." -- Roderick T. Long, Liberty & Power Blog

"His personal consciousness might not be here to continue enjoying it, but in his mortal time Robert Anton Wilson put his own distinct twist into the DNA of our collective intellect that will far outlive his weak fleshly body." -- Al Barger, BlogCritics.org

"The world lost one of its most eccentrically brilliant writers, philosophers, pranksters and dangerous minds on January 11, 2007, when the great libertarian writer Robert Anton Wilson passed away. Wilson wrote more than two dozen remarkable books of subversive and provocative fiction and non-fiction. He is perhaps best known for his 1975 conspiracy-mocking satirical masterpiece Illuminatus! -- co-authored with fellow libertarian Robert Shea -- which introduced radical libertarian ideas to a huge audience of readers... Wilson was not a doctrinaire libertarian -- his trademark skepticism would not allow that. But he was steadfastly libertarian on most important issues, and said libertarianism was the political philosophy he felt most comfortable with." -- James W. Harris, The Liberator Online (January 18, 2007)

Books & Tapes

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