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A history of Mondo 2000
Mondo 1995: Up and Down With the Next Millennium's First Magazine
By Jack Boulware
The night air swooshes through a 20-foot door into Bart Nagel's Emeryville
warehouse/studio space, where almost a dozen people are busy shooting a
promotional video for a new book - Cyberpunk Handbook: The Real Cyberpunk
Fakebook - that takes the cyberhip clich? to task with an ironic smirk.
It's only fitting that the book's authors - St. Jude, R.U. Sirius, and Nagel
- are sending up the concept, seeing as they were the ones who foisted
cyberpunk mania upon the world with the slick quarterly Mondo 2000. Begun
six years ago as a shared hallucination in the Berkeley hills, Mondo melded
computers, psychedelic drugs, sex, and art into an organic whole.
Published and financed by minor heiress Queen Mu, Mondo found a nationwide
audience in the hip computer culture and titillated the talk show bookers
with stories about virtual sex, smart drugs, cryptology, and nanocyborgs. By
1993, Mondo was on the cover of Time magazine, promoting the editors'
best-selling book from HarperCollins.
But in 1995, with cyberpunk now reduced to trite Hollywood formula, this
trio from the Mondo brain trust are happy to record the movement's obituary
with the snide video. As Nagel puts his "star," former Mondo writer Chris
Hudak, through his paces, R.U. Sirius and St. Jude offer directorial
suggestions. Hudak, decked out in black leather - his bullet belt bristling
with a Taser, laser pointer, and Star Trek communicator - re-creates his
tongue-in-cheek role from the Mondo spoof "R U a Cyberpunk?" in issue No.
10.
Nagel's Fisher-Price video camera pans across Hudak's gear as he recites,
perhaps a tad earnestly, from a color PowerBook:
"The term 'cyberpunk' has been used to describe music, lifestyles, and
artistic sensibilities, but it really describes one narrow school of
science-fiction writers," Hudak says. "God, it was a good word ... poetic,
efficient, and romantic. Distance and passion. Machine and man. Technology
and attitude. Cyberpunk. Great fuckin' word. And what the hell; we stole
it."
After several takes a break is called and the crew sips brew and chatters.
Slouched against the refrigerator, R.U. compliments Hudak's performance and
adds, "Boy, am I working hard!"
When did cyberpunk die? I ask.
"1993," smirks somebody. "The release of the Billy Idol record."
Although the crew continues to gab, they avoid discussing the magazine that
brought them together in the first place. It's no secret they've all fallen
out with Queen Mu, and haven't worked on the publication as a group for
several issues. I understand their reticence, having survived a few San
Francisco magazine wars myself. Since the newsstand hasn't seen a new issue
of Mondo in seven months, many readers assume that it is as dead as the
cyberpunk concept, so I volunteer what appears to be the obvious:
"Isn't it a shame about Mondo?" I say.
The silence that falls on the room informs me immediately that I've broached
a horribly touchy topic. The seasoned smartasses avoid my gaze to stare at
the floor. An uncomfortable dramatic pause says I might as well have
mentioned the name of somebody's family member who died in a violent
accident. After a couple of vague, sad remarks, the subject is changed and
chatter picks up again. Without further comment, we return to the video
shoot.
As it turns out, Mondo isn't dead: In late September, Queen Mu produced
Issue 14 and placed it on newsstands. What did expire some time ago was
Mondo's bragging rights, its role as the undisputed arbiter of technohip.
Having nailed the new Zeitgeist with the very first issue in 1989, the Mondo
crew isn't keen on acknowledging that a South of Market competitor fat with
consumer ads, subscribers, a commercial Web division, and an infusion of
cash from Cond? Nast has displaced it as the magazine of the 90s digital
mind-meld.
Examined at close range, Mondo's history reads as if fabricated on another
planet, spewed forth by a sweaty cyberpunk novelist tripping on
nasal-ingested DMT. Yet the story is true. In its absurd journey from Marin
to San Francisco to Berkeley, Mondo changed its name three times to avoid
detection. Its staff consumed vast quantities of designer psychedelics; was
plagued by vehicular accidents, some of them fatal; experienced office
break-ins; suffered publicity-starved celebrities; indulged in media pranks;
watched the skies during suspicious helicopter flyovers; engaged in
cross-dressing; enjoyed the temporary rush of depleting inheritances; and
generated conspiracy theories about the Mormons taking over the world.
And it all began at a 1984 equinox birthday party for an archdruid named
Stephan Abbott in Berkeley. Ken Goffman (by this time already adopting the
Dadaist persona of "R.U. Sirius") arrived with newsprint copies of the
premiere issue of High Frontiers under his arm. Subtitled "Psychedelics,
Science, Human Potential, Irreverence & Modern Art" and published by a
dubious organization called the Marin Mutants, High Frontiers consisted
primarily of long, unedited interviews with acid veterans like Albert
Hofmann, Timothy Leary, and Terence McKenna, the margins filled in with
weird jokes and short items.
That night, Sirius met a woman named Alison Kennedy.
"She was talking about how she had been irradiated over in Germany, because
she was living right next door to the Russian Embassy," says Sirius, who
turned 43 this year. "She'd been irradiated and poisoned, she was sick and
dying, and she was smiling from ear to ear. I immediately fell in love with
her because she was so strange. She was also the prettiest woman at the
party. I said, 'Let's go take some drugs,' and it went from there."
The long-haired, gap-toothed Sirius was a self-described "street rat" and
ex-yippie musician from New York. Kennedy was the faculty wife of an Eastern
religion professor at UC Berkeley, and the daughter of a wealthy Palo Alto
family that claimed Noah Webster in its lineage. Her friends included the
late Aldous Huxley and Ken Kesey.
Despite its small print run of 1,500, High Frontiers No. 1 was
well-received. The back room of Mill Valley's Flashback Pizza became the
unofficial hangout of Sirius and other characters who worked on the
magazine: "Somerset Mau Mau," "Amalgam X," and new Art Director "Lord Nose."
There, Sirius began plotting the second issue of this party-on-paper.
Timeliness was not an issue. "The staff was always blasted!" laughs
pseudonymous investment banker/psychedelic drug expert "Zarkov" of the pizza
parlor era. Zarkov often contributed, together with his companion Gracie, to
this Mondo family tree of publications. "Selling pizzas and drugs on the
side - it took forever to get your pizza." High Frontiers No. 2 equally
focused on drugs, but expanded to include interviews with yippies and
physicists, reviews of art and literature, and an essay by Kennedy about
datura, the common North American plant whose psychoactive qualities were
rediscovered by British soldiers who accidentally ingested it in Virginia in
the 1800s. (According to an 1883 citation, the limeys became extremely
disoriented, blowing feathers in the air, grinning like monkeys, and "pawing
and fondling their companions.")
In its pages, Sirius and Mau Mau advertised little pamphlets touting the
"Neopsychedelic Pop Party" and "cunnilinguistic programming." Now published
by Sacred Cow Mutilators, High Frontiers was right on schedule - producing a
whopping one issue per year.
"My original idea was to make it a confluence between psychedelics and
science and tech, but once we blasted out the first issue, which was all
about psychedelics, we sort of got deep into it," laughs Sirius. "That's the
most fun I've ever had in my life, actually. It was pretty fucking
carefree."
But not very profitable. David Latimer came on board for High Frontiers No.
3 in 1987, which was subtitled "The Latest in Science and Fun." He had
worked on Sunset and Scientific American, and was co-publishing both Soma
and a magazine for Asian-Americans called Rice. With Latimer (also hiding
behind a pseudonym), Sirius and company opened an office in San Francisco's
Financial District, launched a companion newsletter called Reality Hackers,
and began sponsoring seminars and discussion forums at the Julia Morgan
Theater.
"We had Terence McKenna and [physicist] Nick Herbert together talking about
time travel," remembers Sirius. "It was pretty fucking obscure stuff."
Equally obscure were the new designer drugs, many of which were not yet
outlawed.
"We tried every drug there was," says Latimer, who today publishes the cafe
magazine Cups. "Peyote, ketamine, DMT, MMDA ..."
"... 2CB, 2CE, dozens of little alphabet soups," smiles Sirius. "We were
tripping pretty heavily. It was very magical, actually."
High Frontiers No. 3 plunged still further into new technologies with
strange articles on psychoactive software, nutritional memory enhancers,
quantum physics, fractal geometry, and interstellar carbon clusters. And, of
course, heaping quantities of drugs, and an essay on tarantula venom from
Alison Kennedy, who had been rechristened Queen Mu, Domineditrix.
High Frontiers/Reality Hackers attracted not only the psychedelicized, but
computer types from Silicon Valley. As detailed in Douglas Rushkoff's book
Cyberia, the acid/high-tech computer geek connection extends back to the
days when Jobs and Wozniak were still constructing blue boxes from which
free long-distance phone calls could be made.
Sirius says that a revelation occurred to the staff "that if, for instance,
we were able to change ourselves biologically, that would be a more
interesting change than a million people dropping acid. ... I started to
become aware that the ability to manipulate information - and the huge
carrying capacity of information, all that stuff that is related to silicon
and digital stuff - was also going to be related to any other kind of
technical change."
In other words, getting high wouldn't change the world. But computers could.
The '80s had been years of great imagination with science-fiction novelists
like William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, and John Shirley stretching the form so
far that one East Coast newspaper wag coined the term "cyberpunk" to
describe this new genre. Silicon Valley nerds were hunched over tool
benches, furiously whipping more, more, more out of their fledgling
appliances - the 512 begat the Mac Plus, which begat the SE, etc. Desktop
publishing bureaus opened around the bay. Ex-hippies like Stewart Brand and
Kevin Kelly started the WELL computer network as an offshoot of the
post-hippie Whole Earth Review. Anarchist programmers like Jude Milhon
hovered around the Bay Area, inciting nerds to plot the overthrow. In
Amsterdam, Louis Rosetto and Jane Metcalfe, later to found Wired, published
a magazine called Language Technology. Theorists like Timothy Leary pondered
the consequences of a digital future about which nobody knew anything -
except that its reach seemed infinite.
And then tragedy struck High Frontiers. One night Sirius and Deborah Smith,
the magazine's office manager and fiancee of David Latimer, drove down the
peninsula to Cupertino for a radio interview. Smith got bored and decided to
take a drive over to Santa Cruz; on winding Highway 17, she got in a
horrible head-on collision.
Smith was paralyzed. Latimer says that he and Sirius and Queen Mu attempted
a peyote healing ritual in Smith's hospital room to lift her out of her
coma.
"We brought a Native American Indian in," Latimer remembers, "and brought
Smitty in on a bed. We did a prayer ceremony, did channeling things - they
brought witchcraft and crystals."
To this day Smith remains brain-damaged and bedridden, cared for by her
family in Texas. When Queen Mu offered to buy Latimer's shares, he
reluctantly accepted and left the magazine. (Some months later, he would
begin working with me on the concept of a rude little magazine called The
Nose.)
Not long after, new Art Director Adam Zakin celebrated the completion of
High Frontiers No. 4 by traveling to Tibet with his wife, where both died in
a freak accident when their bus went over a cliff. Meanwhile, back in the
States, the High Frontiers office was broken into twice under mysterious
circumstances. In 1988, Sirius and Queen Mu renamed the magazine Reality
Hackers to reflect the drugs-and-computers fusion they had been writing
about and moved the operation to the Berkeley hills, where Mu rented a big
wooden Maybeck house and stocked it full of Victorian furniture.
Vowing to make the magazine a moneymaker, the pair wrote a business plan,
but their meetings with potential investors ended in frustration.
"There was definitely no advertising," says Sirius. "Acid dealers don't
advertise."
"It's just that if your lead story is 'How to Party on Ecstasy,' it's really
hard to go to IBM or Macintosh and say, 'Hey, would you like to take out a
full-page ad?' " echoes Latimer.
Although Reality Hackers appeared more frequently than High Frontiers,
Sirius and Mu could only afford to publish biannually. Sirius says he made
the sacrifice of cutting back on psychedelic use to get more work done. Unix
champ Jude Milhon signed on after meeting Sirius at a party, mutating into
the sharp-tongued St. Jude. The staff bumped into Michael Synergy, who was
working for AutoDesk down in Silicon Valley, and he agreed to write up some
subversive articles about cyberpunks overthrowing the government. After a
serious bicycle accident left Synergy temporarily laid up, Mu and St. Jude
rescued him from the hospital and moved him into the house in the hills.
Reality Hackers offered the most diverse and interesting mix yet, with
articles on computer viruses, virtual reality, psychoactive designer foods,
high-tech paganism, alleged AIDS biological warfare experiments, Brian Eno,
chaos theory, Hakim Bey, and a lengthy exploration by banker acidheads
Gracie and Zarkov on Blue ?yster Cult. In addition to Leary, Herbert, and
McKenna, new contributors included isolation tank expert Michael Hutchison,
drug authors Peter Stafford and Bruce Eisner, drug architect Alexander
Shulgin, smart-drug pioneers Durk Pearson and Sandy Shaw, and computer whiz
Eric Gullichsen, one of the original VR developers. To corral the whole
concept, a new subhead was composed: "Information Technologies &
Entertainment for Those on the Brink."
But the name Reality Hackers remained a problem. Reports came in from
national distributors: Retailers don't know whether to stock it next to Guns
and Ammo or D-Cup Beauties.
"One distributor told them that everybody east of the Rockies thought it was
about hacking people up, and that it was a Mansonite cult magazine," cackles
Sirius.
Kevin Kelly, then editor of Whole Earth Review, wanted to hire Sirius as a
writer to help him produce a new magazine called Signal, which would cover
digital technology and the cultural impact of computers. Sirius said no,
that he had an idea of his own.
With the next issue containing a big scoop on the heretofore ignored subject
of cyberpunk, R.U. Sirius and Queen Mu wanted to change the magazine's image
and make a big splash. Sirius flicked on the television.
"There were all these commercials for this-2000 and that-2000. Furnishings
2000. All this really banal stuff with the name 2000 after it. Finally this
show came on, which was like Future 2000. It was like an Omni magazine kind
of pop-science show. I stumbled into Alison's room and said, 'We've got to
come up with a name with the name 2000 on it, because everybody's using it
to sell shit.' "
"Mondo," replied Queen Mu, explaining that the lettering would look great on
the masthead, and that it had a delightfully fashionable yet decadent sound.
The name was changed.
Mondo 2000 reached newsstands in 1989 with a unique new logo designed by
German graphic artist Brummb'r, each letter of "Mondo" containing its own
separate personality. Todd Rundgren was the cover boy, the only male to
grace its cover in masculine clothing (drag queen Jade made an appearance
years later). Readers were treated to articles by Gibson, Shirley, and
Sterling, as well as several pieces on hackers and crackers, Internet
viruses, conspiracy theories, cyberspace, and cutting-edge technology nobody
had heard of.
The inclusion of Gibson in particular struck a chord with readers. In many
circles his seminal 1984 book Neuromancer was referred to in hushed tones,
like a sacred scripture containing secrets of the future. "He was writing
about us," says St. Jude. "Drug-taking, intellectual scum." At the bottom of
the masthead was this somber warning: "Mondo 2000 has monthly bonfires at
the full moon of all unsolicited manuscripts."
"It had arrived at a particular moment where there was at least a subculture
of people in the computer community that were ready for it," remembers
Sirius. And after some money from Kennedy's family became available, it was
full steam ahead. "At the time there was no competition at all. There was
absolutely nothing to compare it to. It talked about how technology was
important in our lives at a time when people were in denial about it."
There was no denial about the importance of technology from the publishing
industry. This same time saw the launch of several local magazines, taking
advantage of the burgeoning desktop opportunities, including Frisko, SF, SF
Moda, FAD, The Nose, Harpoon, and Just Go!. But Mondo 2000 took the
technology to the outer limits, thanks to Bart Nagel's art direction.
A photographer and custom guitar maker in Phoenix, Nagel had followed his
friend Fred Dodsworth to San Francisco. Dodsworth, who had started a new
publication called The City, introduced Nagel to Queen Mu, who was in the
market for a magazine redesign and in an interview asked Nagel his
astrological sign.
"I'm a Pisces," said Nagel.
"Well, I think this will work out very well," answered Mu, and though Nagel
had never designed a magazine before and had lived in California for just a
month, he was appointed Mondo's art director.
"Being in Mondo is like being in a rock band," explains R.U. Sirius. "You
have to bring your own equipment."
"I didn't think this was going to go anywhere," Nagel says, remembering that
he would arrive each week at the Mondo House to pick up editorial copy - and
learn that none was finished.
Besides a lack of copy, the photographer-turned-graphic designer faced an
intimidating work environment - an editorial staff of the brightest, most
eclectic bunch of misfits in the Bay Area. Queen Mu, the mad
miscellaneous-trivia bank; Jas. Morgan, the subscriber from Georgia who came
to visit and ended up as music editor; St. Jude the computer anarchist, a
self-described polygamist and ex-physician's assistant with legitimate
hacker connections; and R.U. Sirius, a walking Bonneville Salt Flats of
pharmacology. Loitering around the perimeter were Michael Synergy, Queen
Mu's former boyfriend Morgan Russell, and Gracie and Zarkov, the investment
bankers who enjoyed drugs, heavy metal, and polyfidelity, and who took
credit for starting the first sex club in Chicago.
As many news hacks would later trumpet, it was Revenge of the Nerds.
"We were all freaks in our high schools," says St. Jude. "They all hated
us."
Nagel felt like he was trapped in another universe.
"In my circle of friends back in Phoenix, I always felt fairly bright. I had
bright friends. And then I come into this world, and I'm starting to feel
like an idiot. They just know too much about too many things. The editorial
was beyond me. What the hell is an Extropian? Tell me what DMT was again?"
Nagel set about redesigning the book from top to bottom. He commissioned
unknown artists like Eric White to do full-page illustrations for cheap, and
discovered that collage artist John Borruso's sensibility would fit
perfectly on the spine. And photographs were no problem - Nagel took most of
them himself.
One such photo caught the eye of Andrew Hultkrans at a Berkeley newsstand -
the cover of 1990's Mondo No. 3, portraying a sweaty Deborah Harry against a
background shot of deep-space nebulae.
"What the fuck is this?" thought the 24-year-old Harvard graduate, fresh
from a year as managing editor of the Zyzzyva literary journal. He thumbed
through the issue, which boasted peculiar articles on producing your own
growth hormones, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, cybernetic fashion, and
psychotic illustrations by Butthole Surfer Gibby Haynes.
"They were intelligent, obviously," says Hultkrans. "Part of the thing that
seemed intelligent about it was that I couldn't understand half of it. A
little bit might have been that I was just baffled, and therefore assumed it
was deep."
Sheer curiosity drove him to send in a r?sum?, which earned him an interview
at the Mondo House - scheduled on a Saturday morning.
Hultkrans showed up looking professional - pulled-back ponytail, blazer and
button-down vest - and knocked on the door for several minutes before a
nonplussed Morgan let him in without introduction, ushered him into the
kitchen of this antique-crammed home, and left him to wait. Queen Mu
eventually entered, but instead of asking questions, she kept a steady
stream of words going all by herself.
"Five minutes later [R.U.] appears in a bathrobe, looking totally awful and
pale and fucked up," says Hultkrans. "R.U., in the morning after a big
night, is pretty much of a sight. Alfred E. Neuman with long hair. He
mumbled something and then left." To his astonishment, Hultkrans was hired,
first in ad sales, but he quickly was moved to working with text, and Nagel
christened him "The Tall Editor" on the masthead.
One month after he joined up, the Mondo House threw a party for staff and
friends. Somebody put on a belly-dancing record, and Gracie the investment
banker came out in costume and did an exotic dance routine in the living
room. "This is so fucked up," thought the New York transplant. What had he
gotten into? Mondo was nothing if not playful. Nagel peppered the book with
eye-scorching graphics and puns and wordplay. St. Jude composed witty
subheads and penned a column called "Irresponsible Journalism." Hultkrans
steered the ship further into the rapids of pop culture, assigning articles
on hip hop bands and writing a column about slacker culture. Morgan was
essential for dense interviews with mathematicians and physicists. In
addition to her interests in toxic plants and conspiracies, Queen Mu edited
stories and brought a strong gender balance that attracted female readers, a
subtext that said your sex wasn't as relevant as your brain. Sirius floated
around as figurehead, writing and assigning articles. And new pseudonyms
appeared: Mondo Connie, Lady Ada Lovelace, Nan C. Druid, Marshall McLaren,
G. Gordon MIDI, and the wild conspiracy ranter, Xandor Korzybski.
Although Mondo gained enthusiastic readers, it received its share of
negative notices from the press. Rather than sulk about it, Mondo wore them
as badges of honor, reproducing them on the magazine's subscription
solicitations. "Slightly unfathomable - The Washington Post," read one
tear-out card. Another: "Unfortunately, the hacker lingo makes this
relatively new magazine indecipherable for any but the most seasoned of
computer aficionados. - The Utne Reader." Below this was the Mondo pitch:
"Have this indecipherable rag delivered to your own doorstep. Stump your
mailman. Confound your neighbors. Master the secret argot of the cyber
underground."
The Village Voice declaration that Mondo was an art director's nightmare and
completely unreadable prompted Nagel's joke of putting "Guaranteed
Read-Proof!" on a cover-in-progress. The gag was such a hit with the staff
that they let it stand, and it was printed in issue No. 5.
Some jokes weren't planned. Also in issue No. 5, in 1992, Nagel accidentally
transposed the names of avant-garde musicians Glenn Branca and Elliott Sharp
on the cover, rendering them Glenn Sharp and Elliott Branca. Since Sharp and
Branca weren't household names, few readers noticed, but Mondo obviously
owed them - and the author of the piece, Mark Dery - an explanation.
Rather than apologize, Mondo proclaimed the snafu intentional. Gracie and
Zarkov composed an essay about post-postmodernism and deliberate art damage.
Or rather, they scribbled notes on a napkin while out having drinks. The
outline was passed around to the staff, and the concept ended up as a
collaborative two-page manifesto on Art Damage called "What Do You Say After
Po-PoMo?"
"Half the time we were trying to baffle people into thinking we were deep,"
says Hultkrans, "and having it be a pop fluff rag at the same time. It was
paradise."
"You picked up Mondo and it became aflame in your hands," remembers
high-tech publisher Randy Stickrod, who acted as business consultant for the
early Mondo. "It was like computers as drugs. This very cool but somehow
almost impenetrable intellectual content underneath it, and yet with this
edge of New Wave paranoia. It was outrageous! It was like discovering sex
for the first time!"
There was little division between Mondo House living, Mondo House parties,
and Mondo the magazine. Mondo partied with the people it wanted to write
about and have write for the magazine: the cyberpunk novelists (of course),
Spalding Gray, Timothy Leary, and John Perry Barlow, to name a few.
"Ideas for articles appeared at parties, parties happened as a result of
articles, parties happened as a result of interviews, interviews happened as
a result of parties," recalls Zarkov. "It was a very integral part of how
Mondo proceeded. Ken and Alison knew a lot of people that they wanted to
have over, to build the scene. The scene built the magazine, and the
magazine built the scene."
A Mondo party might find a time-travel expert being interviewed in one room,
people playing word-association games in another, others experimenting with
weird mental mind-stimulation glasses, groups quietly chatting in
conspiratorial whispers, or Bart Nagel and virtual reality theorist Brenda
Laurel leaping in the air to see if they could do a complete 360-degree turn
without falling down. Rude pornography or Japanese animation videos
flickered on monitors, figures performed frottage on antique sofas. A
journalist from GQ might have been taking a piss on the front lawn. One
creature would trap people for entire evenings in conversations about how
Sir Francis Bacon was actually William Shakespeare.
"It's very strategically positioned," says Timothy Leary of Mondo House,
speaking between bites of crackers. "You're almost in the country, and yet
you're three minutes away from the country's top university. Jann Wenner and
Rolling Stone - you can't go over to Jann's pad in the penthouse on Park
Avenue and hang out."
Mondo also partied with people whose money it coveted, throwing one affair
for Joichi Ito, its Tokyo correspondent whose parents had been targeted as
potential investors because they came from a wealthy big-business family in
Japan. During the course of conversation, the topic turned to the Japanese
language.
"You know, there are 12 ways of saying 'thank you' in Japanese," said Ito.
"And every one of them insincere," replied novelist John Shirley.
I recall one evening drinking and arguing in the Mondo House kitchen with an
accordion player named Miss Murgatroid, and thinking that not only our
conversation was pass?, but our substance of abuse. Beer was a quaint,
retro, Bill-Haley-and-the-Comets vice compared to the choline cooler smart
drinks people were sipping or the experimental mail-order neural inhibitors
whose molecular structure was still a mystery to the FDA. Having defined the
nascent cybersexcomputerdrug culture, Mondo assumed the role of oracle for
the rest of the media struggling to comprehend the trend. Sirius appeared on
Donahue and Ron Reagan's show. Reporters descended upon the Mondo House from
all parts of the globe - Newsweek, Details, the Washington Post, the New
York Times, Newsday, the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, and bureaus
from Europe - as well as all the local dailies.
What is cyberpunk? they begged. Tell us why cyberpunks wear mirror shades
and drink Jolt cola. What is virtual sex like?
Mondo obliged with catchy slogans for the journalistic pack. "We're a pirate
mind station," Queen Mu told them. "The New Edge ... the alpha and omega of
cyberzines." Rudy Rucker supplied the accusatory, "How fast are you? How
dense?"
" 'The convergence of technology and culture' would be the straight rap,"
says Sirius. "But it got mistaken for total advocacy. These magazine people
would come around, writing an article about VR. I'd be really cynical for a
half-hour. I'd say maybe one positive statement, and that's what they'd put
in the article, because that's what they were looking for."
The magazine found itself described as "Berkeley-based and cyber-spaced."
R.U. Sirius became everything from "Gomez Addams" to a "balding
entrepreneur" to a "long-haired leprechaun who sports some truly humongous
brain banks." Queen Mu was described as "hyper-cerebral," "techno-yogic,"
and "not a witch but may be a pixie." Together they were "digital Druids,"
working against a "pre-Raphaelite backdrop" out of a "techno-Gothic
citadel."
Mondo staffers were articulate and erudite in interviews - so articulate and
erudite that reporters were too intimidated to ask for clarifications and
instead ran the staff's soundbites in their goofy entirety.
"We talk a lot about the 'rupture before the rapture,' " Sirius once told an
Examiner reporter. "It's going to be interesting to see how the really
advanced super-high-tekkies are going to function and evolve amidst this
coming economic chaos. It just might be the garage-tech cyberpunk brigade
that can carry the ball through it."
Queen Mu added, "We're no longer knuckling under to a priest-physician class
that demands belief in a model that has totally failed - a highly
puritanical society where both pleasure and intelligence are suspect."
When the Washington Post asked Sirius what he looked forward to most in the
future, he responded gleefully: "The cure of venereal diseases and the free
passage of RU 486 and the orgiastic end of the 20th century!"
Eventually, being covered by the media became as intoxicating as making
media. One day, Hultkrans entered the Wednesday editorial meeting to
announce that Mondo was the subject of the lead editorial in the new issue
of Artforum. The staff cheered, then somebody asked:
"Is it positive or negative?"
"It's hard to tell." Hultkrans scanned the text. "I think it's negative."
The room broke into applause.
During 1992, Mondo finally lived up to its promise that it was a quarterly
by producing four issues, to the surprise of all. In three years,
circulation rose from 15,000 to nearly 100,000. Quality writers and artists
flocked to the magazine - certainly not for the grandiose late payment of 5
cents a word or 100 bucks per full-page image, but for the joy of partaking
in the magic.
"There was something really wonderful about the dangerous mind behind
Mondo," says Gareth Branwyn, author of the Beyond Cyberpunk hypercard stack,
and a frequent contributor. "As a young writer, this to me was a real
breakout platform. It had a similar feeling to the whole notion of punk
music. There was that sense that we had thrown out all of the rules. So when
I would go to interview a rock band or a multimedia producer, you could do
just whatever you damn well please. The Red Hot Chili Peppers - they
actually did a Rorschach on their dental records. Really bizarre shit."
Branwyn continues: "You could be belligerent and combative, or be just
conversational. If you thought what they were saying was bullshit, you could
just start arguing with them. It was really this kind of Interzone, where
anything was allowed. That was a real liberating feeling for me as a writer.
It celebrated that you were being irresponsible."
The success of 1992 also included a book - Mondo 2000: A User's Guide to the
New Edge - a 317-page compilation of previous articles and artwork, with new
additions and resource listings. It was an immediate success, going into
reprint and eventually selling over 40,000 copies.
In 1993, Bart Nagel rattled his peers with an editorial inspired by artist
Jeffrey Koons' theory of image appropriation. Either steal it and manipulate
it, wrote Nagel, or use it blatantly under the fair-use doctrine. Nagel
practiced what his editorial preached with the cover of issue No. 10, in
which he superimposed a photo against a background stolen from the cover of
another magazine.
Nagel was immediately savaged in trade journals as the Antichrist of art
directors. He retaliated with an editorial in issue No. 11 about a new
technology that works on the DNA level to detect microscopic, recognizable
patterns in images. He asserted that the technology encoded patterns that
were invisible to the naked eye but detectable no matter how much the image
was scanned or used. He further claimed that in one year hence, all scanners
and copy machines would contain a built-in chip to detect these codes and
notify a national computer image bank of every duplication by modem. The
computer would then automatically debit your Visa account.
"I tried to make it more and more absurd, by saying these scanners would be
hooked up to a neural net computer, which could actually detect if you were
scanning someone's style, and that a lot of photographers were already
excited about this, and that Richard Avedon and Annie Liebovitz were already
offering to donate their proceeds from their style theft to a photo
assistance group called We're Creative, Too."
It was a joke, of course, yet an assistant who worked for both Avedon and
Liebovitz called Nagel, asking if his bosses were actually doing it. The
magazine of the Library of Congress called expressing interest in an
interview with Nagel. The corporate offices of Kinko's requested permission
to reprint the article and distribute it to managers. When the Australian
Broadcast Company also requested an interview, Nagel couldn't stop laughing,
and admitted the hoax.
"Well, just consider it a feather in your cap that you put one over on the
Australian Broadcast Company!" snapped the indignant Aussies. As Mondo was
cresting, the founders of a failed magazine named Electric Word, Louis
Rosetto and Jane Metcalfe, were returning to the States from Amsterdam. They
were eager to start a magazine about computer culture and had already picked
out a name: Wired. A mutual friend introduced them to Mondo adviser Randy
Stickrod, and after a small meeting at Stickrod's home, he showed the group
a portion of his office space at South Park, a corner eventually nicknamed
"The Charmed Corner" for its list of successful publishing tenants - Wired,
Might, Cups, Boing Boing, and Just Go!.
Rosetto and Metcalfe liked the space, moved in, and spent the next 15 months
hosting a conference on the WELL, schmoozing contributors, and working on a
business plan package for investors. Stickrod even introduced them to Queen
Mu at the Mondo House.
"They were kind of chummy," Stickrod remembers. "They were swapping tips.
That was the level of incestuousness we had going on there. Alison would
come over to my office and bring a box of Mondos for me to hand out. She'd
go sit and talk to Louis and Jane for half an hour. There was no overt
tension at all."
Throughout 1992, Mondo 2000 could do no wrong and could afford to be
gracious to the young upstarts, who obviously were dull, boring computer
people while Mondo was ultrahip counterculture. (Electric Word telegraphed
how boring it was with the slogan "The world's least boring computer
magazine.")
Still, Wired's basic concept - the consequences of technology on lifestyle
and popular culture - was very similar to Mondo. Didn't everyone know?
"Oh, of course I did," says Stickrod. "They knew that, too. What we all
tried to do was politely underplay the similarities and really play up the
differences. At the time, we all put a spin on it that they were not
competitors. Including Alison."
"The only thing that was remotely connected [to Wired] was Mondo 2000," says
Wired Executive Editor Kevin Kelly, who wrote for the early Mondo. "It was
coming along in parallel with it. We were very careful not to refer to
Mondo. We didn't want to be compared to them. But they also were aware of
this same niche."
In January 1993, Wired magazine debuted as a bimonthly, its billboard
campaign announcing, "At last. A magazine for the Digital Age," its
promotional literature adopting the phrase "Rolling Stone of the 90s," a
soundbite used previously by Mondo 2000.
The Mondo folks had no reason to flinch: A week later they were featured on
the cover of Time magazine's "Cyberpunk" story in what could have passed for
a paid advertisement. The cover was designed by Bart Nagel, and the layout,
which mimicked the Mondo book's design, was illustrated by Mondo artists and
photographers. Paragraph after paragraph was devoted to descriptions of
Mondo articles and topics. Wired rated only a passing mention.
Accompanying the article was a photo of Nagel, R.U. Sirius, and Queen Mu
standing in a field, the royal trio of cyberpunk prankster publishers. But
unknown to Time readers was that Sirius and Mu were barely on speaking
terms. He had already left the magazine. Most staffers say it was over the
U2-Negativland story.
As the magazine's popularity rose, its staff was solicited by celebrities
hoping to get into the pages. Neil Young, Italian astrophysicist Fiorelli
Torenzi, Dan Aykroyd, Michael Penn, Billy Idol's "people," even Buffy
Sainte-Marie approached the magazine asking for press. So when U2 guitarist
The Edge asked to be interviewed, R.U. Sirius summoned his friends from
Negativland, a Bay Area band that had been sued for copyright infringement
by U2's management for sampling the Irish band's music on its release U2.
When The Edge phoned on schedule for the interview, members of Negativland
were there to conduct it - unbeknownst to The Edge. Negativland skillfully
drew the guitarist into a philosophical discussion in which he described the
artistic liberties U2 had taken in appropriating video images and music
onstage during its "Zooropa" tour.
The shocker came when R.U. Sirius told The Edge that he was, in fact,
talking to the band his management company nearly sued out of existence.
Brilliantly revealing U2 as hypocrites, the article caused a huge rift at
Mondo when Queen Mu balked at running it. She was tired of Negativland, and
since she was paying the bills, she could make the calls.
"This was the centerpiece of the issue," remembers Hultkrans. "It was a huge
fight."
"I just blew up," says Sirius. "It was probably a confluence of a lot of
other shit leading up to that." He quit, walked out of the meeting and out
of the house, and later faxed in a formal resignation.
Hultkrans rewrote an introduction to the story and Queen Mu graciously ran
it in 1993's issue No. 8 as scheduled, but Mondo 2000 had faced its future.
"If [R.U.] is not here," thought Nagel, "it's not going to be fun anymore."
Sirius left the magazine and started looking for work at mainstream
magazines like Details and Spin. His approach was not the most tactful
employment solicitation. "Let's face it, I had an attitude: 'Hey, I'm gone
from Mondo 2000! I can fucking come in and remake your goddamn magazine
until it means something!' That didn't go over too well," he says.
He eventually slinked back to the Mondo House, and traded his ownership
shares for a steady salary and financial security. Nobody said anything.
"It was like Long Day's Journey Into Night," says Hultkrans, "where
everybody sort of dances around the problem."
Queen Mu's idiosyncrasies also ran through other departments, recalls
Stickrod, who, in addition to advising the magazine for a time, also shared
responsibility for advertising sales.
"Alison personally alienated more advertisers than you can imagine. She
developed this theory that the reason she couldn't get big-name advertisers
is that the agencies didn't respect her because her rates weren't high
enough. So one day she arbitrarily tripled the rates."
"She was always frustrated because she couldn't understand why we weren't
selling more [advertisements]," says Miles Hurwitz, an independent media rep
who hustled ads for several issues. "And one of the reasons is because the
rates were ridiculously high."
"This is a place I'd done a lot of footwork, and had opened the door up to
them," says Stickrod of Apple Computer's ad agency. "There are people I
can't talk to now because Alison came in and raised so much hell."
Queen Mu may not have been the greatest leader of a sales force, but the
magazine did attract ads from the likes of Xaos Tools, Geffen, New Line
Cinema, Logitech, and other big-ticket concerns.
But the magazine's erratic publishing schedule also made it difficult to
develop a solid advertising base. "Had they just come out quarterly as they
had promised," says Hurwitz, "that would have been helpful."
Mondo's pro-drug association continued to haunt advertisers, a bargaining
chip often used by Wired ad reps, so Queen Mu began orchestrating the tone
to appear more mainstream.
"I think that was a big mistake," says Stickrod. "That was the place that
made them interesting and hip. She was losing touch with her constituency -
the thing that made them outrageous and interesting."
Nagel also winced at the changes. "The rest of us thought, 'We've already
gotten mainstream coverage here - why don't we just continue doing what
we're doing?' It's not like we were going to lose any ads." Wired
scrupulously avoided mentioning Mondo, but its contents page revealed that
it had looked long and hard at Mondo's back issues.
The cover story in its premiere issue was written by Bruce Sterling, a
frequent Mondo contributor. Also on the masthead were R.U. Sirius as
contributing writer and Randy Stickrod, who was thanked under "tea and
sympathy." The second Wired detailed the Crypto Rebels, "cypherpunks"
battling for the right to encrypt, a subject first covered by Mondo. Posing
on the cover, among others, was St. Jude herself, who had coined the word
"cypherpunks." Wired's third cover featured Brian Eno, previously written up
in Mondo; the fourth cover story was written by Mondo alumnus (and Mondo
House guest) William Gibson.
Paying writers 20 times as much as Mondo, and paying on time, the more
commercial Wired quickly skimmed the best of the rest of the Mondo talent
pool: St. Jude, Branwyn, Rucker, Barlow, Ito, and Jaron Lanier.
To this day, Wired still smells strongly of Mondo. The October issue
contains articles by former Mondoids Andrew Hultkrans, Chris Hudak, Allan
Lundell, Mark Fraunfelder, and Gareth Branwyn; Wired's on-line subsidiary,
HotWired, includes on its staff former Mondo contributors Gary Wolf, Richard
Kadrey, and John Alderman; the magazine's new Scenarios special edition
contains essays by Barlow and Sterling.
"Mondo did the market research for a cyberculture magazine," says Branwyn,
author of an upcoming book called Jamming the Media. "Wired manifested on a
much larger playing field, with sane people running it, with intelligent
management. Mondo could have been much, much more than it was, and could
really have been a contender for Wired."
Initial reaction to Wired's debut at the Mondo House was skeptical. They now
had a competitor - their first competitor - but nobody seemed impressed by
the first issues. It was corporate and straightforward, even journalistic.
Timothy Leary called it the CIA's answer to Mondo 2000. The staff compared
it to the Monkees.
"I thought it was a rip-off," remembers Hultkrans. He then pauses. "It was
really like seeing yourself cloned in a way. It seemed like they were on a
campaign to eat up our entire back catalog - people we've interviewed,
issues we've covered."
Even the distinctive spine design of Wired was blatantly copied from the
clever John Borruso-designed spines of Mondo, according to an insider who
attended the Wired design meeting.
"I don't think they make any bones about [the similarities]," allows R.U.
Sirius. "Kevin Kelly pointed out in a discussion on the WELL, 'Well, you're
always advocating appropriation, so fuck you.' I gotta hand it to him."
"Wired was uptown and Mondo was downtown," says Stickrod. "Mondo was really
for the hairy and unwashed, and Wired was able to comfortably cross that
threshold."
Queen Mu and her chief assistant, Wes Thomas, acted indifferent to the
arrival of Wired, yet each issue was immediately scoured for ad leads. Once
Sirius severed full-time ties to the magazine, Thomas assumed more editorial
control. Originally the Mondo publicist based in New York, Thomas wrote
technology articles for many issues, and had a brilliant intelligence for
conspiracy theory.
"He went to work creating this little wedge in between there, and wound up
with this really weird period that I like to refer to as Hogan's Heroes,"
says Sirius. "He was acting like Colonel Klink. On some cosmic level, his
job was to come in and tear the place apart." "He was the potentiator of
Alison's worst qualities," claims Hultkrans. "I personally hold him
partially responsible for what happened at the magazine."
"Wes would come to the door around 11 a.m. in a Buddhist monk robe, and get
upset that his morning Chronicle was sitting under a car in the driveway,"
says then-staffer John Alderman. "Make one of the staff go get it for him.
'I'm the editor of the most important magazine in the world, and I need my
newspaper every day!' "
The fun and games had ended.
"They had this beautiful house up in the Berkeley hills, trying to be the
center of culture, but really it's this siege mentality," Alderman says.
"The mail all has to be pored through like it's messages from the
CIA/Wired/Mormon/Illuminati axis. That was a fully described theory one
day."
In the early days, paranoia and conspiracy theories were just jokes from
which outrageous scenarios and rants could be spun, but by 1994 the mood was
strangely sober. The guys working on the phone box down the street - what
were they really up to? And who was that guy visible from the kitchen
window, pretending to draw sketches of the building? And who were those kids
who came to the door of the house, one of them claiming his dad worked for
the CIA?
But maybe the paranoia was justified.
"Some of the shit they wrote about," says former illustrator Eric White, "I
wouldn't be surprised if I'm on some list somewhere, just for being
associated with it."
When a package arrived one day, the usually levelheaded Bart Nagel remembers
gingerly opening it with an X-Acto knife taped to a broom handle. Gracie and
Zarkov remember coming to visit once and finding everyone hiding under a
bed, convinced the feds were circling with a helicopter.
And one of the staffers started to develop a serious cross-dressing persona
- at the office.
"He was like, 'Oh, I'm sorry. We haven't met. My name is Amara,' " remembers
Alderman. "He looked more like a British pop star. He had on all these
flowing things, and a red wig. It was sort of par for the course. In fact,
it was much more pleasant to work with Amara, because [he] was this cranky
old man, and Amara's at least kind of perky."
Alderman and fellow staffer Kenneth Newby were in similar positions - young
latecomers surrounded by incomprehensible tension, working on a magazine
that was appearing less and less frequently on the newsstand. The two
wondered if this was what publishing was really like.
"We'd go out to lunch every day and just laugh and laugh and laugh," says
Alderman. "Everything seemed so important, dead serious while you were
there, and then you'd get out for a minute, take a breath. You're like, 'I
just spent my whole day arguing about Masons and the CIA stealing the data
base, when it's right there under yesterday's Chronicle.' It was like a
Fassbinder film." Many Mondo principals interviewed for this story doubted
that Alison "Queen Mu" Kennedy would talk on the record about the magazine.
After years of skilled media manipulation herself, they said, she was now
distrustful of the press, and refused all requests.
But talk she does. To me for about five hours and to the editor of SF Weekly
for maybe 30 minutes. She is puzzled about why this piece is being written,
but once it becomes evident the story will be told anyway, she loosens up,
relaxes, and expresses herself. Still, she insists on not being quoted.
No complete history of Mondo can be written until she talks because, as she
has repeated to anyone who will listen, "I am Mondo 2000!"
Rudy Rucker agrees.
"It wouldn't be Mondo without Alison," says Rucker. Since its inception six
years ago, Queen Mu has published 14 issues and co-authored a book, all
without drawing any salary, instead pouring a personal small fortune into
the coffers to produce the best magazine possible. The inheritance is now
spent, by some accounts tallying close to a half-million dollars, but at the
time of this writing, a fresh infusion of cash into Mondo is said to be on
the horizon.
Given the sheer number of off-record anecdotes about her, the level of
unresolved frustration among many former staffers and contributors, it is
surprising to find her extremely charming, in a timeless, Old World sense.
Verbal exchange for her is an art form - you imagine receiving an engraved
invitation for lunch, delivered by a butler on a silver tray. It's a truly
odd juxtaposition, the publisher of a high-tech computer lifestyle magazine
preferring to discuss arcane academic disciplines instead of electronic
gadgetry. For years she even refused to use a computer. But then, Mondo has
always been about juxtaposition, as perpetually confounding as a
conversation with its matriarch.
Topics bounce around with lightning speed in conversation with Queen Mu, a
stream of thoughts often mutating, unresolved, from one to another, as we
circle around a set of questions faxed at her request. Our discourse is
luxurious, seductive, and frustrating simultaneously, as a sudden Latin or
French expression is casually dropped, requiring me to ask for explanation.
It is a position of authority she has been in many times before.
One can empathize with Queen Mu's reluctance to talk on the record.
Everybody on a publication wants to reap the rewards, but nobody wants to
pay the bills. The person who does handle the checkbook has the least fun
and becomes the most vilified.
In that context, the animosity toward Queen Mu among former employees seems
confusing and unjustified. In her mind she professes great love and
admiration for the talents of those who have passed through Mondo House
portals. She is also frighteningly quick to judge, however, and starts
zeroing in on certain Mondoids' personality flaws, giving each a verbal slap
with antique velvet-gloved condescension, until I point out that the
situation isn't that black and white. Many of the people I interviewed also
have nice things to say about her, and admit they owe her for the
opportunity. This produces a tranquilizing effect, and we arrange to have
tea later in the week.
The day after our conversation, a flurry of panicked phone calls bounces
among Queen Mu, myself, and SF Weekly. The story - the cover art by Bart
Nagel! - infuriates her.
Staff members - past and present - say that no Mondo article was ever sent
to press without her pencil going over it. It is becoming obvious to Mu that
this Mondo story is one of the few the Domineditrix will not be able to
edit. Referring to powers that will not be pleased by this article, she
cancels our date for tea.
More than seven months after the appearance of Mondo No. 13, Mondo No. 14 is
now on the newsstands. Its look is still sleek, still printed on heavy
coated stock, and even more saturated with photography, courtesy of new Art
Directors Thomas Pitts and Heidi Foley (Foley paid her dues for years as an
assistant in the Mondo art department). Getting this edition out was
obviously a chore - one ad announces a new CD available in January 1995,
another promotes a Macintosh music festival that ended in July, indicating
the issue's tardiness.
Some of the names on the masthead of No. 14 have since left. There are some
interesting articles on Bruce Sterling, cryogenics, Bob Guccione Jr., and
the future of audio, and a fun essay on video games, but it is a different
magazine now. And yet, thumbing through its glossy pages, Mondo is still, as
O.J. might say, absolutely, completely, 100 percent Queen Mu.
"It's a really remarkable institution," says Timothy Leary. "There was a
style, in the best aristocratic sense, and an attitude of [being] very
bouncy, self-confident. A beautiful merger of the psychedelic, the
cybernetic, the cultural, the literary, and artistic. It shouldn't last a
long time."
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