Last week, we published an interview with the team behind Space Junk, a new magazine exploring the culture of astral travel, from meteor hunting in the deserts of China to trespassing abandoned Soviet space stations. Issue one includes an interview with a legendary NASA moonwalker, a conversation between two generations of astronauts, and a cover story depicting the component parts of America’s first space station, which landed in Western Australia in the late 1970s. 

It ran in tandem with a launch event at Jeremy Leslie’s magCulture, the shop and podcast studio that has become ground zero for experimental publishing. The event was suitably strange and spectacular, with ghost-folk duo Kelora playing vintage mission control frequencies, and a 20-foot rocket erected by set design extraordinaire Rory Mullen. Numerous magazine enthusiasts milled around the shopfloor, from Sleazenation and New Order Art Director Scott King to Macmillan’s speculative fiction author (and Space Junk contributor) Mariel Franklin. 

Dazed familiars like Claire Barrow, Jamie Reid, Ellie Grace Cumming, Anton Gottlob and Space Junk’s Editor-in-Chief Jack Mills gathered on the pavement outside, before kids hurled eggs and water balloons at everyone from a nearby high rise (cheques are in the post - thanks, boys!). It was the perfectly mad crescendo to a very fun night, launching a particularly unique new magazine.

Space Junk (published by Year Zero) is available in bookstores now, and can be purchased online here.