Schrödinger's Cat 1: The Universe Next Door

Schrödinger's Cat #1

by Robert Anton Wilson

In The Universe Next Door, the President of Unistat is Furbish Lousewart V; in that universe, a terrorist organization known as Purity of Essence (named after General Ripper's obsession in the film Dr. Strangelove) threatens to detonate nuclear devices in major cities all over Unistat. Also mirroring Dr. Strangelove, Unistat has an automated device that will send nuclear missiles to Russia in the event of such an attack. Russia has a similar device to bomb China, and so on.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Fantasy, Novels, Science Fiction Fantasy, Literature, Humor

256 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 1979

About the author

Robert Anton Wilson was an American author, futurist, psychologist, and self-described agnostic mystic. Recognized within Discordianism as an Episkopos, pope and saint, Wilson helped publicize Discordianism through his writings and interviews. In 1999 he described his work as an "attempt to break down conditioned associations, to look at the world in a new way, with many models recognized as models or maps, and no one model elevated to the truth". Wilson's goal was "to try to get people into a state of generalized agnosticism, not agnosticism about God alone but agnosticism about everything."
In addition to writing several science-fiction novels, Wilson also wrote non-fiction books on extrasensory perception, mental telepathy, metaphysics, paranormal experiences, conspiracy theory, sex, drugs, and what Wilson called "quantum psychology".
Following a career in journalism and as an editor, notably for Playboy, Wilson emerged as a major countercultural figure in the mid-1970s, comparable to one of his coauthors, Timothy Leary, as well as Terence McKenna.

Reviews

[BlackOxford · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Statutory Ape

Henny Youngman was the British-American stand-up king of one-liners: ‘Take my wife... Please... etc.’ Wilson is the novelistic equivalent, an author who assembles a series of gags into a gig. The Universe Next Door isn’t a story so much as a comedic monologue.

The comedy covers everything from academic science and literature to politics and the cultural conceits of both the Left and Right. It is necessarily of its time. So, much of it is probably opaque to those not of a certain age. The jokes and allusions are so fast and furious though that there’s enough to keep the young interested if not so incensed as their grandparents.

And their grandparents were incensed - by the kinky sex, and the casual drug use, the glorification of various grubby sub-cultures, and the trashing of liberal sentiment. Wilson hated the Right-wing William F. Buckley but he also hated Buckley’s Lefty opponents just as much. He knew the real problem of the day was fervent idealism: “The Idealists regarded everybody as equally corrupt, except themselves.” So nobody liked Wilson and his nihilistic attitude.

Turns out though that Wilson was fairly prescient. He saw the idealistic terminus ad quem: the inevitability of terrorism and the rise of the anti-idealist leader. And he knew he was watching a revolution in the making. Writing in 1979, he predicted “The Revolution of Lowered Expectations... By 1984 nobody in the country had any higher expectations than a feudal serf.” Economically, he called it exactly right.

He also got some other things correct about what might be called democratic reason: “Sanity had failed to save the world and ... only insanity remained as a viable alternative.” The country elected Furbish Lousewart as its president. Lousewart‘s populist philosophy of “asceticism, medievalism, and despair” formed the revolutionary core. So the desired result was produced: “society is everywhere in conspiracy against intelligence.” Getting even is Lousewart’s (and everyone else’s) motivation. Nihilism has triumphed through the opposition of idealisms, religious as well as political.

Wilson’s one-liners are often as good as Youngman’s: “When you are up to your ass in alligators, it’s hard to remember that you started out to drain the swamp.” But the problem with one-liners is that they have no intellectual staying power. They get thrown out by the author and then thrown away by the reader. They’re probably the only authentic way to communicate nihilism but until Twitter they had no lasting impact.

It took Trump and Twitter to realise Wilson’s fears. Wilson was two or three generations ahead of his time. The only positive advice he could give then was ignored but has now become obviously relevant with Trump: “Please listen; it’s vital to your future. We are all … living in a novel” the fact that it’s a very bad novel is what should concern us most.

[Manny · Rating 3 out of 5]

This late 70s book has some of the most bizarre sex scenes I've ever come across - if you like that kind of thing, you may want to check it out. The bit where he tells the girl to pretend to be Margaret Thatcher while she fellates him is particularly memorable. "Swallow every drop of my white-hot cum, you bloody English bitch! I am an American citizen!"

Quantum mechanics is also involved, but I'm afraid I can't remember anything about that part. For some reason, I wasn't focussing very well.

[Meg · Rating 2 out of 5]

I think I'm too young to appreciate this book, and too little versed in American history/the occult/almost everything it refers to. I did enjoy Wilson's style and his love of shock-value passages, and being as I had just finished Infinite Jest before starting on The Universe Next Door, found the two authors had some marked resemblences.
I borrowed a book that contained the entire trilogy, but decided after finishing Book 1 that I had no desire to move onto the other two.

[Mary Slowik · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was promised wacky! And wacky was received. This read almost like a filthy, druggy, grown-up version of A Wrinkle in Time-- here explaining various counter-intuitive concepts of quantum mechanics through a bizarre and subversive narrative, riffing on politics, pop culture and pop religion. I happened to like when Wilson wrote himself into it, too, including both direct criticism "known for his over-complicated book" and lavish, hyperbolic praise. It's funny but not hilarious, dark but not altogether depressing. I am looking forward to reading the rest of the trilogy.

Let's never forget that life is wonderful, horrible and, most importantly, absurd.

[Katherine · Rating 5 out of 5]

I first read this book when I was 10. Pretty sure that explains everything you need to know about me. Bob, you're twistin' my melon, man.

[Seema Rao · Rating 1 out of 5]

A terribly dated 70s book with weird sex and mansplaining written by someone who wanted to seem smart.

[Ericka Clou · Rating 3 out of 5]

I loved this when I read it at 27. And 13 years later, I still really enjoyed the first chapter -so many amazing jokes (truths). But I'm really confused what else I liked about this as a 27-year-old. Presumably, I was really into the quantum physics multiple universe angle? My rating is the average of my 5-star review then, and my 2-star review now.

[Gianluca Buccarella · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ah, the Seventies! One can only imagine the amount of psychotropic drugs consumed by artists in that decade. Most of the art of the period was created by inebriated minds for inebriated minds and therefore is unintelligible today, when we don't "space out" as much as they did. Some progressive rock music comes to mind as a perfect example of this phenomenon - think Hawkwind, just to name one.
This book seems to fall in the same category: it's weeeeird, man. Maybe too weird? You need to contestualize, maaan...

[Elizabeth Gray · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have to admit that I despised this book. Only reason I finished it was because the SO would never let me live it down if I quit.

[Mjhancock · Rating 4 out of 5]

For an off-the-cuff description, this book can be thought of as somewhat more structured than a David Foster Wallace novel, and somewhat looser than a Kurt Vonnegut novel. Wilson describes the final days of a USA about to be destroyed by the atom bombs of a fifth column anarchist group--or not. Thanks to the vagaries of quantum physics, we see two different versions of the events leading up to the detonation, varying from each other in small but significant details. We also see a very wide, eccentric group of characters, including Mountbatten Babbit, whose mind is being invaded by a Vietnamese Buddhist; Clem Cotex and his search for 198 missing gorillas; and recent sex-change recipient Mary Margaret Wildeblood, who keeps her former member mounted on the mantelpiece. The author himself is a character in the book, and there's some doubt about whether he was created by writer Joe Malik, or Joe Malik was created by him. So yes, it's one of THOSE kind of books, but it's got just enough style to pull it off.

The book doesn't quite live up to its potential, in my opinion; it never quite reaches the "more than the sum of its parts" status of the aforementioned novels of Vonnegut and DFW. But I suppose that could still be reached through a reading of the other two books in the trilogy.

[Sam (Hissing Potatoes) · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's equally frightening, disappointing, and unsurprising that a book written in 1979 satirizes the same political BS still present and thriving in the USA today. In fact, it has some eerie predictive qualities (the government some of the characters work against is ruled by a few rich people who control 99% of the country's wealth; just one of the elite distributing all personal funds above $1 million equally to every citizen would solve most problems; commercial entities have screwed democracy and anything that would do good for the world...sound familiar?). However, any of these critical kernels can only be found in part 1 of the book. The whole book is bizarre, but part 2 just takes the cake. It lacks cohesion, is difficult to follow, didn't really add anything new, and I just didn't care.

[Kelly Feldcamp · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well I had heard Mr. Wilson's work was interesting, so I gave it a shot. All in all, I found this interesting enough to move on to the second book in the series.

Although I scored this book a 4 out of five, I did waver between 3 and 4. It was good, not great. I found Mr. Wilson's style to be somewhat similar to a combination of Douglas Adams(Hitchiker's guide to the Galaxy) and Brian Aldiss (Barefoot in the Head). Somehow I suspect I may have enjoyed the book more if I'd taken the time to get stoned...

All in all, not bad. We'll see how I feel about books 2 and 3.

[Scot · Rating 5 out of 5]

A shear delight further amplified by the fact that the concept of multiple parallel universes is a joyous subject of inquiry for someone as wild and witty as Robert Anton Wilson and you could easily tack our current reality tunnel onto this one as a third equally as zany parallel universe not that far from what is described here.

Wilson wrote this in the early 80's, but if you are paying attention or not at all, you might have thought he was talking about today.

RAW is not for everyone, but if you are willing to set aside your personal politics, you are certainly in for a wild ride.

[Christopher · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this trilogy!

[Steven]

One of a trilogy based on ideas of Quantum theory.

[D · Rating 3 out of 5]

Difficult to decipher; difficult to follow.

[Lake Lady · Rating 2 out of 5]

quirky and kinda fun but nowhere near the quality of his Illuminatus Trilogy

[Adam Miller · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was great, my first attempt at his fiction after reading a few of his other books. This series is the sequel to the Illuminatus trilogy and offers a humorous view of modern society. His books are not the easiest and its good to go through them with attention. Ultimately the book was hilarious and jumps from character to character in a markov chain and there become many possible worlds. Highly recommended. Watch the version you read, some of the newer ones have omitted material.

[Alethea Hammer · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you're working to break out of your narrow cultural niche, then you would find Robert Anton Wilson both entertaining and enlightening as well as occasionally very funny.
On the other hand, if you are comfortable in your own particular cozy Reality Tunnel and you like to refer to your own familiar happy set of prejudices as 'just common sense', then he is just a writer of ridiculous nonsense and you should avoid this book and all other RAW books.

[Matt Payne · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is sheer madness. Quantum conspiracies, radical political terrorists, an AI with a rebuilt human penis retrieved from a sex change and put to use in orgasm research, seemingly endless nuclear apocalypse, and so on.

It's fast paced, hilarious, and fun to read, but hard to follow because of the multiple universes, various interweaving narrative threads, and occult body-switching.

Some of the most fun and stimulating writing I've ever read.

[Russell · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not as good as Illuminatus!

[Anthony Faber · Rating 5 out of 5]

A reread. Bounding between alternate universes, this NSFW conspiracy thriller is just hysterically funny.

[Erik · Rating 4 out of 5]

A low Four stars because i really liked it, but im also a big RAW and Illuminatus! Fan. Deduct 1.5 stars if you are not.

This is a wild, hard to follow at times, setup for a great cross-reality quantum

I do not think anyone should read this book without reading the Illuminatus! Trilogy and also the pseudo-non-fiction Prometheus Rising. I heartily recommend both. SC has so many references to both of these books, to the point where you lose plot meaning if you dont have those already read.

I can see why SC is sold/packaged as a trilogy, as opposed to 3 standalone books as originally - this first book isnt much of a fiction book, as it is a setup. Chapters are often just 1-2 pages, and offer just a quantum slice of one reality (or more) from one characters point of view (or more).

Where illuminatus! would change perspective sometimes from sentence to sentence, this book is a bit more reservered in structure and tries to only shift perspective between chapters.

Sometimes.

Sometimes you have pages of 8 conversations happening simultaneously in the same room, across 8 realities, not in the same room. Yeah.

Its wild, can you dig?

Perhaps a bit too much sex in this book, maybe not enough politics or other content. Illuminatus seemed to have the ratios a bit better proportioned. But it often can be skipped if neeeded, however its mostly used to inject a visceral comedy into the flow of the book.

I appreciate a trans character is a main character, and treated rather modern and normal, aside from the RAW zanyness. Very progressive. However, women are more often than not, but not always, sexual aspirations and desires and objects of lust - comes off a bit one dimensional. But RAW is far far away from the outright sexism of say Heinlein.

Its a wild book, and im not quite sure what its all about , but I sure do want to know.

P.S. I love this books version of Ralph Nader, Lousewort, with all the fake quotes from his book "Unsafe wherever you go"

[Daniel · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm putting the final 2/3 of this series on the shelf for a while. Robert Anton's Wilson's second completed trilogy (with The Illuminatus! Trilogy before and Cosmic Trigger's volumes bracketing this one) is, at least on the basis of this first volume, the least of the three. It lacks the spark of genius (possibly provided by Illuminatus! co-author Robert Shea) of that first, and the sincerity and refusal to attempt to show-off his intellect that characterized the substantially less fictional last (though I suppose one could argue there is truth in Illiminatus! - certainly my favorite recent phishing e-mail I received argues how influential it was).

As far as I can tell, the guiding principal is one of multiversal imaginings in which butterfly wing events sent worlds off on extremely different courses. This is conveyed through recurring characters that have very different situations depending upon which chapter they are in. Honestly, it's all a bit much. The "satire" alternates between institutional and governmental incompetance (correct!) with almost Remo Williams, The Destroyer: The Adventures Continue-like projection into right-wing boogeymen with, in this case more empathy, but the same lack of insight. Mostly. Lines like: "She no longer defined herself as a man trapped in a woman's body, but as a human being trapped in male definitions of femininity" suggest an almost Judith Butler-esque understanding of gender, but Wilson promptly follows it up with mocking: "She no longer had to take responsibility for anything; everything was the fault of men." Which, *sigh*.

[Mike White · Rating 3 out of 5]

#13: The Universe Next Door (book 1 of Schrödinger's Cat Trilogy), by Robert Anton Wilson
“We demand:
That President Furbish Lousewart immediately confiscate all fortunes above one million dollars;
That this money, which we calculate makes a sun of three trillion dollars, be distributed at once to the forty million families, who are, according to the government’s own standards, living below the poverty line, so that each poor family receives $75,000;
That all government money presently invested in weapons of war and preparations for war be immediately redirected to improving schools, homes and hospitals in poor neighbourhoods, so as to make them fit for human beings;
That George Washington be removed from the dollar bill and replaced by Walt Disney’s Mickey Mouse to remind people forever of the idiocy of worshiping money.”
SF fantasy satirising American life, culture & politics. Uses the ‘many-worlds’ theory to justify the variance from reality and recurrence of similar situations. There’s a large cast of crazy characters, e.g. Judge Draconic V Wasp, and references to the works of James Joyce, including text in imitation of Finnegans Wake. The demand quoted from the POE (Purity of Essence) group seems not unreasonable now.
It’s clever, cynical, fun and sarcastic. The author refers to himself and his work. I finished book 1 and made inroads into book 2: The Trick Top Hat but became tired of it, since it didn’t seem to be just a succession of amusements and going anywhere. I may continue reading later but not just now.

[C. Steinmann · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well. Quite strange. Too much of Rehnquist, Brownmiller and Potter Stewart. The Quantumphysics is fully okay. Read all 3 books at once...the more you read, the better it gets...
Especially the view on Unistate...just like that reality.

[Steve Albert · Rating 3 out of 5]

Guessing this was written on cocaine and vodka and edited by someone else who was just stoned. Lots of fourth wall, lots of Wilson talking about himself in the third person. A little bit of shock for the sake of shock, but mostly mehh.

[FJO · Rating 3 out of 5]

way too complex. I kind of love the approach to seeing earth from his perspective though

[Sherry · Rating 3 out of 5]

You really have to think about this one as you read it. It isn't just a light bit of reading, but I did find it intriquing. One thing I can say, it's not for everyone for sure.

[George Siehl · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a reread. My rating has dropped from 3 stars in 2006
to 2 stars in 2020. I guess the wandering writing style across
different universes is less appealing.

The version I read contains all three volumes of a trilogy. I don't
plan to continue with the other two books.