How to Mutate and Take Over the World

A typographical mess of a book that tries hard to capture (and capitalize on) a fringe cultural phenomena - the lively underground anarchy of the Internet. Former Mondo 2000 editors and writers Sirius (a.k.a. Ken Goffman) and Jude (a.k.a. Judith Milhon), now contributors to Wired, smartly complain about their co-option by the mainstream, but their self-conscious posing "on the edge" just doesn't cut it in such a lame combination of tired wordplay, on-line lingo, and subcult ranting. Set in future, the assemblage of ephemeral computer high jinks here posits a crackdown on user freedom, an assault by the politically correct left and Christian right on the present-day wildness tolerated on the Net. Jude and Sirius become leaders in the "virtual revolution," dedicated to protecting the right to encryption (disguising one's message in code) and thereby protecting free speech among hackers. Both authors supply their diary notes in support of "the flatout spectacle of human perversity." But it's nothing more than the usual Acker-Burroughs nonsense about sex and drugs, fancying itself an "anarcho Dada scrapbook." In fact, it's a collection of e-mail, TV transcripts, magazine clippings, wacky manifestos, and a lengthy correspondence with their editor - an oblivious dupe in the containment of the revolution. Using his rock-bank performance group, Mondo Vanilli, as a vanguard in the movement, Sirius confronts the forces of HADL, who promote the "New Civility" and refuse to tolerate on-line pedophiles. Sirius gleefully describes and endorses pirate media pranks and revolution by WEB. The various anarcho-punk-libertarian rants reprinted here are boilerplate in 'zine culture, and would benefit from editing, which seems to be a heresy if this sloppy compilation is any evidence - the tyranny of concision! Beware any cultural artifact that describes itself as "post-," though this certainly does seem the messy result of some sort of explosion. (Kirkus Reviews)