Item #39290 Chaos & Cyberculture. Timothy LEARY.
Chaos & Cyberculture.
Chaos & Cyberculture.

189.

Chaos & Cyberculture.

Berkeley, CA: Ronin Publishing, 1994. First edition. 4to. Wrps., 272pp. Illustrated throughout, including work by Keith Haring, Robert Williams, and pioneering digital artist Brummbaer. Edited by Michael Horowitz and Vicki Marshall.

SIGNED and briefly inscribed by Timothy Leary on the first page (alongside printed quotes from William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Tom Robbins, R.U. Sirius, Susan Sarandon, William Gibson, Mondo 2000, and Guide to Computer Living, among others).

The book presents a "cyberdelic Be-In", gathering articles and texts by Leary that had previously appeared in a wide array of publications, some of them desktop-published and sold samizdat-style by mail order from a 'cyberdeli' called KnoWare. Topics discussed by Leary over the course of 40 graphic-rich chapters include the drug war, death, cybersex, new technology (the "PC is the LSD of the 1990s"), and the emergence of the Information Age, some of them as part of conversations shared with kindred spirits William Burroughs (the last person Leary spoke to on the phone before he died), William Gibson, David Byrne, and his goddaughter, Winona Ryder.

The launch party for the book was held at Megatripolis West in San Francisco, a short-lived offshoot of the London club started by the editor of Encyclopaedia Psychedelica/Evolution and founder of the Zippy movement, Fraser Clark.

A Near Fine copy of what was then regarded as a manifesto for the cyberpunk counterculture, and in retrospect as a high point of techno-utopianism.

Sold