Image: Daniel Rehn/Flickr
-- The header on the front page of the first edition of High Frontiers. Distributed in early 80s San Francisco, the first edition was a DIY affair, but it launched with a deep-rooted sense of cosmic purpose.Thirty-three years ago, a sometime punk, occasional Yippie, and full-time internet weirdo—the godfather of all internet weirdos, perhaps—R U Sirius, known IRL as Ken Goffman, founded High Frontiers, the San Francisco-based publication which would later be known as Mondo 2000. Sirius's CV is extravagant and varied: at various times he has edited technology journals, appeared in arthouse cinema, created music with a band named 'Mondo Vanilli,' hosted podcasts, and at one point co-authored a book with psychonaut philosopher Timothy Leary*, despite the latter's death halfway through the project (1998's fittingly titled Design for Dying). In the year 2000, Sirius also ran for president, with the campaign line " Victory over horseshit! Mock the vote!""The space age newspaper of psychedelics, science, human potential, irreverence and modern art"
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The first issue appeared in 1984, featuring Leary, Terence McKenna, and Bruce Eisner, along with the erratic yet intricate visual style that would evolve in future issues.Half the appeal in reading through old editions, preserved today on Archive.org, stems from the paper's bizarre details: the stamp on the cover, claiming High Frontiers to be the "official psychedelic newspaper of the summer Olympic games," or the ad inside for a company called 'Pyravid International' selling subscriptions to the 'Brain Mind Bulletin.'There are ads for nonsensical inventions straight out of an episode of Rick and Morty. There are comics making fun of Yippies*, talk of early nootropic brain enhancement and life-extension, and the assertion that 'science without feminism is apocalypse.'In one tiny panel placed in the corner of one page, a company showcases mail-order t-shirts emblazoned with the slogan " Let's get meta-physical." Elsewhere, an apparently inexhaustible succession of publishing houses advertise guides to growing marijuana, while a man named "Jeff Abbott, Computer Therapist" claims to have "over EIGHT YEARS facilitating human/computer relationships." He signs off with "WHEN THE CHIPS ARE DOWN, CALL JEFF!""We really had to work to convince people that technology was defining the future. Nobody really got it."
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Soon High Frontiers evolved into a glossy magazine, Reality Hackers ("Some distributors at the time thought it was about hacking people up, and put it on the shelf next to murder mystery magazines") , and later Mondo 2000, which ran from 1989 till 1998. The word 'mondo' was an interesting choice—the Mondo movies of the 60s, 70s, and 80s showcased 'shockumentary' footage from around the world on video.Read More: Universal Basic Income Is the Path to an Entirely New Economic System
Mondo 2000 spoke to a magpie taste for cultural writing, irreverent humour and surreal design, blending countercultural values with a pre-millennial mix of anxiety and awe, auguring in the 21st century chaos with writer Bruce Sterling would later call 'dark euphoria.'In High Frontiers and its inheritors, the word 'mutation' appears again and again. Archive.org even hosts a flier dating from 1985, advertising a 'World Mutation Day' event organised by magazine and its acolytes. It's a distinctly Cronenberg-y take on personal enlightenment. (When I tell Sirius this, he mentions that he once actually interviewed David Cronenberg for Wired. Apparently Kathy Acker was also meant to turn up, but sadly couldn't make it.) High Frontiers documents life with 'the new flesh,' a culture placed somewhere between the Summer of Love and techno-utopianism."We don't really like sharing each other's brains, as it turns out. They're not well-developed."
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