Reviews for Cosmic Trigger III: My Life after Death

The average rating for Cosmic Trigger III: My Life after Death based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2014-04-25 00:00:00 Melinda Harry I can not at this moment recall if I have read COSMIC TRIGGER I. I do not believe I have read volume 2. I remain certain that I have read a number of other books by Robert Anton Wilson, of which I would first point you to the ILLUMINATUS! trilogy, a brain-changing map disguised as a novel. If you haven't at least read one or two of Mr Wilson's other works, COSMIC TRIGGER III will probably make very little sense to you, which describes fairly accurately how my wife feels about the bits I insist on reading out loud to her. If you HAVE read a bunch of other RAW, you will likely find much to enjoy in this one. Certain references in this book, since I have not read volumes 1 & 2, admittedly passed me by, but I have enough of a background (coupled with fairly high tolerance for groundlessness) that this did not bother me. If that sort of thing bothers you, maybe start with volume 1. And for the record, my favorite chapter in Cosmic Trigger III discusses 'television' and bears the title "Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds". *I have attempted to write this review in E-Prime, ie English without any forms of "is" or "be", which seemed appropriate at the time to the subject matter at hand. :)

Review # 2 was written on 2020-01-13 00:00:00 Dave Douglass When the inciting incident that you open your book with is an account of your own death, it's pretty easy to get the reader's attention (RAW was the victim of one of the first celebrity death hoaxes back in the 90s.) Unfortunately the rest of this volume of RAW's musings on life, love and conspiracies doesn't have the verve or wit of the preceding two volumes. Part of the problem is his adoption of "E-Prime", a way of writing that eschews the use of the words such as "is" or "are" as a way of sidestepping the philosophical absence of absolute certainty in life. The largely equivocal approach that results robs the text of much of its power and occasionally means sentences must be read several times before it becomes clear what the author was getting at. The text doesn't appear to have been edited, either; Stanton T. Friedman's name is misspelt, as is a reference to the film "Buckaroo Banzai", and the use of "principal" and "principle" is regularly mixed up. The other problem is the author's apparent metamorphosis into a grumpy old man. Parts of the book read as if he'd just returned to the computer after a brief session standing on the back lawn shouting at clouds; political correctness and radical feminism get very short shrift. This may have been an intentional, ironic act, but it hasn't aged well. There are some fine musings on PKD and UFOs, and the regular juxtapositions of quotes from his favourite films provide more than a few belly laughs. But this book left me feeling the need to go back and read Illuminatus! again to remind myself of what RAW was capable of at the height of his considerable powers.