R. U. Sirius (bornKen Goffman in 1952[1]) is an American writer, editor, talk show host, musician andcyberculture celebrity. He is best known as co-founder ofMondo 2000 magazine and its original editor-in-chief from 1989 to 1993.
Sirius has written forWired andWired News,San Francisco Examiner,Artforum,Rolling Stone,Time,Esquire and many other publications.[2]
From 1984 onward, Sirius edited acounterculture magazine that started asHigh Frontiers with a focus onrecreational drug use. In 1988 it was renamedReality Hackers to reflect increased content about digital culture issues. The following year it becameMondo 2000.
Sirius leftMondo 2000 in 1993, and the magazine folded in 1998 after 17 issues.
In 1993, Sirius was quoted inThe Nation magazine about the internet and its future.[3] This July 1993 piece,The Whole World is Talking, wasThe Nation's first article about the internet.[4]
Sirius recruitedTimothy Leary to be a contributing editor forMondo 2000 and taught an online course in Leary's philosophy for the Maybe Logic Academy. He co-authored Leary's last book,Design for Dying (1998), and wrote the introduction for a 1998 edition of Leary's 1968 bookThe Politics of Ecstasy.
Sirius appeared in the filmsSynthetic Pleasures (1995) andConceiving Ada (1997). His mid-1990s techno-rock band Mondo Vanilli recorded an unreleased CD titledIOU Babe forTrent Reznor's Nothing Records.[citation needed] The music is available on BandcampIOU Babe, by Mondo Vanilli.
Sirius spoke at many events, such as theStarwood Festival[3]. He delivered the second Keynote address for the Virtual Reality conference, Oslo VR, in 1994.[5]
Sirius was chairman and candidate in the2000 U.S. presidential election for the Revolution Party.[6] The party's 20-point platform was a hybrid oflibertarianism andliberalism.[7]
During the 2000s Sirius published four books. In 2005 he began hosting two weeklypodcasts, theRU Sirius Show andNeoFiles.[8] Both went on unannounced hiatus in August 2007 because their financial backer withdrew his support.[9] In September 2006 Sirius helped launch the webzine10 Zen Monkeys with fellow GettingIt.com alumniJeff Diehl andLou Cabron.
From October 2008 to May 2010, Sirius was head editor of thetranshumanist magazineH+ Magazine.[10] He then turned his attention to a project documenting the history ofMondo 2000.
From June 2011 to November 2012, R. U. Sirius ranAcceler8or, a counterculture, Singularitarian/Transhumanist website.[11][12]Mondo 2000 was briefly relaunched online in 2017.[13]
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