Looking at visual illusions and how they work show us that reality and human perception of reality are different things. Return Trip is a shortened, chopped-up and transformed version of prominent art historian Cycleback's earlier published works on aesthetics, psychology, epistemology and philosophy of art. It examines aesthetic perception and cognitive biases in relationship to information processing and the search for knowledge. The aleatory structure and narrative is at turns academic, comic, poetic and psychological. Cycleback was a 2013 Eric Hoffer Award Finalist for his book Conceits, much of that work incorporated into Return Trip. Reprinted by Beijing's Three Shadows Art Center, his books Judging the Authenticity of Photographs and Judging the Authenticity of Prints by The Masters were the first comprehensive books on the subjects published in Chinese.