A History of CoEvolution Quarterly (to 1986)

1. A History of CoEvolution Quarterly (to 1986)

2. A History of CoEvolution Quarterly

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A History of CoEvolution Quarterly (to 1986)

Art Kleiner

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ART KLEINER

Appendix:

A History of CoEvolution Quarterly

Issue i (Spring 1974): After a two-year hiatus from publishing, Stewart Brand (who signs himself SB in the magazine) founds COEVOLUTION QUARTERLY simultaneously with editing the Whole Earth Epilog. “I had [originally wanted] to call it ‘The Never Piss Against the Wind Newsletter’ . . SB writes in the Epilog. “I did have a formula in mind: we would print long technical pieces on whatever interested us—the opposite of the predigested pap in, say, Intellectual Digest." The first issue is small (96 pages), and introduces an ongoing concern with forecasting environmental/energy/economic apocalypse in a regular section called “Apocalypse Juggernaut, Hello.” Other sections carry forward from the Whole Earth Catalog'. Understanding Whole Systems, Land Use, Soft Technology, Community, Communications, Learning, and Craft. Michelle Phillips, Richard Nilsen, and Rosemary Menninger begin their long associations with CQ as Land Use revi ewer/eval uators.

Issue 2 (Summer T974): Long (174 pages), perfect bound (making it look more like a book than a floppy magazine). Introduces young curmudgeon/ naturalist Peter Warshall (“1 daydream of rhe day when BOOK [field guides] die out and a strong spoken tradition revives.”) Introduces J. Baldwin, the

source of coevolution’s ongoing authoritativeness on soft technology (known to some people as alternative or appropriate technology). Introduces editor-to-be Stephanie Mills, writing on salons (see p. 10). One article describes the New Games tournament, which SB had invented the previous fall. The only dramatic play published in CQ, Michael McClure’s Gorf (about a giant penis aloft in the apocalypse), appears this issue.

Issue 3 (Fall 1974): This issue is guest-edited by the Black Panther Party of Oakland, California, who design it to read and look like one of their newsletters.

Issue 4 (Winter 1974): Gregory Bateson, whose work and conversation will form a philosophic underpinning for the magazine, is first introduced to coevolution readers. (SB had published an interview' with him in Harper’s two years before.) J. D. Smith, “Whole Earth’s resident cowboy,” returns from Idaho to be a regular presence in the office and magazine for the next three years, cq’s original offices (on a pier in Sausalito, California) are threatened by development, so the magazine moves one mile north. “You’ve heard of industrial parks?” writes SB in the magazine’s Gossip section. “We’re in the longhair industrial dump at Gate 5 now, in a building called harvey’s lunches and as unwelcoming to visitors as ever. Mail w'e love.”

Issue 3 (Spring 1975): First of many appearances by Wendell Berry in the magazine. An article about Nitinol, a metal alloy that people thought could make mechanical engines powered from solar heat, will generate mail from curious would-be inventors for years. J. Baldw'in writes “One Highly Evolved Toolbox,” a description of his most-used tools; one of cq’s most popular articles, it will get updated five years later in the Next Whole Earth Catalog. Zentatsu Richard Baker-roshi, abbot of the San Francisco Zen Center, makes his first CQ appearance with a transcript of one of his lectures. Later, he joins the board of CQ’s parent organization , the nonprofit Point Foundation.

Issue 6 (Summer 197g,)'. First of many articles on

the Gaia hypothesis (see p. 15)- Dan O'Neill, creator of "Odd Bodkins” in the 1960s, begins eight years of quarterly cartoons for coevolution. Young hacker Marc Le Brun inaugurates a section on personal computers—to my knowledge the fifSt coverage of personal computing by any general-interest magazine. J. D. Smith brings volleyball (a Whole Earth Catalog office sport) to the CQ office— two games a day on paid time when the weather’s nice. With the end of large sales of the Whole Earth Catalog, CQ begins "an austere period, its first since 1968.” That austere period will last for the rest of CQ’s history. SB introduces the uniform wage— everyone in the office gets $ 5/hour.

Issue 7 (Fall 297 5): The cover announces "{Gerard} O’Neill’s Space Colonies: practical, desirable, profitable, ready in fifteen years.” This kicks olf a debate between proponents and opponents of space colonies (thousands of people living years in totally man-made environments in space) that lasts four issues and introduces arguments between ecologists and technologists that will reverberate in various forms throughout the magazine’s history. This issue also includes the first of five CQ interviews in the office of California governor Jerry Brown; SB introduces Gregory Bateson to the governor, and monitors the talk with a tape recorder. (The other such interviews will, respectively, be with Herman Kahn/Avory Lovins, Thomas Szasz, Marshall McLuhan, and Ken Kesey.) Editor-to-be Jay Kinney makes his first CQ appearance this issue as a cartoonist. To save money, SB limits this and most future issues to 144 pages.

Issue 8 (Winter 2975): J. D. Smith guest-edits an issue more hippie-oriented than usual, %'ithout any of the usual section headings; "having been around the heading Whole Systems for years,” he writes, “and trying to fit things in and out of it, the categories get melted into one another.” SB and J. Baldwin visit Marlon Brando and make tentative plans for a Whole Earth TV series—the series will not happen, but the interview is published.

Issue 9 (Spring 1976): Seventy-five pages of responses to Space Colonies. SB asks forty writers and thinkers to respond on the topic and prints the results, a technique used successfully several times during CQ’s history. Story teller/teacher Ron Jones’s crue story "Take As Directed,” about a simulated Third Reich in high school, appears (and is later reprinted in the Next Whole Earth Catalog). Norman Lear will later make it into a made-for-TV movie. CQ publishes the first of many reports on The New Alchemy Institute, a group of biologists and inven

tors doing original research on energy technology. CQ business manager Andrew' Fluegelman leaves to start his own publishing house, the Headlands Press; he will eventually become well-known in personal computer circles as the inventor of “shareware”—user-supported software. Meanwhile, CQ has its first subscription price-hike—from $ 6/year to $8 —based partly on Fluegelman’s last financial analysis (“Thank you for a quick pin in our balloon,” Stewart replies in print).

Issue 10 (Summer 1976): Introduces Robert Horvitz (see p. 51), who will become cq’s “art editor,” a liaison with conceptual artists. Wendell Berry and SB quarrel in print over space colonies. “How long is it going to take us to live down the Space Colony issue?” writes SB in Gossip. “Besides the Wendell Berry trauma, here’s part of a letter from Andrea Sharp’s mom. 'I noticed what your answer was, Andrea, on the last page of the CQ about Space Colonies’ [which quizzed each CQ staff member about how they felt about them]. ‘I was very glad you said no to them’ (Andrea turns page, expecting moral lecture). . . 'California’s far enough.’ ”

Issue 11 (Fall 1976): CQ publishes its first special product, a map of World Biogeographical Provinces (see p. 68). An article by Herman Kahn prompts SB to change his first section heading to “NO Apocalypse?!” SB and Gregory Bateson hold a conference to address the pathology of Cartesian mind/body dualism, and SB prints some of the position papers in this issue. Architect Malcolm Wells advocates underground architecture (“I do it primarily because it is so beautiful”); his article will later become the basis for a book about same.

Issue 12 (Winter 1976): Peter Warshall guest-edits one of CQ’s most popular issues, on watershed consciousness and politics. SB advertises for an “assistant editor, someone to help me expand my range”; writer Anne Herbert responds from Columbus, Ohio, gets hired, and makes her first appearance this issue. Her values, oriented to people and processes, will come to modify the magazine’s printed sensibility. SB joins Governor Brown’s staff as an ongoing part-time consultant. “Sacramento, to me, is Oz,” he writes. “Munchkins, witches, wizards, the motley band with Dorothy, and all. There’s dazzling magic. You gesture gracefully toward yonder wall, and PHOOM! spectacular goings-on. Gesture again: PHOOM! over on that side. Gesture again: nothing happens. Gesture repeatedly: nothing happens. Turn your back: PHOOM! As Jimmy Breslin said of politics, ‘It’s all done with mirrors and smoke.’ What isn’t?”

Issue 13 (Spring 1977): Introduces a regular section-heading on Politics. Introduces cartoonist Robert Crumb, who will appear regularly in CQ. Introduces C. Scott Van Strum, who will become Whole Barth’s Learning editor. Introduces Medical editor Tom Ferguson, M.D., who will shortly thereafter start his own quarterly magazine, Medical Self-Care. SB reports in Gossip that Gregory Bateson has been appointed to the Board of Regents of the University of California (“the closest thing this state has to knighthood”) and quotes his remarks: “There is at large among our students the medieval demon named Accidie —he’s the one who whispers in your ear, ‘It’s not worth doing.’ The students have lots of ideas, but they lack an underpinning of some sort which would let them feel that the universe makes sense. They don’t know what entropy means, so they don’t understand science. They don’t know what a sacrament is, so they don’t understand about religion.”

Issue 14 (Summer 1977): Introduces fiction writer Will Baker with “Left Over in Your Heart,” a humor story about Americans traveling in the Near East. Publishes Peter Warshall’s interview with astronaut Rusty Schweikart, another CQ regular, on urination and defecation in space; the interview will be reprinted in the Next Whole Earth Catalog. Reprints a report from Stanford Research Institute called “Voluntary Simplicity,” which says, “The fastest-growing sector of the market is people who don't wane to buy much.” Many cq readers read into this study either vindication of their values or a frightening warning that the mass culture may co-opt them.

Issue 13 (Call 1977): John Perlin and Ken Butti find evidence of solar power use in the early twentieth century, material that will eventually become a book (A Golden Thread). Reacting against attempts by the city of Sausalito to “sanitize” the waterfront area at the expense of its residents, SB begins writing about neighborhood preservation, an ongoing interest that will eventually crystallize into a series of articles in cq on the practice of local politics. Jeanne Campbell, “longtime voice of CQ in all promotion and distribution matters,” and “Godzilla on the volleyball court,” leaves the staff. Penguin Books publishes the first of two CQ books, Space Colonies , a compendium of CQ’s material on that subject.

Issue 16 (Winter 1977): Larry Lee and Scoop Nisker, news reporters and performers on KSAN, a radio station which “invented the progressive-rock format,” guest-edit a special issue of CQ on broad

Appendix: A History' of CoEvolution Quarterly

cast. “How often does one get to edit one’s favorite magazine?” they write. “It is doubtful that our second favorite, the New Yorker , is going to follow’ suit. Jerry Mander’s article, “Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television,” will later become a book with the same name. Patty Phelan and Dick Fugett join the CQ staff; Patty to do “projects,” Dick to handle subscription complaints and eventually to write CQ’s popular tongue-in-cheek renewal letters.

Issue 17 (Spring 1978): CQ unearths the scrambled fable “Ladle Rat Rotten Hut” and prints a popular article on using road kills for meat (both reprinted in the Next Whole Earth Catalog). SB organizes a benefit for R. Crumb, who owes the IRS $35, 000 after being “shafted by crooked lawyers.” Kathleen O’Neill, who will eventually design CQ’s pages, joins the staff. An article called “In Defense of Sacred Measures” by an Englishman, John Michell, begins an ongoing argument against the introduction of the metric system into America. The cover article, about how' language can cause or cure disease—based on the author’s work with acne— ensures that this issue will forever be known around the office as “the pimple issue.” The second Penguin/CQ book, a compilation of energy-and-tooloriented articles and reviews called Soft Tech , appears. CQ attempts its first large-scale mailing-list rental and promotional mailing, which fails miserably. CQ’s circulation reaches 30,000 with this issue, and henceforth will hold steady there.

Issue 18 (Summer 1978): Introduces the “Million Galaxies Poster,” a computer photo-map of “the large-scale texture of the universe.” SB announces the “Whole Earth Jamboree,” a two-day tenth-anniversary festival for Whole Earth, held in August, organized by Patty Phelan. “The last time we had a party (The Demise Party in 1971), we gave away $20,000 in cash to the crowd,” SB writes. “That won’t happen this time. Other things will.” In Gossip he adds, “Of the invited speakers for the event even those refusing have style—from the graceful [Ursula Le Guin: 'Woe. Alas. Phooey.

Sob.’] to the cruel [Lewis Mumford: Thank you!

But to escape the Whole Earth Jamboree I’d buy a one-way ticket on a spaceship to Saturn.’]”

Issue 19 (Fall 1978): The “Poet’s Issue.” Guestedited by beat poets Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Michael McClure, David Meltzer, and Gary Snyder, this issue is designed as a rebirth of a 1961 City Lights magazine called the Journal for the Protection of All Beings. The editors write, “We aimed at an issue centered on how to liberate mind & body and

protect endangered species (including ourselves) from pathogenic industrial civilization.” Partly because of its unfamiliar format, this becomes one of the most controversial (and worst-selling) issues CQ has published. Future guest-edited issues will usually involve at least one Whole Earth staffer as editor

Issue 20 (Winter 1978): The “Jamboree Issue,” quoting liberally from speeches at the Whole Earth Jamboree (Anne Herbert’s Jonah story on page 136 is first published here; her reaction to the Jamboree on the next page also appears in this issue). Sheila Benson begins her regular film review column, “Good Movies,” in CQ.

Issue 21 (Spring i979): SB researches and writes “Genetic Toxicity” (p. 142): the cover announces, “New chemicals may have already done more damage to the human gene pool than nuclear energy ever will.” In the same issue, “Used Magazines” queries CQ regulars on their favorite magazines. I appear for the first time, writing about the history of magazines. Dan O'Neill , protesting a $190,000 copyright infringement suit from Walt Disney for an underground comix parody he did of Mickey Mouse, draws a four-page “communique from the Mouse Liberation Front.” It ends by announcing, “The preceding comic strip is a federal crime—contempt of the Supreme Court of the United States.”

Issue 22 (Summer 1979)-. Introduces former New Scientist editor Peter Laurie with a regular column called “Pig Ignorant.” A contributor to the “Broadcast Issue,” Ira Einhorn, is “indicted for murder in Philadelphia. His girlfriend Holly disappeared in 1977 (it must have been shortly after he wrote [for CQ]). . . . This spring, after neighbors complained of stains on their ceiling and bad odors. Holly’s dismembered remains were found in Einhorn’s closet.” Also, Disney responds to the Mouse Liberation Front by suing SB, Dan O’Neill, and Point Foundation for criminal and civil contempt of court (maximum fines: $10,000 each). SB publishes an open letter to Disney president Donn Tatum in Variety, saying: I’m reserving equal space (four pages) in the Fall COEVOLUTION for Disney to reply to O’Neill or do whatever it wants. If Disney parodies us, I would not mind, or sue. Parody, as part of Free Speech, is a fragile right, all too susceptible to overzealous suing. . . . How would Mickey handle a situation like this? He’d come up with some goodhearted solution no doubt.”

Issue 23 (Vail 1979)'- Guest-edited “Oceans Issue” by Mariners' Catalog editors Peter Spectre and George Putz, who visit from Maine for the occa

sion. Patty Phelan leaves to manage Planetree, a San Francisco health resource library and information/advocacy service. Anne Herbert resigns as assistant editor to be replaced by Land Use evaluator Richard Nilsen. Disney offers to withdraw its charges if O’Neill and CQ promise never to draw or print Disney characters again, and to help stop other artists from parodying Disney characters. SB refuses (“I don’t like seeing copyright law used to stifle criticism which is supposed to be protected by law”) and prints four blank pages labeled “Walt Disney’s reply to Dan O’Neill.”

Issue24 (Winter 1979): The “Swastika issue.” CQ prints excerpts of a major poem by Antler, which will later become a City Lights Press book, Factory. Cover artist Robert Crumb, illustrating “Factory,” draw's a cartoon of a factory worker with swastikas in his eyes. Nine CQ staffers protest; Anne Herbert withdraws her writing from the issue. SB keeps the cover, prints her protest (“I think the cover is immoral”) and his reply (“If CQ is marginally different from other publications, it is partly in our defense of the contributors’ material from the depredations of insurance mentality or group-think”), and invites reader response. CQ prints three articles on New Wave and Punk music, and SB writes in Gossip: “The show violence of punk is good explosive theater, exposing a paradoxical sweetness to the night.” James Lovelock’s book Gaia is reviewed.

“In the brutal/apologetic tones you would use asking someone to scrub the toilets,” SB hires me to begin work coordinating the Next Whole Earth Catalog.

Issue 25 (Spring 1980)-. Several articles appear on Third World culture and politics, beginning an unplanned but prominent c.Q preoccupation that will last the next four years. These include “Shramadana” by Joanna Rogers Macy, an article (that will also appear in the Next Whole Earth Catalog) on using community to tackle huge projects. In response to the swastika cover, CQ receives “ninety-one letters,” reports SB. “Forty-one disliking or hating the cover (three canceled their subscriptions), thirty-one liking or loving the cover, and nineteen mixed, informative (swastikas aren’t just Nazi, you know 1 ), peace-making, or indecipherable.” The independent but allied Whole Earth Truck Store, almost our of business, is bought by the San Francisco Zen Center and becomes the Whole Earth Household Score. Disney settles with O’Neill and CQ, who agree co stop drawing or printing mice; Disney drops its previous $250,000 lawsuit. The staff swells to nearly twice its size to put out the

608-page Catalog. Stephanie Mills joins the staff as assistant editor, alternating with Richard Nilsen.

Issue 26 (Summer 1980): Introduces Ivan Ulich as a regular CQ contributor, with a twenty-seven-page essay “on the fate of Vernacular Values during the last five hundred years of warfare that has been waged by the modern State against all forms of Subsistence.” It will later become a book called Vernacular Values. Illich writes, “I guess that, in 1980, through no other journal I could reach a comparable motley readership of unusual critics.” This issue also introduces economist/small businessman Paul Hawken, who will become cq’s most popular author and the most influential member of the Point Foundation board. Another article by Peter Nabokov and Margaret MacLean will later become a book: Indian Running. Meanwhile, the staff is consumed by work on the Next Whole Earth Catalog. “None of us have private lives or social lives left worth mentioning,” writes SB. “For lack of a life, Anne notes, we've gone in for dressing weird—her tie, for example, sports a paper dollie with staples in its head.”

Issue 2 7 (Fall 1980): Everyone is too exhausted to do an issue. Subscribers gleefully receive a copy of the Next Whole Earth Catalog instead. The Catalog is dedicated to Gregory Bateson, whose death on July 11 will be described by his daughter, Mary Catherine Bateson, in the following issue (see p.

170).

Issue 28 (Winter 1980): Guest-edited by Anne Herbert, this issue focuses on neighborhoods and includes articles by several previously unpublished (in cq) staffers—David Burnor, Dick Fugett, Don Ryan, Catalog codesigner David Wills, proofreader Angela Gennino. CQ reviews take on a tone of update-to-the-C^Wtfg, often specifically filling in niches that the Catalog didn’t cover. Editor-to-be Kevin Kelly makes his first appearance with a page of haiku written while bicycling across America.

An article by Orville Schell about antibiotics in meat will later become a book, Modern Meal. Another article by Wavy Gravy, about the Seva Foundation’s work to end preventable blindness in Nepal, will later result in a $10,000 gift to Seva.

Issue 29 (Spring 1981): A compendium of computer slang, taken off the Arpanet computer network (“flame: To speak incessantly and/or rabidly on some relatively uninteresting subject or with a patently ridiculous attitude”) wdll later become a book, edited by Guy Steele. Paul Hawken’s article “Disintermediation” will later become the core of his book The Next Economy. Typesetter Evelyn El

Appendix: A History of CoEvolution Quarterly

dridge-Diaz, who has worked for Whole Earth since the Last Whole Earth Catalog , resigns to take care of her new daughter, Maria Francesca. Office manager Andrea Sharp also has a daughter, Sarah, who spends the first year of her life watching her mother work in the CQ offices.

Issue 30 (Summer 1981): The “Local Politics Issue,” formally opening up the practice of local politics as an ongoing topic of concern. This issue introduces Bryce and Margaret Muir, a toymaker and an anthropologist, who will take several CQ-published concepts—disintermediation, local politics—and test them in the real-world laboratory of their town in maritime Maine. A Betty Dodson illustration this issue of two women making love in Space, running with a short story called “The Day They Tested the Rec Room,” will provoke a swarm of subscriber protest. Working on a Next Whole Earth Catalog revision, Joe Kane joins the CQ staff and introduces professional-level copy editing—a controversial move in a magazine that prides itself on never changing an author’s words. The second edition also brings in proofreader Susan Erkel.

Issue 31 (Fall 1981): The Point Foundation loses some of what it made on the first edition of the Next Whole Earth Catalog by creating a second edition only a year later, which results in large returns of the first edition. The second edition never sells all of its overlarge first printing, 150,000 copies. Since the Point Foundation, not Random House, is the publisher (thus paying for the printing), that effectively ends income from the Next Catalog into CQ for at least the next several years. An article by Alia Johnson (“Stopping the Unthinkable”) lists, for the first time in one place, groups organizing againsr nuclear war and foreshadows a new wave of peace-movement activity during the following year. In Gossip, after mentioning “the giddy life in California,” SB quotes Wes Jackson of the Land Institute in Salina, Kansas: “California’s too easy. Any fool can appreciate California. It takes subtlety and attention and character to appreciate Kansas.”

Issue 32 (Winter 1981): Stephanie Mills and Planet Drum, editor Peter Berg guest-edic an issue on Bioregions—“government by life,” in the words of writer Jim Dodge; government by indigenous peoples, local cultures, and ecologically distinct communities, all influenced by the natural systems around them.

Issue 33 (Spr 'mg 1982): Stephanie Mills and I take on alternating editorship of cq; SB changes his tide to publisher.” Most of the major decisions about the magazine still belong to SB, but now

Art Kleiner

other editors will begin to develop major voices in the direction of the magazine. Pat Califia’s essay, “Feminism and Sadomasochism” (p. 206) appears; it will spark more protest than “Rec Room” did. On the following page, CQ prints letters defending “Rec Room.” CQ begins a wave of major budget cuts, under the direction of financial advisor Paul Hawken. Included, for the first time in the magazine’s history, is the selling of CQ’s subscriber list. An anticipated wave of subscriber protest does not emerge. In Gossip, SB reports that the campaign for metrication, fought against repeatedly in CQ’s pages, has lost both in England and in the United Stares. “Ronald Reagan, in his only known uncontested budget cut, is [dismantling] the U.S. Metric Board,” he writes.

Issue 34 (Summer 1982): A cover story by Michael Phillips, “White America is Predominantly a Viking Culture,” will prompt a series of reader rebuttals in future issues. By the time they’re done, Vikings, Celts, Piets, Germanics, Slavs, IndoEuropeans, Greeks, and Romans will have been blamed and credited for the American Way of Life. SB unveils a new project, an adult school called “Uncommon Courtesy,” with classes on “compassionate skills” like home care, first aid, creative philanthropy, and preventing street violence. It is intended to nurture a “school of thought” called the Peripheral Intelligence Agency—potentially a group of hand-picked people with the mission to "1. Do good. 2. Try stuff. 3. Follow through.”

Issue 35 (Fall 1982): Three articles in this issue—Lewis Hyde’s “The Gift Must Always Move,” about the healthful practice among Indians of passing on gifts, Tom Parker’s collection of “Rules of Thumb,” and Ken Weaver’s compendium of Lone Star State raunchiness, “Texas Crude”—will later become books. The San Francisco Chronicle begins a weekly column edited from CQ material by SB and Joe Kane, called the “Chronicle Whole Earth Catalog.” Robert Fuller and associates unveil the Mo Tzu Project, for amateur peacemaking between disparate countries and peoples. Ongoing reports about Mo Tzu will appear henceforth in the magazine. SB proposes two editions of CQ: “Lite” for people offended by sexually explicit material, and “Bold” with full content. “I don’t want to publish in feat of readers,” he writes. “I do want there to be a magazine which can publish, potentially, anything. If that’s to be truncated, I want it to be at least in part the choice and responsibility of the reader.”

Issue 56 (Winter 1982]: A guest-edited section by

Conn Nugent, “When Things Go Wrong,” about failure and misfortune. One essay in this section, “Poetry and Marriage” by Wendell Berry, will later become part of his book Standing By Words. Partly because of the flood of letters about the Bold/Lite idea (mostly protesting, some supporting), CQ opens its first regular letters column, called “Backscatter.” SB writes, “The volume and forcefulness and ambiguity of the letters on the two-issue issue tells me to proceed full tilt, not hang back, till we find out what’s at the bottom of that whirlpool.”

Issue 3 7 (Spring 1983 j: This issue is concerned with agricultural diversity and includes articles on deforestation and on an agricultural patron saint, Kokopelli (p. 267). SB is given a computer co help him teach courses over a computer network, and begins investigating the world of personal computing. The first Bold section appears, with “More Texas Crude” and a two-page short story by a San Francisco poet named Pheno Barbidol. Anonymous author Szanto, a strategic planner for a larger multinational corporation, begins a regular column called “Real Intelligence,” in which he writes,

“The Europeans view the U.S./U.S.S.R. conflict as the competitive decadence of two empires, with the only real uncertainty being which one will decline faster.” In Gossip, SB reports, “So far 190 people have requested CQ Lite versus 1900 people requesting CQ bold—10 percent. A much larger number haven’t indicated which they want, and they get Bold. We won’t know for a year if it'll pay off [in extra subscriptions], but it certainly isn’t breaking us, and it’s interesting to try.”

Issue 38 (Summer 1983): Editor Stephanie Mills resigns; Jay Kinney takes her place. An article by Robert Gnaizda foreshadows the “simple tax” proposals of the following year. Regular contributor Sallie Tisdale makes her first appearance in this issue. The last CQ Bold section appears, a two-page article on Japanese “Love Hotels” by Michael Phillips; thereafter, no raunchy material shows up chat’s good enough to merit a special section. SB announces two new Whole Earth publications: a Software Catalog, to be published by Doubleday in fall 1984; and a quarterly Software Review, to begin publication fall 1983—“two publications evaluating the best personal computer software, hardware, suppliers, magazines, books, accessories, services, and promising directions to watch for. . . .” A $1.3 million advance from Doubleday provides initial funding for the project. Editors of the new publication are hired from a competitive computerw'riting job market at substantially larger salaries

than the normal CQ staff. Thus ends the equal-payfor-all-scaffers salary policy that had held constant since 1976- (It* 19835 most CQ staffers were making $io/hour.) The change disrupts some of the CQ staff’s longtime community feeling. The Software publications and CQ share production facilities and staff, who move to the new Software offices across the street from “Harvey’s Lunches.” cq subscription prices rise to $ 18/year; at Paul Hawken’s suggestion, this is done without a major announcement in the magazine.

Issue 39 (Fall 1983): Jay Kinney edits a special section on reconciling Politics and Religion, including Gary Snyder’s essay “Good, Wild, Sacred” (p. 282). In Gossip, SB writes: “The Whole Earth Catalog and CoEvolution Quarterly are godchildren in part of Buckminster Fuller, who died a few weeks ago, followed a day later by his wife Anne. A few days after that another friend, the 300-pound “neoStoic” Herman Kahn, died untimely at 63. .

Fuller and Kahn started conversations that I expect to keep having with them the rest of my life.”

Issue 40 (Winter 1983): CQ runs articles on the political, financial, and sexual abuses of two prominent counterculture religious leaders. The first is an investigative probe into the affairs of Swami Muktananda of the Siddha Meditation movement. The second involves a former member of Point's own board: Zentatsu Baker-roshi of the San Francisco Zen Center (seep. 298), who will eventually be asked to resign by the Zen Center community. The change affects many Zen Center businesses, including the Whole Earth Household Store, which is now sold to a Bay Area retail chain originally inspired by the Whole Earth Catalog , a chain called the Whole Earth Access Company. Two months before the Zen Center article appears, Stewart Brand and Patty Phelan are married at the Zen Center’s Green Gulch Farm. CQ publishes an Anne Herbert essay called, “It Is Easier to Stop a Slow-Moving Vehicle Than It Is a Runaway Horse. Safer, Too.” It will eventually appear in her book Random Kindness and Senseless Acts of Beauty. James Donnelly, who will shortly become Cq’s most consistently hilarious cartoonist, joins the staff as a typesetter.

Issue 41 (Spring 1984): The financial needs of the Whole Earth Software Review bring budget planning to the rest of Whole Earth. Uncommon Courtesy is suspended “until Point is fat enough to do interesting charity again.” The CQ products are discontin

Appendix: A History of CoEvolution Quarterly

ued, because they drain more money than they bring in; SB remarks that Products Manager Debbie Hopkins “diligently assisted the very analysis that ended her job.” Product fulfillment is given to the Whole Earth Access Company. The cq library (excess review copies and research books accumulated over the years) is sold. Meanwhile, the first issue of the Whole Earth Software Review appears— 132 pocket-book-sized pages, full-color, no advertising—to mixed critical reception. A subsequent issue is better, but gathers far fewer subscribers than expected. After the second issue, editor Richard Dalton resigns.

Issue 42 (Summer 1984): I leave cq to edit the Whole Earth Software Rei'iew. Kevin Kelly is hired from Athens, Georgia, to replace me. An article (“Nicaragua’s Other War") by Bernard Nietschmann, on the battles between the Sandinista government and Nicaragua’s Miskito Indians, will incite so much controversy that CQ will ultimately send Will Baker to Nicaragua to sort out the situation. The Whole Earth Catalog newspaper column begins to be syndicated nationally. The wedding of longtime cq staffers Don Ryan (maps, photographs, paste-up) and Susan Erkel (proofreading, behind-the-scenes organization, unclassifieds) is reported in Gossip. Two other longtime employees— production liaison Jonathan Evelegh and librarian Ben Campbell, the unofficial conscience and allaround caretaker of the CQ office—leave the staff.

Issue 43 (Fall 1984): The last coevolution quarterly. Says the cover: “Next issue is Whole Earth Review, livelier snake, new skin.” Writes SB in Gossip: “The Point Foundation Board of Directors, doing its job, said [the Software Review] was pissing away what’s left of the million-buck advance we got from Doubleday for the Whole Earth Software Catalog. . . . Gloom. Financial officer Paul Hawken brooded for a couple of weeks and then made the kind of suggestion we retain him for.

Don t kill the Software Review. Blend the best of it into COEVOLUTION. Find a new title if need be.

Use the money saved to make the new magazine be even better, and promote it properly.’ ” Coedited by Kevin Kelly and myself, the first issue of the Whole Earth Review appears in December 1984, with a fifty-four-page special section called “Computers as Poison,” and a twenty-two-page section on “Computers as Tools,” updating the Whole Earth Software Catalog.

Table of Contents

A History of CoEvolution Quarterly (to 1986)

A History of CoEvolution Quarterly