RAW Trust to reprint 19 RAW books

Christina Pearson

The Robert Anton Wilson Trust's new Hilaritas Press has issued its first email newsletter, which you can read here. 

The main news is that the RAW Trust plans to reprint 19 RAW titles, in both paper and ebook editions (making many of them available as ebooks for the first time) under the Hilaritas Press imprint. As you'll recall, the trust terminated New Falcon as RAW's main reprint house earlier this year so that it could take charge of the effort.

The newsletter doesn't give publication dates but says they are close. It also doesn't list the 19, but I asked Richard Rasa for the list, and he shared it with me. Here are the 19, in current order of planned publication:

1 ~ Cosmic Trigger I: The Final Secret of the Illuminati (1977)
2 ~ Prometheus Rising (1983)
3 ~ Quantum Psychology (1990)
4 ~ Email to the Universe (2005)
5 ~ Coincidance: A Head Test (1988)
6 ~ The Earth Will Shake (1982)
7 ~ The Widow’s Son (1985)
8 ~ Nature’s God (1988)
9 ~ Cosmic Trigger II: Down to Earth (1992)
10 ~ Cosmic Trigger III: My Life After Death (1995)
11 ~ Sex, Drugs and Magick: A Journey Beyond Limits (1988)
12 ~ The New Inquisition (1986)
13 ~ Ishtar Rising (1989)
14 ~ Reality Is What You Can Get Away With (1992)
15 ~ Wilhelm Reich in Hell (1987)
16 ~ The Walls Came Tumbling Down (1997)
17 ~ TSOG: The Thing That Ate the Constitution (2002)
18 ~ Natural Law, or Don’t Put a Rubber on Your Willy (1987)
19 ~ Chaos and Beyond (1994)

The dates are when the books first appeared. The last two have never been reprinted.

As you can see, the reprint plans include all titles except for Illuminatus!, Schroedinger's Cat and Masks of the Illuminati, which remain in print as paper and ebook editions from their original publisher. Also omitted are collaborations with Timothy Leary which are apparently controlled by the Leary estate.

The other news is that there is now a RAW Trust website to check out.

The email newsletter is written by Rasa, identified as "metaprogramming director of the RAW Trust," and RAW's eldest daughter and literary executor, Christina Pearson. Christina's portion reveals biographical details about her father not included in Cosmic Trigger II: Down to Earth and is worth quoting:

 ... I am Bob’s daughter via memes, not genes. Yet he was far more my dad than bio-dad ever was! Bob married my mom Arlen when I was between one and two years old, after she left a very unhappy marriage. I have no memories of that time, all I know is I grew up with Bob as my father, in every sense of the word except “blood.” He understood that she was a “package deal,” with two small daughters from her previous marriage, and he took us on willingly and gladly in order to have Arlen as his companion in life.

He taught me to play chess at 5 years old, and then would “fall in amazement” off his seat when I made a good move; he would lie in waiting, pretending to be the troll under the bridge while waiting to pick us up from the school bus; then as we walked over it, he would roar “WHO is walking on MY bridge!” We would laugh hysterically, running away, and he would chase us... and, sometimes he had to write bad checks so us kids could eat.

Being raised in the House of RAW was such a wide and deeply rich spectrum of experiences, ranging from incredibly difficult situations to some of the most joyful, enlightening and spectacular! Someday, I hope to write a bit about it.

I can't wait to read that!