A 1979 CoEvolution with an R. Crumb cover.

The earlier post about Ken Kesey mentioned Stewart Brand’s 1974-84 periodical, The CoEvolution Quarterly. The Spring 1976 issue, which focused, much to Lewis Mumford’s consternation, on space colonies, was written up in the Harvard Crimson. An excerpt:

“THE MAIN ARTICLE in the Spring issue deals with space colonies. It runs 48 pages, featuring 76 famous people or friends of Stewart Brand (guiding light of The Catalog and editor of The Quarterly) writing on what they think about the possibilities of building cities in space. The article includes not only such popular scientists as Carl Sagan, Lewis Mumford, and Buckminister Fuller, but also Richard Brautigan and poet Gary Snyder.

It seems rather pointless and maybe just a little silly to discuss cities in space when New York is in such a predicament, and to Brand’s credit, he publishes viewpoints radically dissimilar from his own, which is that these cities can’t come soon enough. Mumford states that, ‘I regard space colonies as another pathological manifestation of the culture that has spent all its resources expanding the nuclear means of exterminating the human race. Such proposals are only technological disguises for infantile fantasies.'”