Hilaritas Press Authors

David Jay Brown & Rebecca McClen Novick

David Jay Brown is the author of The Illustrated Field Guide to DMT Entities, Dreaming Wide Awake: Lucid Dreaming, Shamanic Healing and Psychedelics, and The New Science of Psychedelics: At the Nexus of Culture, Consciousness, and Spirituality. He is also the coauthor of six other bestselling volumes of interviews with leading-edge thinkers: Voices from the Edge, Conversations on the Edge of the Apocalypse, Mavericks of Medicine, Frontiers of Psychedelic Consciousness, Women of Visionary Art, and Psychedelics and the Coming Singularity. Additionally, Brown is the author of two science fiction novels, Brainchild and Virus, and he is the coauthor of the health science book Detox with Oral Chelation. Brown holds a master’s degree in psychobiology from New York University, and was responsible for the California-based research in two of British biologist Rupert Sheldrake’s books on unexplained phenomena in science: Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home and The Sense of Being Stared At. His work has appeared in numerous magazines, including Wired, Discover, and Scientific American, and he was the Senior Editor of the special edition, themed MAPS (Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies) Bulletins from 2007 to 2012. In 2011, 2012, and 2013 Brown was voted “Best Writer” in the annual Good Times and Santa Cruz Weekly’s “Best of Santa Cruz” polls, and his news stories have been picked up by The Huffington Post and CBS News. To find out more about his work see: www.davidjaybrown.com

Rebecca McClen Novick moved from England to central California in her early 20s where she lived in a cabin in the ‘woods’ and made a life-long friendship with David Jay Brown, which produced Mavericks of the Mind and its sequel, Voices from the Edge. After moving to Los Angeles, she began to study Tibetan Buddhism and wrote, Fundamentals of Tibetan Buddhism. With her husband, she founded a video production company creating promotional films for nonprofit organizations and became involved in human rights work with a focus on Tibet. After releasing an award-winning documentary about the Chinese invasion of Tibet, she and her husband decided to move permanently to live and work in the exiled Tibetan community of Dharamsala in North India. She produced a monthly radio program on Tibetan issues and worked as a freelance writer and editor. While engaged as communications director for an international Buddhist organization based in Delhi, Rebecca embarked upon a post-graduate degree in Buddhist Studies from the University of Wales. She then spent several years traveling to pilgrimage sites in India and studying Indian and Buddhist philosophy with various teachers. She trained as a yoga instructor in Rishikesh at the ripe old age of 50, moved to a rural medieval town in France in 2016, and has been teaching yoga and breathwork there ever since.

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Mavericks of the Mind

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“Some of the most important thinkers of our time speak in their own words to two brilliant interviewers. Anyone aspiring to understand the new millennium we are entering will have to read this book. Every page explodes like an intellectual firecracker. A first rate job!”

– Robert Anton Wilson on Mavericks of the Mind

Praise for Mavericks of the Mind

Jerry Garcia

“This is a fine collection of original thinkers, an important national resource. Everyone who wants to stay current with information from the outer perimeters of consciousness exploration should read it.”

– Jerry Garcia of The Grateful Dead

Robert Anton Wilson

“Some of the most important thinkers of our time speak in their own words to two brilliant interviewers. Anyone aspiring to understand the new millennium we are entering will have to read this book. Every page explodes like an intellectual firecracker. A first rate job!”

– Robert Anton Wilson, author of Cosmic Trigger and The Illuminatus! trilogy

Alex Grey

“What distinguishes these ‘voices from the edge’ is their passionate self-actualization and their profound and strange contributions to our culture. Give a listen.”

– Alex Grey, artist, author of Net of Being and Transfigurations, and co-founder of The Chapel of Sacred Mirrors

Library Journal

“Depending on how one chooses to view it, this aptly named book is either a potpourri of strange and wonderful ideas or a collection of far-fetched suppositions. …there will certainly be readers interested in this volume’s unique subject matter.”

– Library Journal

Clifford Pickover

“David Jay Brown is the most compelling interviewer on this planet.”

– Clifford Pickover, author of Sex, Drugs, Einstein & Elves and Artificial Intelligence: From Medieval Robots to Neural Networks

Douglas Rushkoff

“Wow! A one-stop shop of the greatest minds in cyberspace, or any other space for that matter. I could spend days in here, gaining insights from my favorite thought warriors, or discovering others I really should have known about all along.”

– Douglas Rushkoff, author of Media Virus, Team Human and Survival of the Richest

John Allen

“…a winner. It’s got punch, rhythm, verve …brilliantly conceived and executed, forming perhaps the best possible connection of the past thirty-five years of cultural transformation. It opens the road to the starmakers – to all who intelligently dare.”

– John Allen, Inventor of Biosphere 2 and author of Me and the Biospheres

Jaron Lanier

“The great test of youthful ideas must be in how well they age and regenerate for future generations. In this volume two young people interview many of the outrageous luminaries of the 20th century Western ecstatic mystic community. This book provides evidence that a new flavor of spiritual tradition, completely compatible with science and technology, is being passed from one generation to the next. I feel this is a most vital project, and that it has been beautifully executed.”

– Jaron Lanier, Virtual Reality pioneer, author of You Are Not a Gadget and Dawn of the New Everything

Marilyn Ferguson

“A provocative collection indeed!”

– Marilyn Ferguson, author of The Aquarian Conspiracy and editor of Brain/Mind Bulletin

R.U. Sirius

“In print or on the web, David Jay Brown supplies the right combination of thought and information. Frequently useful, always interesting…” 

– R.U. Sirius, editor Mondo 2000, author of Counterculture Through the Ages and coauthor of Design for Dying

Graham St John

“Mavericks of the Mind is a now classic collection of interviews that serves as an indispensable reference and portal into the mercurial minds of the psychedelic pantheon.”

– Graham St John, author of Mystery School in Hyperspace: A Cultural History of DMT

Rob Brezsny

“People who ask great questions and listen well are my heroes. And when they pose great questions and listen well to the greatest geniuses on the planet, and those geniuses respond with extravagant brilliance, they’re heroes who make my brain ecstatic. David Jay Brown and Rebecca McClen Novick are heroes like that.”

– Rob Brezsny, Free Will Astrology columnist, author of The Televisionary Oracle and Pronoia is the Antidote for Paranoia

Richard Metzger

“Speaking as a professional interviewer myself, I can tell you that whenever you are lucky enough to have access to a really fine mind, you want to make sure that you’re on your ‘A game.’ David Jay Brown and Rebecca McClen Novick are uniquely well-suited to draw out the very best from their subjects, and Mavericks of the Mind represents the finest collection of difficult thoughts and brilliant thinkers you can find between two covers. It’s a modern classic. Mavericks of the Mind represents the finest collection of difficult thoughts and brilliant thinkers you can find between two covers. It’s a modern classic.”

– Richard Metzger, DangerousMinds.net

Stanley Krippner, Ph.D.

“…a provocative collection of interviews with some of the most challenging thinkers in the Western world. Their statements may cajole you, infuriate you, or inspire you, but they will never bore you! Together, these interviews give the reader an uncanny glimpse as to the way that our reality may be heading.”

– Stanley Krippner, Ph.D., author of A Chaotic Life, co-author of Dream Telepathy and Spiritual Dimensions of Healing

Erik Davis

“When it was first published, Mavericks of the Mind was more than a breath of fresh air – it was a hurricane of ideas and visions perfectly tuned to the time. This 21st century expansion pack will ensure that these maverick spirits – many of whom have now passed on – will continue to channel the mindscape beyond the bend.”

– Erik Davis, author of Nomad Codes, TechGnosis, and High Weirdness

Bruce Damer, Ph.D.

“No other book of interviews captures the front-edge, psychedelically-inflected inquiry of the pre-millennium better than Mavericks of the Mind. I believe that this and subsequent volumes by David Jay Brown give us a serious run at cracking the DNA code of conscious reality in this Century.”

– Bruce Damer, Ph.D., UC Santa Cruz Astrobiologist working on origins of life, and President of the Center for MINDS.

DNA

“Blurbs are often hyperbole. This is not. In ‘93, Mavericks of the Mind struck my life like a 13 point lightening bolt. This collection of essays is a nexus, a portal in time & space, an actual Stargate. My life wouldn’t be the same without this seminal collection of interviews. Spoiler Alert: reading it might change your life. It changed mine.”

– DNA, Comedian, and author of Memoirs of the Messiah: A 98% True Story 

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