Three of this year's covers were done by a new artist, Holly Kaufman Spruch, while the Summer cover was done by veteran Ken Copel.

The mini-cover in the upper right-hand corner continued to appear for all issues.  The covers this year were notable in that they focused on world events much more than in the past.  It was also a very eventful year on a number of levels.

Autumn 1989 focused on an historic milestone in the hacker world: The Galactic Hacker Party.

This international event took place in Amsterdam and was the first time that hackers from so many different countries had come together.  We certainly felt inspired by the whole thing and that issue is seen by many as a second wind for our magazine, which was starting to feel slightly repetitive.  From this point, we had access to a world of hacking intelligence and it showed in our pages.

As for the cover itself, the building where the event took place (the Paradiso Cultural Center) is portrayed, along with various posters in much the same way that actual posters adorned the front of the building, advertising upcoming concerts taking place inside it.

One poster reads "BAD Concert," which was a reference to Big Audio Dynamite, one of our favorite groups around the office and one which we tracked down and interviewed in London later in the summer.  (The interview can be found in our Off The Hook archive for September 1989.)

While in Europe, Emmanuel met up with members of Big Audio Dynamite who had just released Megatop Phoenix, which would prove to be their last album in the band's original configuration.  This interview was originally aired on WUSB-FM in Stony Brook, NY and re-aired on WBAI when a slot unexpectedly opened up.  The first half of the interview is primarily Don Letts and other members of the band while the second half is Mick Jones, B.A.D.'s founder and, within a year, the only remaining member.  (Don Letts, incidentally, is the voice on the Off The Hook theme.)

Download  September 28, 1989  (7.5M MP3)

Another poster reads "INGSOC," a clear reference to 1984 and the Newspeak word for "English Socialism," which was the totalitarian government of that novel.

The final poster reads "Rop Knows," which refers to Rop Gonggrijp, the publisher of Hack-Tic - a Dutch magazine that was much like 2600.

We found Rop to have an all-knowing air about him and, as one of the organizers of the monumental event that brought so many hackers together, he deserved that recognition.  It also served as a bit of a warning to one of the attendees who had betrayed our trust by ripping us off - the secret was out and we all knew.  In case it wasn't clear enough, we show the offender (complete with a t-shirt indicating his origin) being run over by a tram labeled 2600!  (We never heard from him again.)

Some of the posters can also be seen littered on the ground.  And, of course, there's a Dutch phone booth jammed with hackers.

The mini-cover features a rat ("techno-rat" was one of the phrases being suggested at the time as a synonym for "hacker") typing on a keyboard labeled 2600.