Self-discovery

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Robert Anton Wilson, in his Cosmic Trigger, describes his reactions to various events as those of The Author, The Skeptic, The Sage, The Neurologician, The Shaman, and other personae — all Wilson himself, of course, and by no means the “multiple personality” image first made popular by Dr. Morton Prince in the early years of this century; facets, rather, of any whole human being, and not a host of separate entities.

Who, inside yourself, calmly watches you flying into a rage or drifting in ecstasy or capturing an audience? Do you, as so many do, refer to “a little person who watches” or “the part of myself that always observes, never participates”?

(And why do so many of us describe the watcher as a little person? Sometimes I suspect that mine is big — maybe bigger than I.)

These are the questions — the kinds of questions, of provocations — evoked by Vladimir Savchenko and his astonishing novel, for at the heart of his story is the problem of self and personal identity. Krivoshein, the brilliant young experimenter in cybernetics who is the hero of the novel, discovers a way to duplicate human beings and, working secretly, brings into the world many versions of himself.

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