MONDO 2000
MONDO 2000 was a glossy Berkeley cyberculture magazine (1989–1998) that put virtual reality, smart drugs, hacker politics, and literary cyberpunk on the same page — a more anarchic prototype for the later-founded Wired. SCALE is opening a growing record set around the magazine, its network of Mondoids, and founding editor R. U. Sirius (Ken Goffman).
Start here
- MONDO 2000 records — announcement and call for submissions
- R. U. Sirius — founding editor-in-chief; people profile and links
- MONDO 2000 on Wikipedia — publication history, masthead, bibliography
- R. U. Sirius on Wikipedia — editor, writer, musician
- mondo2000.com — current site (blog relaunched 2017; offline 2025)
- @mondo2000official on Instagram
Publication line
The magazine evolved through three titles under the same editorial circle:
| Era | Title | Years | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Origins | High Frontiers | 1984–1988 | Psychedelics × science × early digital culture; edited by R. U. Sirius with Morgan Russell |
| Transition | Reality Hackers | 1988–1989 | Jude Milhon (St. Jude) joins; drugs-and-computers theme sharpens |
| Peak | MONDO 2000 | 1989–1998 | 17 issues; Berkeley; Fun City MegaMedia; art direction by Bart Nagel |
| After | Online mondo2000.com | 2017–2025 | Blog relaunch; history project and new writing |
Editors and publishers included R. U. Sirius, Jude Milhon, Alison Bailey Kennedy (“Queen Mu”), and art director Bart Nagel. Sirius left as editor-in-chief in early 1993 — around the launch of Wired — and the print magazine continued until issue #17 (1998). Douglas Rushkoff called MONDO the “voice of cyberculture” in 1994.
Contributors spanned William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, Rudy Rucker, Douglas Rushkoff, Mark Dery, Timothy Leary, Robert Anton Wilson, and overlapping writers with early Boing Boing — a cast that helped define the cyberpunk subculture before the web went mainstream.
What we are collecting
Issue scans and PDFs, party flyers, mailing-list fragments, oral history, photographs from Berkeley Hills-era gatherings, broadcast and podcast appearances, and material from successor projects (Acceler8or, H+ Magazine, the MONDO 2000 History Project).
Submit: up@scalepublishing.com — subject line MONDO records
Seed links
Archives and reference
- MONDO 2000 — Internet Archive — scanned issues and related ephemera
- MONDO 2000 cover gallery — issue-by-issue covers (mondo2000.net)
- Anarchivism wiki — MONDO 2000 — issue index and open-history pointers
- Mondo 2000: A User's Guide to the New Edge (1992) — Rudy Rucker, R. U. Sirius, Queen Mu (ISBN 0-06-096928-8)
Current projects (mondo2000.com)
- Freaks in the Machine: MONDO 2000 in Late 20th Century Tech Culture — R. U. Sirius and Shira Chess; contracted with Strange Attractor Press; foreword by Grant Morrison
- Leary, MONDO 2000, and TESCREAL
- Acceler8or archive — R. U. Sirius counterculture site (2011–2012)
Deliria2 — Strait of Deliria (Aug 2026)
Deliria2: Cyberpunks, Mutants & Mondoids Return to the Strait of Deliria — a two-night Bay Area gathering (12–13 August 2026, rough draft) reviving the MONDO social circuit. Scheduled highlights include:
- Talks & podcasts — Douglas Rushkoff (Team Human) with Rudy Rucker and Howard Rheingold; Shira Chess, R. U. Sirius, and Bart Nagel on Freaks in the Machine; Annalee Newitz
- Film & media — SF premiere of Nova ’78; Craig Baldwin’s Tribulation 99; John Law; Marc Franklin / Lord Nose
- Performance & music — Guillermo Gómez-Peña (La Pocha Nostra); R.U. Sirius / Phriendz / Digital Dead / Virtual Pretenderers; Cyrnai (Carolyn Fok); Tony Parisi & Marina Berlin
- Hosts — David Gill (Point Reyes Reality Investigation Center)
Inquiries are directed to Sirioso@Yahoo.com with subject Deliria2.
Related SCALE threads
MONDO sits upstream of several histories SCALE already traces: UCSD new-media and software-studies circles, early web and open-culture networks, the cyberpunk aesthetic that crossed fiction, magazines, and graduate publication practice in the 1990s, and St. Louis–rooted hacker publishing via Phrack. This record set is a sibling to The Ilya Archive — another connector-and-magazine archive SCALE is building in public.