R. U. Sirius (born Ken Goffman in 1952[1]) is an American writer, editor, talk show host, musician and cyberculture celebrity. He is best known as co-founder and original Editor-In-Chief of Mondo 2000 magazine from 1989–1993. Sirius was also chairman and candidate in the 2000 U.S. presidential election for The Revolution Party.[2] The party's 20-point platform was a hybrid of libertarianism and liberalism.[3]
At one time, he was a regular columnist for Wired News and San Francisco Examiner, and contributing writer for Wired and Artforum International. He's also written for Rolling Stone, Time, Esquire and other publications. Sirius has written several hundred articles and essays for mainstream and subculture publications.[4] He was Editor-in-Chief of Axcess magazine in 1998, and GettingIt.com from 1999-2000.
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Sirius was a teenage Yippie activist in the early 1970s. He was the lead singer for Rochester, New York-based punk band Party Dogs from 1979-81.
Sirius recruited Timothy Leary to be a contributing editor for Mondo 2000 and has 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 book The Politics of Ecstasy.
Sirius appeared in the films Synthetic Pleasures (1995) and Conceiving Ada (1997). His mid-1990s techno-rock band Mondo Vanilli recorded an unreleased CD titled IOU Babe for Trent Reznor's Nothing Records. The music was available on the internet for several years and is currently available on bandcamp [3].
Sirius has been a speaker at many events, such as the Starwood Festival[4]. He delivered the Keynote address for the Virtual Reality conference, Oslo VR, in 1994.
Sirius shifted his media focus in 2005, becoming a show host for two ongoing weekly podcasts, the RU Sirius Show and NeoFiles[5] Both went on unannounced hiatus in August 2007 because their financial backer withdrew his support.[6] In September 2006 he helped launch the webzine 10 Zen Monkeys with fellow GettingIt.com alumni Jeff Diehl and Lou Cabron. All these projects were part of a media network named MondoGlobo.
In October 2008 the first issue of a transhumanist magazine, H+ Magazine,[7] appeared with Sirius as head editor. It went on hiatus in May 2010,[8] when Sirius turned his attention to a project documenting the history of Mondo 2000.
On June 7, 2011 R.U. Sirius launched Acceler8or [9] a counter-culture, Singularitarian/Transhumanist web-site.[10]