Illuminatus! Part I

The Eye in the Pyramid

By: Robert Shea, Robert Anton Wilson

Narrated by: Ken Campbell, Chris Fairbank

"It was the year when they finally immanentized the Eschaton".

So begins this original trilogy of conspiracies, Illuminatus!. For the first time in audiobook form, the unabridged epic is presented in all its grandeur, spookiness, hilarity, and brilliance.

The Illuminati, an inside joke? The lunatic fringe? Or a vast conspiracy hidden for centuries, unleashing it's power on a naive, defenseless world? It was the lousy luck of Saul Goodman, a tough, streetwise New York detective, to smell the trail in a bombed-out office - the heavy case he'd always dreaded. In a breakneck race against an awesome deadline, Goodman plunges down the trail of the ultimate conspiracy as the days fall away toward Apocalypse.

Filled with sex, violence, and rock-and-roll, in and out of time and space, Illuminatus! is only partly a work of the imagination. The trilogy tackles all the cover-ups of our time, from who really shot the Kennedys to why there's a pyramid on the one-dollar bill, and suggests a mind-blowing truth.

Part I: The Eye in the Pyramid is performed by the incomparable Ken Campbell and Chris Fairbank. In 1976, Ken Campbell adapted Illuminatus! for the stage, creating a 10-hour epic that went on to open the Royal National Theatre in London under the patronage of Queen Elizabeth II.

©1975 Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson (P)2006 Deepleaf Productions Inc.

Critic reviews

"If baseball can have a designated hitter, why can't science fiction have a designated underground classic? Well, apparently it can, and Illuminatus! is its name." (Booklist)
"The ultimate conspiracy book...the biggest sci-cult novel to come along since Dune." ( Village Voice) "If you want to read a riddle wrapped in an enigma within a conundrum that turns out to be the best secret in the world, get the Illuminatus! trilogy." ( New Age Journal)

Classic book, sketchy performance.

Campbell is brilliant. Fairbanks is awful. This would have been so much better if they had just let Campbell read the whole thing.

life changing if you let it

yeah don't listen to the haters their ego is getting in the way. it's a bit dated but it's got so much cultural cache you'll spend the rest of your life learning how much of it is true

Hail Eris! All Hail Discordia!

Any additional comments?

It had been over 20 years since I read the book originally, and I still remembered so much of it, while also clearly remembering things that happened differently than my memory told me. So, it was a simultaneous voyage of discovery and hug from an old friend.

The most noteworthy thing about this version in the narrator. At first the gruff, accented voice comes across as a drunken rambling, and then you remember the book being read, and it fits perfectly. My initial reaction of "Really?" was replaced by growing to value the attitude the voice brought with it - dirty, sloppy, and real. This became especially clear when I started book 2 with a different narrator, whose clean-cut voice was an uncomfortable shock after this book.

It also added another layer of differentiation between the narrator voice and the various voiced characters (I may be incorrect, but I assume the narrator was one voice, and all the others were the second performer did the character voices. If the narrator also did some of the characters, I am doubly impressed.

That kind of harsh differentiation is really important in a book like this with it's sudden jumps in time, location, and theme. Add to that the times when you jump from one character to another without changing the point of view - a description that only makes sense in a book like this where individual identity is as fluid as everything else. The voice work made it much easier to follow what was going on than the book. I'm not going to say that is a universal good, as the confusion is likely part of RAW's intent, but for a listen after having read the book, it did clear up some ambiguous things that may have been responsible for some of the memory mismatch I talked about earlier.

Confusing, enlightening, tempting, infuriating, and strangely pornographic. What more could we want from our pyramid-eyed overlords?

Wow!!!

An amazing performance of this incredible book. The narration and voices are spectacular! This is worth every penny!!

Un-Normal in every wonderful way

A true example of how unusual storytelling can become, in a gifted, twisted way. Anyone seeking conventional writing, or a conventional performance of that writing should flee back to safer waters.

a trippy romp through coincidences

Given the nation's current penchant for conspiracy theory, one might as well drink from the original fountain, right? Funny, enticing, ridiculous, this first stop of the trilogy can also be confusing and sexually graphic. Do not look for strong female characters, as each one is introduced naked and splayed claiming her speciality is sex 🙄 also, the voice work is atrocious. they didn't even TRY to sound the least bit female.

soooooo, yeah. it was a romp. I'm taking a break to absorb some Margaret Atwood with the intention of coming back for round 2 (The Golden Apple) but there were definitely times where this listen was an exercise in patience.

seminal classic

it blew my mind when I read it fifteen years ago. it continues to blow my mind to this day.

Beautifully Absurd

This masterfully crafted fairy tale for paranoids will have you questioning several seemingly basic assumptions about the world. The manic performance of the narrator really sells the schizophrenic tone that pervades the book. An excellent choice for anyone interested in conspiracies, the occult, or the truth.

Oily narration

The voice used to narrate the conspiracies is extremely oily and raspy. Awful. What a downer in an otherwise delightful romp!

This book is terrible.

Do not read this book. This is not the book you are looking for. This is my review. 5-23-17