The Beginning of the Illuminatus...

I'm always very interested in the beginning of things, or even before the beginning. The rough versions of what would later bring them success (or not), the strange hang-ups the flow and morph until it becomes the best version of whatever said writer's main idea is. It took several almost Saint's before Leslie Charteris settled down on the saint. Lester (Kenneth Robeson) Dent toiled with several pulp characters with Doc Savage-like traits before he mashed them all together to flesh out the Man of Bronze. Even 'ol Travis McGee had firm roots in the other Florida crime novels of John D. MacDonald (especially Jimmy Wing in A Flash of Green) and though I've never tracked them down, the, uh, adult novels that Don Pendleton wrote about Stewart Mann are said to have some of that Mack Bolan flavor. 

Speaking of smut books. Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea, both formally of Playboy magazine, had written the Illuminatus. That sprawling, wild-ass tale of conspiracy theories, golden submarines and Old Gods but unsurprisingly it took a while for it to get published. In the meantime, Wilson got The Sex Magicians published from the California Porn publisher Sheffield House, which specialized in gay porn books. The general idea is that some of the stuff from the Illuminatus books kinda migrated over to The Sex Magicians. Obviously, the book didn't set the world on fire but did become a cult classic within the Illuminatus fans and eventually became a sought after and very expensive paperback. I'm sure more people have read the transcript version that has been floating around the internet since dial-up, don't worry Wilson thought it was cool to pirate this book.

Years ago, when I was a far too young and dumb kid, I read the first Illuminatus book The Eye in the Pyramid when I ran into the full set of the 70s Dell paperbacks. I bought it on the groovy covers and the whole intriguing world. I knew nothing about them before that used bookstore trip and I didn't think I knew anymore after the I read the first one. Again, young and dumb. Or maybe that was the right time, and I should have read them all in a white-hot reading session. Such is life. I didn't get them at the time, but the book stuck in my mind's craw, and I eventually began diving in and learning more. And in reading more hippy-dippy sci-fi and Men's Adventure of the time, certain things kept popping up that were also in the Illuminatus. Hasan-i Sabbah, the old man of the mountain and the father of assassins, appeared in Michael Kurland's Mission: Tank War, things like that. I also fell down a rabbit-hole recently involving The Church of the Sub-Genius, the half real /half big joke religion which counts The Illuminatus as a major influence. It's time to read them all. So, I decided to warm up to it and start with The Sex Magicians.

I've read a fair amount of these smutty books, usually because the author later became famous. Lawrence Block and Donald Westlake come to mind. Bob Trailins, George H. Smith and Ennis Willie also come to mind, as well as Jack Lynn's Tokey Wedge. But I've also dabbled in Clyde Allison's 0008 books and The Man from CAMP by Victor Banis. So, I know my way around this kind of adult entertainment. At best they are examples of hungry young writers plying the craft for cash on the barrel head, at worst it's the lowest kind of hack work. I've never come across a middle of the road one. The one thing most of these books have in common is that the sex scenes are rather quaint, and minor compared to today's smut.

Not The Sex Magicians.

Boy howdy this is a smutty book. Hitting a lot of taboos and engaging in LONG scenes of graphic sex. It's still a little goofy, but I think it was always supposed to be goofy. Wilson wasn't a super serious guy in his writing. The put-on is part of it, but so is the serious parts. The Sex Magicians is about Dr. Prong, Josie, Tarantella, Josh Dill, and Markoff Chaney (who returns for the Illuminatus books) among others in Chicago tied up with MAJOR VIBES that are making the city get DOWN. From the Orgasm Research Insitute and the Illuminati to the Hugh Hefner-like Pussycat Magazine, the plot runs along with a lot to say in-between all the sex. There's a little satire, a little history, a little taste of practical sexual magic and a lot of whacky situations. It's a little like one of those Ted Mark Man from ORGY books cranked to 11 and spun around on its head and also, uh, good. But mostly a lot cooler, man.

Usually with the smutty books, I sort of skip over the sex scenes. They are rarely titillating and really don't have anything to do with the rest of the book. But the sex scenes here are INTEGERAL to the plot. It's the whole point. That being said, I still think Wilson really gets going when in-between the sex stuff. When he's laying out his ideas on sex magic, old assassins, the Bavarian Illuminati and joking. There are wonderful nods to the likes of The Shadow (Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?), King Kong and Frankenstein. All that being said, he certainly didn't phone in the sex scenes. Whoa, they get CRAZY. But enough fun to keep going. Not to mention that theory that the book was published as some sort of sex magic itself to get The Illuminatus published.

I know the Illuminatus books don't have as much of the dirty stuff, which was honestly the part I liked the least. There was so much that it was desensitizing, so I'm good to go down my path of tackling the series. I'm glad I read this one though, it was out there and fun and I needed a wild and crazy shake up for my reading. It's widely available as a PDF on the internet, but I actually bought the fairly new republished (for the first time ever) from Hilaritas Press, which specializes it out-there books. I'm glad it's been reprinted for future weirdos, like me.