Ecological Crisis From Genetic Toxicity to Three Mile Island: CoEvolution Quarterly Nos. 17 through 24, 1978 to 1980

CoEvolution Quarterly Whole Earth Catalogue Robert Crumb

Periodical

CoEvolution Quarterly run from Spring 1978 through Winter 1979/80, documenting the Whole Earth network’s expansion from practical self reliance into systems theory, environmental politics, nuclear risk, communications, ecological design, and technological criticism. The eight consecutive issues contain Gregory Bateson’s “The Pattern Which Connects,” Russell Schweickart’s account of the Three Mile Island accident, the ten year Whole Earth Jamboree retrospective, an issue edited by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Michael McClure, David Meltzer, and Gary Snyder, and work by R. Crumb, Wendell Berry, Allen Ginsberg, Anne Waldman, John Todd, Ken Kesey, Paul Ehrlich, and others. Founded in 1974 as a descendant of the Whole Earth Catalog, the quarterly retained the Catalog’s practical departments while providing sustained space for political argument, scientific controversy, and ecological systems thinking.

Brand, Stewart, ed. The CoEvolution Quarterly. Nos. 17 through 24. Sausalito, California: POINT, 1978 to 1980. Eight illustrated issues, averaging approximately 130 pages each, 7 x 11 inches.
[1] No. 17, Spring 1978. Contents include John Michell’s “A Defence of Sacred Measures,” Ken Kesey on “Cops Without Guns,” W. C. Ellerbroek’s “Language, Thought, & Disease,” “Earl Butz Versus Wendell Berry,” Mark Primack’s “Botanic Architecture,” a history of solar water heaters, and discussions of job sharing, roadkill use, institutional psychiatry, and personal computing.
[2] No. 18, Summer 1978. Gregory Bateson appears on the cover under the heading “The Pattern Which Connects”; the issue includes Bateson on scale, nuclear addiction, and mind and nature, with contributions or commentary by James Oberg, Christian O. Basler, Paul and Anne Ehrlich, Lynn Margulis, Eric Drexler, Gerard O’Neill, Thomas Szasz, R. Crumb, and Rosemary Menninger.
[3] No. 19, Fall 1978. Edited by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Michael McClure, David Meltzer, and Gary Snyder and issued with City Lights, the “Journal for the Protection of All Beings” gathers work by Peter Blue Cloud, Susan Griffin, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Anne Waldman, Herbert Read, Robert Aitken, Nanao Sakaki, Peter Marin, William LaFleur, Michael McClure, Peter Orlovsky, Ismael Reed, Mei Bersenbrugge, Richard Felger, Robert Creeley, Walt Whitman, Henry David Thoreau, Antonin Artaud, and others around plutonium, nuclear politics, Buddhism, endangered species, and ecological survival.
[4] No. 20, Winter 1978. The “Whole Earth Jamboree 1968-1978” issue records the gathering through photographs and thirty seven pages of stage talks, with appearances by Stewart Brand, Margaret Mead, Theodor Kroeber Quinn, Robert Currey, Bruce Ames, James Fadiman, Tom Ferguson, Peter Warshall, Ernest Callenbach, Michael McClure, Raymond Dasmann, Sam Keen, William Irwin Thompson, Anne Herbert, Huey Johnson, Bill Wahpepah, R. Crumb, and others; additional material addresses nuclear weapons, desertification, permaculture, solar power, community finance, and R. Crumb’s “The Final Solution.”
[5] No. 21, Spring 1979. The cover announces “GENETIC TOXICITY: New chemicals may have already done more damage to the human gene pool than nuclear energy ever will,” introducing articles by Steven Klein and Stewart Brand on mutagenic chemicals, human DNA, herbicides, pregnancy, and environmental pollutants; the issue also includes R. Crumb, Anne Herbert, Gary Snyder, William Burroughs, Judy Chicago, Wendell Berry, Paul Ehrlich, and a broad survey of used magazines.
[6] No. 22, Summer 1979. Opens with “The Real News from Three Mile Island,” Stewart Brand’s interview with former astronaut Russell Schweickart on reactor damage, possible meltdown scenarios, and the public information failures surrounding the March 1979 accident; further articles address civil liberties, Sacramento, watershed management, tree sitting, personal computer networks, information warfare, Arctic travel, and underground finance.
[7] No. 23, Fall 1979. The ocean issue combines John Todd’s “Ocean Arks,” George Putz’s “The Ocean, Full Wilderness, Empty Wilderness,” Phil Conkling on the global carbon cycle, R. Crumb’s “A Short History of America,” material on ocean power, fisheries, boats, navigation, and The Whole Sea Catalog, with Brand’s editorial insistence that ocean politics begin in local watersheds.
[8] No. 24, Winter 1979/80. Antler’s “FACTORY” supplies the principal text and R. Crumb the cover image of an industrial worker beneath a nuclear cloud; related contents address factory production, biological diversity, solar architecture, ocean farming, hospital labor, money, communications, computer networks, electronic defense, and the contested politics of the cover itself.

Across these issues, the Whole Earth editorial model becomes a forum in which back to the land practice encounters nuclear engineering, cybernetics, genetics, media access, and institutional power. Bateson’s account of the “pattern which connects” supplies a conceptual vocabulary for relations among mind, ecology, and communication, while the Three Mile Island interview records Schweickart discussing reactor damage before the accident’s full consequences had been settled. The sequence also preserves the publication’s unusual adjacency of technical manuals, book reviews, cartoons, scientific disputes, political reporting, financial statements, and reader correspondence, allowing solar heaters, computer networks, desertification maps, roadkill manuals, plutonium poetry, and federal energy policy to occupy the same editorial field. Brand founded the quarterly with proceeds from the Whole Earth Catalog; it continued until 1985, when it was merged with the Whole Earth Software Review to form Whole Earth Review. Moderate rubbing, toning, staining, cover creasing, and edge wear; no detached leaves, substantial annotations, or modifications. Overall good condition.

Item #23714

Price: $420.00