The Illuminatus! Trilogy was published by Dell Publishing in 1975 as three mass-market paperbacks (The Eye in the Pyramid, The Golden Apple, Leviathan), co-written by Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea. Both authors worked at Playboy magazine, where they handled the letters page — receiving correspondence from conspiracy theorists of every variety — and the novel grew from the question: what if all the conspiracy theories were true simultaneously?
The plot (insofar as it can be summarized) follows several parallel narratives: Saul Goodman and Barney Muldoon, New York detectives investigating a bombing; Hagbard Celine, a discordian anarchist who commands a golden submarine; the Illuminati themselves, manipulating world history from behind every institution; and various other characters who may or may not be real, may or may not be dead, and may or may not exist in the same timeline.
The novel’s method is deliberate disorientation: scenes shift without transition, characters merge and split, timelines intersect and contradict, and the narrative voice (which shifts between first and third person, between characters, between sincerity and parody) refuses to provide the stable ground from which a reader could determine what is “really” happening.
Wilson and Shea’s philosophical argument — developed through the chaos — is that all reality tunnels (conspiracy theories, scientific materialism, religious faith, political ideology) are equally constructed, equally partial, and equally delusional. The novel doesn’t debunk conspiracy theories; it demonstrates that “consensus reality” is itself a conspiracy theory that happens to have more adherents.
Collecting The Illuminatus! Trilogy
First edition (Dell Publishing, New York, 1975): Three paperback originals.
Market values:
- Complete set, first printing paperbacks: $80–$250
- First hardcover omnibus (Dell, 1984): $40–$100
- Signed copies (any edition): $100–$300