2023: A Trilogy

If you're reading these Amazon reviews, you're probably (like me a little while ago) familiar with the KLF (aka The Timelords, aka The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu), their music, and their performance art. If not, you'll certainly miss a lot of references. But even familiar with them, you might be wondering: can they write a novel?This book is full of references, blatant and oblique: Robert Anton Wilson's Illumnatus! trilogy is there in big flashing lights, along with a few other books; tons of politicians and celebrities and companies, barely aliased; the authors themselves, or at least, alternate reality versions of them. I'm certain I missed a ton. As a conventional novel, it's unsatisfying... one of many similarities with the Illuminatus! trilogy. Every character is alternately sympathetic and terrible. Narrative arcs go unfinished or fizzle out. There is little insight, and no moral is handed to you on a silver platter.But in the thrashing of the characters, their foolishness and fatalism and conceits, you're encouraged to ask (and answer) your own questions. The nature of "Art," transience, the human condition... even if you don't get the myriad references, there's enough here to get your brain working on some philosophical questions. Is that enough for you?

I already know I will love the book,,,But the shape of the book jacket and the book itself was unbelievably AWFUL.The book jacket is ripped in 4 or 5 different places.The right side of the pages look like the book has been read by several people with large, very dirty hands.I would readily accept (or purchase) another cover.

This book has more 23s than any other book I’ve read in the last, oh, I don’t know, 23 years.

Literally... WTF is going on?Love the KLF. Longtime fan of the music, the art, the mythology and the chaos they Kreate. That said, I couldn't make heads or tails of this and, frankly, gave up. I got the interweaving of old friends (Gimpo) and influences (Wilson) and all of that, but the gender swapping and time swapping and language swapping and geography swapping and on and on left my head reeling. I want to LOVE this, and I appreciate the craziness of it all (because that's what B&J do)... but measured as an entertaining read, I just couldn't keep up. Maybe I'll come back to it sometime when I'm willing to put more effort into it, vs. a casual read.

i haven't read it yet, but i am excited to. they said they would return in 23 years and here they are! i anxiously await the 2nd and 3rd part in in the trilogy if they make enough money from this one. best band ever with a good sense of humor! turn up the strobe!

It's like reading Gulcher, but on acid.

It's a clever book, but not enough to hold my attention for its duration. I skimmed most of it. Turn up the strobe.

Very disjointed, hard to follow. Sounds like the ramblings of a dedicated recreational drug user.

This book is bad. There were a couple of intriguing concepts, but the authors lack the knowledge of story structure or the ability to craft an engaging narrative. To write metafiction you have to be able to write well, otherwise you are left with smug self-referential nonsense which makes your reader cringe. It seems they have tried to create a modern version of the Illuminatus! by just being gimmicky but it doesn't work because the Roberts, Shea and Anton Wilson, understood their material and writing technicalities in a way these idiots never will.This book is a waste of money. Worse than that, it is a waste of the time I spent reading it. I wish I had stopped, instead of clinging to the hope, all the way through to the end, that it might redeem itself.Part of me thinks (hopes) that it may be deliberately awful, as some kind of statement on the literary world, but I doubt it.How anyone ever agreed to publish this book is beyond me. The authors should be embarrassed. They do not deserve the title they give themselves. The JAMs would never have written such rubbish.

The musical output of The KLF (and associated acts), particularly their Stadium House anthems, was a chaotic fusion of multiple styles and genres that somehow all came together perfectly in a cleverly ordered structure. This book is constructed in a similar way. It forms a smorgasbord of philosophies and political concepts thrown into an eclectic mix of literary styles that, somehow, just works wonderfully.Set in the eponymous year, ‘2023’ looks back over recent future history, ie the next few years in real terms (something Ford Timelord might possibly describe as ‘timey wimey’). Within this parallel dimension history the exploits of Drummond and Cauty in the worlds of art and music are retold and re-envisioned multiple times, with many of their acts attributed to others such as The Beatles, the Utah Saints and former KLF collaborators Extreme Noise Terror. The inclusion of Discordianism and the recurring figure 23 are inevitably scattered about throughout the whole work as might be expected.It is a mixed utopian dystopian ‘history’/account of the near future serving as treatise on the balance between order and chaos. In this way, it acts as a critique on the modern world/modern life; challenging what is happening in society in the present day.This is an incredibly difficult novel to attempt to review. I certainly wouldn’t consider pretending to know what it is supposed to all mean or what its message is (and, I expect, nor could anyone, even Drummond and Cauty). The truth being (most likely) that there is no one message and meaning and no intention that there should be. But everyone should find at least something within its pages to make them think.Aside from that it is written with great intelligence and wit, proving to be a highly entertaining read. Furthermore, it is not imperative that you need to be a fan of The KLF or the Justified Ancients of Mu Mu or any other personas of Drummond and Cauty to find this enjoyable or intellectually stimulating. Although obviously the more you know of the fascinating exploits of The KLF, the more in jokes and references you’ll find.Hail Discordia.

When I started reading this book I was hooked. The prose was top notch, the characters and settings were intriguing, and the plot moved at a good pace. But this was the KLF and they have a habit of self-destruction, and this book slowly imploded into a mess of tangled plots, with too many ideas, and trying too hard to be original. I think the book was mainly Bill Drummond's, rather than Jimmy Cauty's. If Bill ever decided to write a good novel, without trying to be too clever, too anarchic, he could write something brilliant - the opening chapters clearly demonstrate this. If the book had continued with the quality of the first 100 pages or so, I'd easily have given it five stars. The second half though I'd give two stars. Overall I'm being slightly generous in giving the book four rather than three stars. (Three and a half is perhaps more accurate, but at school we were always told that halves should be rounded up.)

For hardcore fans only. And even speaking as one of those I gave up after 50 pages. Unreadably badly written. Here's an idea: go back to making records - or even staging pithy art stunts, because you're great at those. You're just TERRIBLE writers.

Despite immediate misgivings, I persisted and reached page 50 before accepting that it is a poorly written book. I persisted because the original Illuminatus is not only playful and funny but it is a good read. Although this book refers constantly to the earlier trilogy, and is therefore intermittently interesting, it is disappointing and boring.