Robert Anton Wilson wrote this as a film script in the late '90s while settling into a new environment (Los Angeles) and recovering from a collapsed film deal. He waited nearly a decade before publishing it.

Unfortunately, this is not one of Wilson's better works. Wilson's books of philosophy and social criticism shine with brilliance, wit and a clarifying debunking. Praise of these points festoons the covers here, but it is not The Walls Came Tumbling Down that earned those accolades.

In the story Michael, an academic scientist, is so barraged with hallucinations and the paranormal that his entire reality is upset for reality only to emerge as a world run by a controlling shadow government with an extraterrestrial treaty. The quick scene changes and short dialogues threaten to unseat even the reader. The Golgotha imagery, folk hallucinogens and parallel universe theorization is a grab bag of alternate reality models that may have been advanced in the late '80s. However, it now reads as predictable, unexciting and not revealing at all. Certainly a necessary addition to the library of the Wilson completists, but a better entry point into his wisdom can be found in Reality is What You Can Get Away With or Prometheus Rising.

- Rambles
written by Tom Schulte
published 12 April 2003