According to the Huffington Post, R.A. Wilson - author of The Illuminatus! Trilogy and other science fiction works - is dying. Reading the trilogy was a life changing experience for me - easily the most challenging literary experience I've ever had (and I've read Goethe's Faust in the original German!). It was his writing and the way he framed issues in a cynical but curious manner that finally pushed me over the edge into anarchism. I will always be grateful that he spoke his thoughts and beliefs so plainly, and I will always resent that he wasn't more widely read.
Here's a great quote from a recent interview in which he addresses his mortality:
Read this article"I know I'm going to die sometime soon: five weeks, five months, five years," says Wilson. "I don't know, maybe 50 years if stem cell research moves along. But I don't know and I don't care. And I can't take it seriously anymore. If George Bush is president of the free world, who can take anything seriously?"
