While this, the second volume of the Cosmic Trigger series, continues along the path set by the original "Cosmic Trigger I", it also stands solidly on its own.

Any reader with an open mind and a sense of humour cannot help but be entertained and enlightened while following Wilson's explorations into such subjects as the future of cyberspace; the peculiarities of Irish jurisprudence; links among the Mafia, the CIA and the Catholic Church; anal-eroticism in The White House; the Dog Castrator of Palm Springs; and many more observations from his infinitely fertile brain.

Entertaining and witty, eye-opening and mind-expanding. Great book, very fun read.

Reading the Comic Trigger books is like listening to one of Bob's hilarious talks.

In this, volume 2, he lays down his rules for dealing with BS (i.e., Belief Systems, dogmas, absolute truths, etc.), which are (1) never believe totally in someone else's BS and (2) never believe totally in your own BS.

Bob spikes his observations on a mysterious suicide named Roberto Calvi and musings on a murdered baby in County Kerry, Ireland, with vignettes from his early life in Depression-era Brooklyn, his Irish Catholic upbringing, his contemplated suicide from the Brooklyn Bridge in 1955, and his meeting with and marriage to Arlen Riley.

Cinema and the montage, non-linear, non-narrative quality it brings to storytelling, is central to this work. Bob describes many of the early films that provided his first entryways into what he calls "virtual reality," a meta-programmer of sorts who could mess with imprints, paradigms, etc. The non-linear, interpenetrating way in which the material in the book is presented, particularly in its few explicitly lysergic scenes, makes manifest the model agnosticism he consistently champions.

Along with the "down to earth" material about his life, Bob provides glimpses into some of his breakthrough moments and insights, going as he says from a state of ignorance to a more complicated state of ignorance.