One of the most influential of all Discordian works,
The Illuminatus! Trilogy is a
series of three novels written by
Robert Shea and
Robert Anton Wilson purportedly between 1969 and 1971.
In a 1980 interview given to the science fiction magazine
Starship, Wilson suggested the novel was an attempt to build a myth around Discordianism:
We felt the Discordian Society needed some opposition, because the whole idea of it is based on conflict and
dialectics. So, we created an opposition within the Discordian Society, which we called the Bavarian Illuminati [...] So, we built up this myth about the warfare between the Discordian Society and the Illuminati for quite a while, until one day Bob Shea said to me, "You know, we could write a novel about this!"