Illuminati in Popular Culture - Books and Comics

Books and Comics

• Gothic literature had a particular interest in the theme of the Illuminati. The Cambridge Companion to Gothic Fiction states that readers had a "scandalous vogue for German tales of the Illuminati." The role of the Illuminati in Horrid Mysteries, as in Montague Summers' introduction to a later reprint of it. The Illuminati also turn up in two spoofs of the gothic genre, which both also reference Horrid Mysteries, Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen and Nightmare Abbey by Thomas Love Peacock. A number of writers have indicated the familiarity of Mary Shelley with the early anti-Illuminati text Memoirs Illustrating the History of Jacobinism due to Percy Bysshe Shelley's enthusiasm for it and see its influence in Frankenstein, Zastrozzi and The Assassins particularly, reading the Monster itself as an amalgam of Shelley's Illuminati-influenced ideas and of the Illuminati itself, with the monster being created in Ingolstadt, where the Illuminati had been formed.
• The Illuminatus! Trilogy by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson is a three-book science fiction series published in the 1970s, which is regarded as a cult classic particularly in the hacker community. An incomplete comic book version of the Illuminatus! was produced and published by Eye-n-Apple Productions and Rip Off Press between 1987 and 1991. Robert Anton Wilson also wrote The Historical Illuminati Chronicles in the early 1980s, and several other books and stories making use of it.
• Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum is a labyrinthine 1988 novel about all sorts of secret societies, including the Illuminati and the Rosicrucians.
• Fallen Angels by Bernard Cornwell (under the pseudonym Susannah Kells) (1984). A love story set in the shadow of the Paris revolutionary guillotine and the grounds of Lazender Castle in England. The illuminati plot to bring revolution to England is a central thread.
• Angels & Demons (German title: Illuminati), Dan Brown's 2000 precursor to 2003's The Da Vinci Code, is about an apparent Illuminati order plot to destroy its enemy the Catholic Church by using antimatter to blow up the Vatican while Papal elections are being held. In this novel the Illuminati movement was founded by Galileo Galilei, and others, as an enlightened reaction to persecution by the Catholic Church. They were initially based in Italy, but fled after four key members were executed by the Vatican. Apparently there are four churches to them in Rome, each representing one of the four elements. This is also the plot of the movie by the same name.
• In Michael Romkey's vampire novels, the Illuminati are an order of benevolent vampires, consisting of many famous figures throughout history (Beethoven, Mozart, etc.). The main character, David Parker, joins the order, but later leaves. Author Larry Burkett book called The Illuminati, where "The Society" seeks world power.
• In Marvel Comics, the Illuminati is a group of superheroes who joined forces and secretly work behind the scenes in Marvel's main shared universe.
• In War & Peace by Leo Tolstoy, Count Pierre Bezukhov, a Freemason, is accused of attempting to introduce the ideals of Illuminism to his lodge.
• A Scream in the Dark; Life of Zarate Arkham, a horror gothic novel by Costa Rican author Daniel Gonzalez, the Illuminati Circle is a powerful world-wide Satanic sect of Dark Wizards and main antagonist of the story.
• In Alexander Franco's The Matrix of Evil, the Illuminati are referred to as the Alumbrados, consisting of a financial elite who control the central bank of a fictional country in the 1930s. The Alumbrados are overthrown by a libertarian revolution led, in part, by an Ayn Rand-type character. The novel attempts to develop Objectivist class theory by displaying the Illuminati as the ruling elite within the political class.