What do you think?
Rate this book
Surfing the Conscious Nets
Graphic novel designed as a Q&A chatroom session with Dr Leary, where readers travel the electronic maze of cyborgiastic addiction and the search for the absolute aphrodisiac. Topics include My lonely Quest for the Male Afrodisiac, A Near Miss with Billionaire Bacon, Mengele Lives! Medical Evil! and other rants. Graphic and paintings by Robert Williams.
122 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 1995
About the author
Timothy Leary
184 books825 followersTimothy Francis Leary was an American writer, psychologist, futurist, modern pioneer and advocate of psychedelic drug research and use, and one of the first people whose remains have been sent into space. An icon of 1960s counterculture, Leary is most famous as a proponent of the therapeutic and spiritual benefits of LSD. He coined and popularized the catch phrase "Turn on, tune in, drop out."
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
March 11, 2026
a fellow 2-star-rating-awarder mentions in his review that Leary has predicted Viagra herein. well, that's not some subplot or supporting detail. this book tells the story of a guy who wants control over his boners, preferably in pill form.
the most interesting thing here is... the question of authorship. that is what kept me reading to the end. according to an old amazon review, a guy named Jim Bauer wrote the bulk of this text, via email correspondence with Dr. Leary, and was not properly credited. i was curious and found some of Jim's PKD fanfiction through the wayback machine. it seemed pretty bad and i could believe it was also written by whoever who wrote this book. so, the story of the mistreated schizophrenic fictional character becomes the meta-story of the mistreated schizophrenic real life author, possibly? or that guy was just lying in his amazon review? according to a different amazon review, Bauer is dead. RIP if any of this is even factual. but yeah that was the primary intrigue, voyeurism vis a vis a famous megalomaniac plagiarizing an unknown one. indeterminacy is suuuch a vibe.
there are plenty of very boomer-ass* witticisms and amusing/creative turns of phrase going on which i did appreciate to varying extents, my mood permitting, but the whole time i wondered who actually wrote them. it is even possible that Leary and/or Bauer just threw in a bunch of old street jokes which i am unfamiliar with.
*"boomer-ass" is not a term of disparagement coming from me, some of those guys used to be pretty smart before they got facebook. and really it was more aptly "silent-generation-ass" i guess? idk.
plot-wise, there was nothing really amusing or interesting here. i chose to read this first to satisfy some morbid curiosity, and continued reading to satisfy a secondary morbid curiosity. well, i expected this book to be ridiculous and it delivered. i have still never read or seen anything by leary that wasn't a late-career vanity project. his pre-messiah-trip clinical work actually interests me a lot, i just dont respect my own intellect enough to commit to reading anything about psychology longer than a wikipedia article. and in a perverse way i like to see how grotesquely the long 60s petered out i guess idk i just pulled that line out of my butt. i kind of like leary as a guy, even late-career cybernaut doofus leary. even though he was a jerkoff. but whether or not the main content of Conscious Nets was generated by lovable jerkoff leary's brain or plagiarism victim Jim Bauer's jerkoff brain it was pretty much a washout.
this book claims to be a graphic novel. it is more like the script for a one man show, with many illustrations. you see the cover? a lot of the pictures look even worse than that. a note i took while reading says "artwork is uniformly atrocious. must be seen to be believed."
as general categories i like "bad" and "naive" artwork juuust fine and maybe even prefer them 9 times out of 10, but these early photoshop experiments are putrid. so unaesthetic. and yeah i do know this is Robert Williams who is nobody to sneeze at, but these illustrations stunk. really. like it's cool how bad they were but i did not enjoy looking at them. god i sound like a stooge. who am i pretend-arguing with here, anyway? nobody knows this dumb book exists.
there are abstract patterns behind the text and it's sometimes rather hard to read the scan i have downloaded. i would actually be pretty curious to buy a hard copy just so i can see how this looks on the printed page. however, if you have a copy to sell me, i won't be offended if you instead put it under a pile of leaves to decompose. that's mean... i just said it for fun. i hope you can find someone to buy your copy.
sorry for such a crummy review, i hope you liked it. i wouldnt bother with this book but if you're curious, then you're curious. there's no insight here, just a mentally ill man possibly being disenfranchised by one of his heroes and a pretty stupid story about boners. i like that he is sending emails about his cock to Susan Sarandon throughout the book. i also enjoyed that Sidney Cohen was added as an antagonist just a few years after the real Sidney Cohen had passed away. very "based" thing to do.
my favorite lines were
"During these younger years, I dreamed of becoming a Black Rapper like Grand Master Flash"
and
"Involuntarily dying could be the most important stupid mistake of your life."
another reviewer seemed to have received this as queer lit which was an auxiliary reason that i tried to stick with the book and remain curious. i think this was written by - to borrow a phrase from Kool Keith - a "funky heterosexual" .. AT MOST. ("at most" is a joke, sexuality is immeasurable, probably)
the most interesting thing here is... the question of authorship. that is what kept me reading to the end. according to an old amazon review, a guy named Jim Bauer wrote the bulk of this text, via email correspondence with Dr. Leary, and was not properly credited. i was curious and found some of Jim's PKD fanfiction through the wayback machine. it seemed pretty bad and i could believe it was also written by whoever who wrote this book. so, the story of the mistreated schizophrenic fictional character becomes the meta-story of the mistreated schizophrenic real life author, possibly? or that guy was just lying in his amazon review? according to a different amazon review, Bauer is dead. RIP if any of this is even factual. but yeah that was the primary intrigue, voyeurism vis a vis a famous megalomaniac plagiarizing an unknown one. indeterminacy is suuuch a vibe.
there are plenty of very boomer-ass* witticisms and amusing/creative turns of phrase going on which i did appreciate to varying extents, my mood permitting, but the whole time i wondered who actually wrote them. it is even possible that Leary and/or Bauer just threw in a bunch of old street jokes which i am unfamiliar with.
*"boomer-ass" is not a term of disparagement coming from me, some of those guys used to be pretty smart before they got facebook. and really it was more aptly "silent-generation-ass" i guess? idk.
plot-wise, there was nothing really amusing or interesting here. i chose to read this first to satisfy some morbid curiosity, and continued reading to satisfy a secondary morbid curiosity. well, i expected this book to be ridiculous and it delivered. i have still never read or seen anything by leary that wasn't a late-career vanity project. his pre-messiah-trip clinical work actually interests me a lot, i just dont respect my own intellect enough to commit to reading anything about psychology longer than a wikipedia article. and in a perverse way i like to see how grotesquely the long 60s petered out i guess idk i just pulled that line out of my butt. i kind of like leary as a guy, even late-career cybernaut doofus leary. even though he was a jerkoff. but whether or not the main content of Conscious Nets was generated by lovable jerkoff leary's brain or plagiarism victim Jim Bauer's jerkoff brain it was pretty much a washout.
this book claims to be a graphic novel. it is more like the script for a one man show, with many illustrations. you see the cover? a lot of the pictures look even worse than that. a note i took while reading says "artwork is uniformly atrocious. must be seen to be believed."
as general categories i like "bad" and "naive" artwork juuust fine and maybe even prefer them 9 times out of 10, but these early photoshop experiments are putrid. so unaesthetic. and yeah i do know this is Robert Williams who is nobody to sneeze at, but these illustrations stunk. really. like it's cool how bad they were but i did not enjoy looking at them. god i sound like a stooge. who am i pretend-arguing with here, anyway? nobody knows this dumb book exists.
there are abstract patterns behind the text and it's sometimes rather hard to read the scan i have downloaded. i would actually be pretty curious to buy a hard copy just so i can see how this looks on the printed page. however, if you have a copy to sell me, i won't be offended if you instead put it under a pile of leaves to decompose. that's mean... i just said it for fun. i hope you can find someone to buy your copy.
sorry for such a crummy review, i hope you liked it. i wouldnt bother with this book but if you're curious, then you're curious. there's no insight here, just a mentally ill man possibly being disenfranchised by one of his heroes and a pretty stupid story about boners. i like that he is sending emails about his cock to Susan Sarandon throughout the book. i also enjoyed that Sidney Cohen was added as an antagonist just a few years after the real Sidney Cohen had passed away. very "based" thing to do.
my favorite lines were
"During these younger years, I dreamed of becoming a Black Rapper like Grand Master Flash"
and
"Involuntarily dying could be the most important stupid mistake of your life."
another reviewer seemed to have received this as queer lit which was an auxiliary reason that i tried to stick with the book and remain curious. i think this was written by - to borrow a phrase from Kool Keith - a "funky heterosexual" .. AT MOST. ("at most" is a joke, sexuality is immeasurable, probably)
September 7, 2023
Maybe I would have loved this book when it came out, but it’s pretty difficult to get through now. Let me start by saying that it was made with Photoshop and PoweMacintosh 7100, amongst other programs. Terribly dated, this graphic novel is an incoherent merger of Leary’s drug-fueled futurism and early 90’s online chat room novelty, all set against a garish backdrop of psychedelic clip art which makes it near illegible. Still-kudos to Timothy Leary for predicting Viagra.
January 7, 2019
That's what I call a wild one.
Lots of the fun, almost incoherent rambling this sort of book is known for.
It is super awesome to read the mash-up between queer identities and sexuality, wild mind expansion adventures, and butting heads with the straight (and straight) world as a creative.
""Well, I can't listen to well-meaning or malicious advice from literary agents...You see, I write about real people with real issues which matter to real people, like cryonic hibernation, tender, sexual self confidence, and exposing the slime monster medics who want worms to eat our bodies after a miserable life of sexual inadequacy.""
"As a veteran of many a gay pride parade, I am rightly suspicious of jiggling white girls."
That needs to be a cross-stitch in my house.
Lots of the fun, almost incoherent rambling this sort of book is known for.
It is super awesome to read the mash-up between queer identities and sexuality, wild mind expansion adventures, and butting heads with the straight (and straight) world as a creative.
""Well, I can't listen to well-meaning or malicious advice from literary agents...You see, I write about real people with real issues which matter to real people, like cryonic hibernation, tender, sexual self confidence, and exposing the slime monster medics who want worms to eat our bodies after a miserable life of sexual inadequacy.""
"As a veteran of many a gay pride parade, I am rightly suspicious of jiggling white girls."
That needs to be a cross-stitch in my house.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews