The Schrödinger’s Cat Trilogy

By: Robert Anton Wilson

Type: Series, 3 books:

• The Universe Next Door
• The Trick Top Hat
• The Homing Pigeons

Setting: Various parallel universes

Description:

Bouncing crazily back and forth between parallel universes and different time frames, Wilson scrambles our brains in an attempt to link sex, science, physics, socio-political movements, Kaballistic magic, the Illuminati and James Joyce. 

Comments:

Ow. These books have everything, whether they need it or not. To read and understand everything that is happening in this series, you would need to be a master of many different fields of knowledge, from literature to science to the occult. It reads well, though it is sometimes difficult to keep track of where you are. The characters show up in different universes with the same names and different qualities, and only a couple of them have a clue what is going on. They aren’t particularly inclined to let you know, either.

Wilson throws in a pinch of self reference here and there, a nice touch. In several places, he refers to Illuminatus, a prior work of his, as being difficult literature written with no purpose other than to satisfy the writer’s ego as he laughs at the people who don’t understand it. There are numerous self-comparisons to James Joyce and Finnegan’s Wake; whether they are justified or not is up to you to decide.

The novel reads something like a Tom Robbins science fiction novel might read. I could imagine Bonanza Jellybean and Sissy Hankshaw from Even Cowgirls Get the Blues fitting right in to the storyline. A high humor quotient pervades the work, especially when you realize that Wilson does not take himself too seriously and is willing to throw anything out on the table. 

Recommendations:

Got a spare few months, in which you can read a little each day faithfully and digest it during the next day? Then you might understand the book. I don’t pretend to, but I found it an enjoyable ride, even if I didn’t know where (or when) I was going.