The last issue of Mondo 2000, featuring Nina Hagen on the cover.

I’m obsessed with dead magazines, especially ones that crossed over into the mainstream. The history of such magazines often sounds like a VH-1 Behind the Music special; first the group’s idealistic creation rises to fame on account of its originality, then comes the inevitable collapse due to in-fighting under the conflicting pressures of appeasing a wider audience, a set of advertisers and the project’s own artistic aims. More often then not, the problem is simply that such a magazine is way ahead of its time. This was the case with Mondo 2000, yet I’m grateful that it existed precisely when it did.

So, what made Mondo 2000 so special? It was, in my opinion, the best alternative culture magazine that America ever had. They wrote about smart drugs, brain implants, virtual reality, cyberpunk, Cthulhupunk and cryogenics. They covered Laibach and Lydia Lunch in the same issue. The pantheon of writers was a force to be reckoned with: Bruce Sterling, Robert Anton Wilson, and William Gibson all lent their talents, and there was even a Burroughs vs. Leary interview face-off. Then there was the famous U2-Negativland interview, in which Negativland, disguised as reporters, interviewed U2 into a corner to reveal the band’s hypocrisy over their lawsuit against Negativland over sampling. All in all, the magazine took risks. “The good dream for me and Mondo,” said editor R.U. Sirius in an interview with Purple Prose, “is overcoming the limits of biology without necessarily leaving sensuality or sexuality behind.” Issue after issue, Mondo 2000 threw a sexy dystopian bash and invited the decade’s best thinkers.

Mondo 2000’s most direct descendant is 10 Zen Monkeys, a blog by founding editor R. U. Sirius. Bart Nagel, the graphic designer responsible for Mondo’s trippy-technological look and feel, is now a photographer. Hacker/writer St. Jude, credited with coining the term cyberpunk, sadly passed away in 2003 [Ed. Note – actually, it was “cypherpunk!” I wish I could claim “typo,” but in this case I just ignorant].

Mond0 2000 may be gone, but bits and pieces of it survive in other publications as well. The technology and culture magazine Wired absorbed a lot of Mondo’s writers, and echoes Mondo’s ethos in the same diluted, advertiser-friendly way that Jane Magazine carried on the torch for Sassy. Boing Boing shares a lot of the Mondo 2000 vibe as well – Mark Frauenfelder even wrote for Mondo – but Boing Boing comes from its own tradition as an underground print ‘zine.

There will never be another Mondo 2000. Today, almost 10 years since Mondo stopped publishing, Coilhouse pays respects to this great magazine of alt culture. Thanks to back issues of Mondo, we enjoy the future that should’ve happened.

Posted by Nadya Lev on October 20th, 2007

Filed under Culture, Cyberpunk, Magazines