Robert Shea
| Robert Shea | |
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At the British National Theatre in 1977 for the opening of the nine-hour stage version of Illuminatus!
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| Born | Robert Joseph Shea February 14, 1933 |
| Died | March 10, 1994 (aged 61) |
| Spouse | Yvonne Bremseth Shea, Patricia Monaghan |
| Website | |
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Robert Joseph Shea (February 14, 1933 - March 10, 1994) was an American novelist and former journalist best known as co-author with Robert Anton Wilson of the science fantasy trilogy Illuminatus!. It became a cult success and was later turned into a marathon-length stage show put on at the British National Theatre and elsewhere. In 1986 it won the Prometheus Hall of Fame Award. Shea went on to write several action novels based in exotic historical settings.
Shea met Wilson in the late 1960s when they worked on Playboy magazine. They decided to collaborate on a novel. It would combine sex, drugs, religious cults and conspiracies, as well as anarchy. Their philosophical and political differences merely served to enrich their efforts. Objectivity was jettisoned, as indeed was subjectivity: no single point of view or version of reality was privileged: Illuminatus! was the three-volume consequence.
Illuminati, a card game from Steve Jackson Games, was inspired by the books. A trading card game, Illuminati: New World Order, and a role-playing game, GURPS Illuminati, followed.
Shea provided in 1983 a brief introduction for the Illuminati Expansion Set rule book. "Maybe," he wrote, "the Illuminati are behind this game. They must be. They are, by definition, behind everything."
He and Wilson, though living in Chicago and California respectively, remained good friends in later years.
Shea went on to write historical action novels, including Shike (1981), a two-volume novel set in Ancient Japan about the warrior monk Jebu and his love Lady Shima Taniko, All Things Are Lights (1986), and The Saracen, a novel published in two volumes in 1989 depicting the struggle between a blond Muslim warrior called Daoud ibn Abdullah and his French crusader adversary Simon de Gobignon. His last published book was the Native American tale Shaman (1991). These stories were straightforward beginning-middle-end tales, but included a few sly hints about the subjects of Illuminatus!
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