Hyperworlds, Underworlds

by Jason Louv, R.U. Sirius (Foreword), Duncan Trussell (Preface)

Hyperworlds, Underworlds is an uncompromising chronicle of the utopian dreams and dystopian nightmares of the 21st century. In the articles gathered here, journalist Jason Louv hands you his ambitious map of the future. He chronicles the effects of globalization and technology, the rampant abuses of corporations and intelligence agencies, the robotification of war, and how technology and mass communications are used for control of the population. For answers to the questions posed by our Brave New World, he looks to our culture’s outsiders and rebels, and the combs the fringes of spirituality for ways to destabilize the Machine.Hyperworlds, Underworlds is more than a record of a journalist’s best work. It’s also a toolkit for understanding our tumultuous world, and finding a way to re-establish our very humanity in the face of a relentlessly dehumanizing future.With a trickster magician’s sardonic humor, Louv reveals the future to come—and gives you the power to change it.

Genres: Nonfiction, Occult

362 pages, Kindle Edition

First published December 9, 2014

About the author

Jason Louv is the author of eight books, including John Dee and the Empire of Angels, Generation Hex, and Thee Psychick Bible. As a journalist, he has covered surveillance, international trade and the dark side of technology for VICE News, Boing Boing, Motherboard and many more. As a futurist and strategist, Jason has worked on Buzz Aldrin’s international campaign to colonize Mars, Google's artificial intelligence program, and in many more strange and wonderful places. He lives in Los Angeles. More at: jlouv.com

Reviews

[Steve Cran · Rating 5 out of 5]

Have you ever read a book that has everything and also at the same time strips away the lies and leave the truth naked and bare? Jason Louv has done it with this book, composed mostly of essays published in various publications and at different times. The book covers, politics, social issues, Eastern spirituality and Western Magick. Reader beware you may be blown away and you may also at the same time find out that this stuff resonates with you because on some deeper level you know it is all true.
Mr. Louv will talk a lot about politics. Let’s face it the government is not on our side. Rather they are backing the big money, corporations. Corporate America sees the common man as nothing more than cattle and money making machines. Their goal is to make up like robot or slaves. It I a soft cell slavery where we are chained to a desk and computer while we mine away information for these companies. The information will be used for marketing. In a way we already are slaves, our work hours get longer and our pay becomes less. Benefits are being stripped away before our very eyes. We are not the only ones who are slaves.
Across much of the third world forced labor or slave labor is used. Kids as young as 12 are denied education so they can work for major corporation at 12 cents an hour for like 15 hours a day. We Americans love our gadgets and Iphones but think it is an open secret by now that these products we love are built off the back of children who are worked to death. That makes us consumer accomplices to the crime. Nestle is one of the biggest users of child/Slave labor.
The NSA has since 9/11 ben monitoring our internet usage. They see everything we do. Their purpose is to spy on us and take away our freedoms. Big corporation by information from internet biggies like Facebook and google. Congress allowed them to do so. The big corporations are at the top of the pyramid. As it stands right now the corporations are becoming more powerful than the government. There are international treaties being drafted that give major corporations the right to sue a government if it makes laws that hurt its revenue. This undermines a countries and governments soverenty.
Our government does lots of dirty things like spying on friendly countries via our embassies, something which does not make them too happy. The CIA has also sold drugs to finance its operations. Even on the streets of America, especially towards minorities. Our crimes against minorities and the underprivileged is being played out in the prison system wherein female inmates were pressured into being sterilized. Our world is in trouble as our artificial consumeristic lifestyle causes us to deplete the earth’s natural resources and overpopulation is bourgeoning. Pretty soon our planet will not be able to sustain us. The solution is to explore space while we still have fossil fuels. It is our destiny to colonize space .
Jason Louv talks lots on chaos magick which strips away al the finery and gives you nothing but the barebones of the matter. Lots of what goes on in the occult world is baloney . But he gives yu the real deal and wipes away the glamor of magic so that all you have left is what works. I have only scratched the surface.

[Justin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Doesn't go into much depth

[Leah · Rating 3 out of 5]

an ambitious and uneven collection of short essays, generally about politics, magic/the occult, technology, transhumanism, and human nature. easy to read, with lots of recommended additional resources.

[Ken Nickerson · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fun and wild ride. Like sharing a Ouija Board with HST at Woody Creek.

[Abdullah Furqaan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Imagine taking LSD, smoking a couple of bowls with Niel DeGrasse Tyson, Hunter S. Thompson, and the Dalai Lama, playing with a Ouija Board, hopping onto the Honorable Prophet Mohammed's Flying Buraq alongside some female androids and ancient imam-scientists, and discovering the secrets of religion, the occult, ecology, genetically-modified-organisms, transhumanism, imagination, yoga, and twenty-first century space sexploration. This book is sharp and as the clever chaos magickian that he is, Jason Louv unveils the curtain of reality and allows you to peek at what is truly going on behind the surface. He unites spirituality, politics, technology, sexology, and humanism into a psychedelic journey - the text is a marvelously diabolical collection of essays that explores a few of the aforementioned topics from a Louvian point-of-view.

[Brendan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This collection of Louv's writing is good, but a tad uneven. It starts strong but gets a bit too repetitive towards the end, and could definitely benefit from some editorial work to adapt it to a strictly print platform (there's a excessive amount of "more info here" hyperlink text left in the articles). Nevertheless, there's a good deal of helpful and inspiring information in here.

[Peter A. Lio · Rating 5 out of 5]

Deep and thoughtful

I just really like his style. He is thoughtful, scholarly, and yet not pretentious. There is a rawness to his essays that resonates with me. The essays are short and in fact feel pretty much like blog entries, but I learned a lot enjoyed being in his brain for a while.

[Marcus Coker · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great read

Loved this collection. Each article was very informative. Will read again! Thanks Jason Louv for all of your insight to the chaotic world that we live in.

[Nancy McQueen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I both loved and hated this book.
Try living in a rural area of the North. When someone has to live on the edge, it changes your perspective. There are still places in this world that will chew you up and spit out the pieces.