The Historical Illuminatus Chronicles is a series of threenovels byRobert Anton Wilson written after his highly successfulThe Illuminatus! Trilogy and his 1981Masks of the Illuminati. His co-author from the first trilogy,Robert Shea, was not involved in this series, providing only a praising blurb.
It is composed of three books:The Earth Will Shake (1982)ISBN 1-56184-162-5,The Widow's Son (1985)ISBN 1-56184-163-3, andNature's God (1991)ISBN 1-56184-164-1. A fourth book,The World Turned Upside Down, was promised at the end ofNature's God but was never written; Wilson also had stated he intended theChronicles to be apentalogy.[1] His death in 2007 left the series as a trilogy, incomplete. There is an audiobook of the first novel read by Scott Crisp.[2]
The novels concern the adventures of Sigismundo Celine, an ancestor of theHagbard Celine character in theIlluminatus! Trilogy, as he blunders through Europe and America during theEnlightenment, constantly fighting to escape becoming a part of history.
In the first book, Sigismundo is an adolescent in Naples, Italy, where his uncle introduces him to the teaching of the Freemasons. In the second book Sigismundo has been banished from Naples because of a lovers' duel. He lives in Paris and is taken captive twice. The first time he is imprisoned in the Bastille, from which he escapes using Masonic techniques of concentration to help distract himself from the pain involved in climbing down from his tower. The second time Sigismundo is imprisoned by a more mysterious group of captors, who seek to convince him that he is a descendant of Jesus Christ. In the third book, Sigismundo finds himself in further exile, in the wilderness of North America.
In 1989, Kenneth Lamar Noid, a mentally ill man, held two employees at aDomino's Pizza restaurant inChamblee, Georgia hostage, and requested a copy of the series' second novel,The Widow's Son. In an interview between Wilson and James Wallis of ESTWeb, Wallis mentioned "someone held up a fast-food restaurant demanding $100,000, a helicopter and a copy ofThe Widow's Son." Wilson showed familiarity with the case.[3]