Taking The Red Pill acts as a wonder drug, a miracle cure for all the cognitive complications The Matrix generates.

'the sheer brilliance of the Matrix films becomes clear.'

Containing many answers to the questions posed by the first 'Matrix' film, this book explores the frontiers of philosophy, technology and religious symbolism. It explores the enormous dilemmas the Wachowski brothers presented when they gave the movie its many layers of meaning - fusing myriad philosophical and religious themes with futuristic science and technology.

I made an offer to publish this book after reading just one of its mind-blowing chapters. It was the most far reaching and profound book I had read in a long time, and I knew right away it was going to be a bestseller. Taking The Red Pill has sold translation rights all over the world - it generated quite a buzz at this year's London Book Fair, and kept the Summersdale stand busy with people desperate for review copies! Wide ranging scientific, religious and philosophical concepts introduced by The Matrix are explored in this very readable book. It's an intelligent read and thought-provoking (especially when 'proving' that statistically it's likely that we are living in a computer simulation!), but it's also a book that any fan of The Matrix movies can enjoy.

Stewart Ferris
Publisher

Introduction

The Matrix hit the film-going public by surprise, much like Star Wars a generation earlier, and for many of the same reasons. It had a breathless pace, astonishing eye-candy, a sense of mythic adventure, and an acid-tinged sensibility. Like Star Wars, it opened up a new continent of imagination; in this case, a domain of cyber-existence that no movie had explored before.

Also, like Star Wars, The Matrix drew heavily on the major tropes of science fiction. Long-time readers of the genre recognized the permeating flavors of George Orwell, Harlan Ellison, Philip K. Dick, and William Gibson: a dystopic machine-dominated future, peopled by implacable forces and disposable identities; a juggernaut of industrial behemoths flattening humanity under the steamroller of time.

But all of this came in on top of an earlier, even more powerful mythic structure: the lone hero who saves the town; almost always he has some superior ability or insight. We?ve seen this story in a variety of forms, we never get tired of it.

It?s the underlying theme in James Bond movies and Tom Clancy novels, in almost every Clint Eastwood western, in classics like Shane and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, in comic books like Superman and Batman, in popular television shows like Route 66 and The Fugitive, and even in many Bugs Bunny cartoons?but although this particular myth has sometimes been identified as "the American mono-myth," we also see it expressed in earlier fables, such as The Pied Piper of Hamlin, Beowulf, and St. George and the Dragon.

We can even find variations of this story in other cultures, as in Akira Kurosawa?s film of Yojimbo, or in the earlier tales of medieval Samurai warriors, such as Musashi. If we go far enough back, we can add Perseus to the list, Prometheus too, and probably even Orpheus as well; all lone heroes who took on impossible challenges and succeeded, often at enormous cost.

Neo stands among some very proud company indeed.

The cultural archetype, of course, is Christ. He came into the world with superior powers and insight. He was misunderstood. He saved the souls of those who trusted him and believed in him, he was betrayed by someone he trusted, and he was punished by the authority he challenged. But he left the world changed for the better for having passed through it. So, of course, any tale that echoes that one is going to have enormous resonance among its audience.

And you thought The Matrix was just a movie, right?

Like any good movie, like any good work of art, a single exposure is not enough; there?s much more to be discovered by revisiting the work, by giving ourselves over to some careful contemplation of its intention as well as its impact. We have the opportunity to consider at some length the nature of reality as portrayed in the film, not as a simple story, but as a commentary?a mirror in which we can see ourselves and our own "reality" reflected?and thereby granting us the opportunity for insight.

Insight, also known as wisdom in drag, allows us to recognize the traps of existence. Some traps, like life itself, cannot be broken, cannot be escaped; the best we can do is recontextualize. With the addition of insight, we gain mastery over ourselves in relation to the trap. This is the essential function of philosophy, as well as of art, and what this excellent collection of essays demonstrates, if nothing else, is a confluence of intention where art and philosophy collide in a single film.

Here, The Matrix is held up to the light and examined from a dozen different directions. I suppose I could make the immediate comparison of the six blind men and the elephant (I won?t mention where the seventh blind man stuck his hand), except in the world of The Matrix, we?re all blind and everything is elephants?but that analogy would be wrong.

It might also be appropriate to mention an odd little book, long out of print, that made a minor splash three decades ago. It was called The Pooh Perplex and served up a collection of essays analyzing Winnie the Pooh, each from a different perspective?political, social, religious, philosophical. That book was a parody, and while it told you very little about Winnie the Pooh, it told you a great deal about how individual authors impressed their own agendas and mind-sets upon even the most innocently intentioned works. But that comparison would be wrong as well.

The authors of these explorations have given us, instead, a lens, an object through which light is focused and projected so as to provide illumination?so that we can distinguish our environment. Sometimes we project light through filters, sometimes we polarize it, sometimes we use infra-red or ultra-violet, or even micro-waves or X-rays, all so that we can look at the world in ways that go beyond the limitations of the physical eye. In that regard, we are using not the body?s vision, but the mind?s. The authors of these explorations have given us the opportunity to see how a single work resonates on multiple levels, reflecting off many facets, striking deep chords of memory, meaning, and interpretation.

That?s the success of a movie (or any work, for that matter)?that it creates new opportunities for exploration, discovery, and insight, that it gives us new ways to think about ourselves and the world in which we live.

Indeed, that?s the point of the Matrix?that humanity has a choice, not just as a species, but as individuals as well. We can accept our roles as slaves of the machine, or we can reinvent ourselves as masters.

I?ll get out of your way now. You can step into the mirror.

2006-07-09 Some interesting ideas

This book poses some interesting ideas and theories. Some of the essays are linked to the film and others are inspired by themes the film explores. I found most of the essays to be well written and have something of interest to say, a minority were not of much interest, a little tenuous or of minor relevance. Never the less, it is worth a read for some of the forward looking ideas explored in it's pages.