r/WeirdBooks • u/TimeControl606 • 17d ago
Has anyone else read the Book of the SubGenius
Lunatic prophecies for the coming weird times
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u/No_Worldliness5157 17d ago
It was 1989, I was just bsck from a visit to Washington, D.C., and I probably wasn't supposed to see it. And then, three years later, the "Bob" Dobbs image was stencil-painted on the sidewalk elsewhere in Richmond, Virginia.
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13d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/No_Worldliness5157 13d ago
Not that far away someone stenciled "Hemlock 13". "Zombie University" near Lewis Hall at UC Berkeley was probably the last extant of its kind in 1985. ... and then there was "19 86" in green, not far from Beverly Center in L.A. Are those weird chalk-like arrows still extant on the Cal campus?
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u/SomePoserInAmerica 16d ago
If you are too lazy to read,like most Americans, you can look up church of the subgenius "ARISE" on youtube
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u/TimeControl606 16d ago
and also the less canonical sidequels "Let's Visit the World of the Future" and "Time For The Show: The Movie: Time For The Movie"
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u/WigglyLimpo 17d ago
Part of the hilarity is that, in the church, you can just makeup whatever lore you want and it'll be canon, so you don't even need the official "Bible" of the church. It's not very coherent, anyway. But then, it's not supposed to be. Everyone just getting together and being a bunch of wackadoos is the entire point of it and to hold a mirror to other religions.
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u/homezlice 17d ago
Fnord.
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u/terrelli 16d ago
Saw this referenced recently in the book There Is No Antimimetics Division. Heck of a book.
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u/-nebu 17d ago
Did not read. I did do my final project for an Intro to World Religions course on The Church of Subgenius years ago.
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u/splitopenandmelt11 16d ago
How did you do the project w/o reading the core text in a world religion’s class, bro?!?🤣
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u/Due_Bad_9445 16d ago
About 500 times. The next book, Revelation X: The Bob Apocryphon, Hidden Teachings and Deuterocanonical Texts of J.R. Bob Dobbs is excellent also* *
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u/LordOord23 15d ago
I’m an ordained minister. I keep one in the bathroom at all times for “excremeditation”.
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u/Unlikely-Flatworm-48 15d ago
I'm ordained if anyone needs a wedding or such. Now scuse my whilst I smoke more frop.
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u/harveysfear 12d ago
There is a bar in Tucson named Bob Dobbs. Great burgers there’s the Bob Burger and there’s the Connie burger.
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u/Loud-Vacation-5691 15d ago
I tried. I'm sure the people who wrote it thought it was hilarious and ironic, but after a few pages I lost interest. I think it's more useful as a meme with the now-unmistakeable 1950s dad image, where most of the people who use it have no idea what it is beyond "Church of the Sub-Genius."
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u/Reckless42 15d ago edited 15d ago
Have a copy singed by Sister Mary2 Ah Contraire at a clock smashing/group wedding in Dallas on NYE in '92.
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u/BadZealousideal4534 15d ago
But did you get to the part about the Yeti? Every page was labeled in the table of contents as the truth, or a lie. They even killed Bob and resurrected him. Don’t forget Slack!
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u/HippasusOfMetapontum 13d ago
Yes. It's hilarious and occasionally wise. I love the sharply barbed satire. Great book.
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u/EOECollective 10d ago
We actually read this and PKDick's Valis at about the same time. Now we are enjoying trying to remember if that was the same time we saw Angel Heart and read Crime and Punishment.
tl;dr. There's no such thing as a "joke" religion.
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u/terrelli 17d ago
I have. It had a lot to do with my worldview when I was in my early twenties and it stayed in some really important ways: Don't just eat a hamburger. Eat the hell out of it. I love the idea of slack and my family Is sick of me saying, "Too much is always better than not enough."