The Happy Mutant Handbook [Illustrated] [Paperback]

Carla Sinclair (Author), Gareth Branwyn (Author), Mark Frauenfelder (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1, 1995

A whole generation has grown up with computers and cable, VCRs and voicemail. It's not surprising that a brand-new culture has blossomed--with its own jargon, its own style, and its own definition of fun. This is a full-color treasury of brain candy, eyeball kicks, and reality hacking projects, with tips on everything from joyriding on the information superhighway to running your car on kitchen grease.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

In the wrong hands, this book would receive a dousing of gasoline and a quick flick of the Bic. In the right hands, this is a delightfully subversive manual for a lifetime of fun.

This is the do-it-yourself handbook for enjoying our media-saturated world by tinkering with how it works. Pulls together the kookiest and most engaging ideas from the Internet, great suggestions on "culture jamming" (a practice of co-opting the resources, messages, and brain-washing machinery of existing media, pioneered by Adbusters magazine), and generally jam-packed with loads of fun ideas and funny material.

Notable contributors include Bruce Sterling, Rudy Rucker, R.U. Sirius, Richard Kadrey, and that most prolific of all authors, Anonymous.

(Editor's note: In some ways, the Happy Mutant philosophy is the cyberspawn of the behavioral shenanigans of the Dadaists, Surrealists, or the lesser-known but more interesting Situationists. )

Product Details

• Paperback: 205 pages
• Publisher: Riverhead Trade; 1st edition (November 1, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1573225029
• ISBN-13: 978-1573225021
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 7.7 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,050,063 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Looney Anarchy with a Side of Jello-O, June 10, 2004

By 

Baroness Von Grim "Ophelia Grim" (Verslums) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Happy Mutant Handbook (Paperback)

Do you laugh at authority, enjoy silly putty, get a kick outta kitsch, appreciate goofy pranks, take pride in being a do-it-yourselfer? Do your knees get weak over Water Wiennies, Sea Monkeys, Crazy Straws, or Esquivel? If you answered "yes" to a few or more of these then you are probably a happy mutant and this book is for you.

It's great. You'll find tips on building hacking, how to do "your" work while appearing to be doing "their" work, turning the tables on telemarketers, creating your own personal anti-marketing strategy, getting your zine seen, and The Urban Absurdist Survival Kit which offers official looking signs you can copy and stick around to confuse and amuse. It also includes character profiles of idiots you are likely to run into on the net, conveniently printed up as cards to cut out and keep handy for quick identification. Plus, articles on Ivan Stang, Roger Corman, Jim Ludtke, and Patch Adams (oooh, even scarier than Robin Williams).

Get your giggles off while undermining the Man. But, this book isn't all just fun and games, it contains a degree of seriousness, yet it is also serious fun. *The Happy Mutant Handbook* possesses teeth but when it nips it aims for the funny bone.

Buy this book, read it, play with it, give it a hug. You two kids could become really good friends.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This book is pretty darn good, September 9, 2001

By 

Willow (Nashville, TN USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Happy Mutant Handbook (Paperback)

Everything from prank calls, odd types of hacking, and Wham-o products to strange but simple foods, comix, and the Happy Mutant Hall of Fame, the Happy Mutant Handbook has most everything that the other 10% of the human population, who aren't Normals, could want to know. There are lots of fun little pranks that can always be used. One is standing in an elevator and giggling the entire time you're reading the phone book. It's quite entertaining and your able to read it again and again, each time knowing that there are actually other people like you out there. If there weren't this book wouldn't exist. So worship it and read it.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Too Much Fun Is Never Enough, October 5, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: The Happy Mutant Handbook (Paperback)

What appears to be, at first, a critique on pop culture, is instead a guidebook to subverting the dominant paradigm. Make your own diesel fuel. Start a newsletter. Adapt technology for more "creative" uses. Create your own conspiracy. This is one of the few books that actually make you want to go out and do something after you read it (or in my case, WHILE you read it). Highly, highly recomended. This might become the STEAL THIS BOOK of the 90's!