The Golden Apple

The second volume of the Illuminatus! trilogy by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson, first published by Dell in 1975. Dell split the novel into three books for commercial reasons, and The Golden Apple carries on without a break from The Eye in the Pyramid.

Reporter George Dorn, the Discordian leader Hagbard Celine, New York detective Saul Goodman and a crowd of assassins, mob bosses and conspirators are drawn further into the secret war between the Illuminati and the Discordians. Some of the first volume's questions are answered while new confusions pile up, and the action builds towards a showdown at Ingolstadt. The title points to the golden apple of discord from Greek myth, the Discordians' emblem.

The trilogy is a satirical, postmodern adventure that mixes science fiction, conspiracy theories, counterculture and Discordian humour, told through shifting narrators and a nonlinear structure. Read The Eye in the Pyramid first; the story ends in Leviathan.