[ZINE] Mail from the Future

John Dishwasher's biohazardous vision of societal collapse

“I went to the future to see the end of civilization. There was nothing but smoke and ruins and a bunch of these zines everywhere. I brought a few back.”

Zines are timeless medium, but this week’s zine is literally without time. Sealed in medical-grade packaging and crumbled under the weight of an imploding society, Zine from the Future Describing the End of Civilization was salvaged by one John Dishwasher, who we thank for capturing this remnant of a possible* future.

If you’ve ever been to a zine festival in Southern California you’re likely to have met John, a time traveler who folds paper as a hobby. He’s so prominent in the community that one must ask: if John Dishwasher didn’t go to your zine fest, did it even happen? Read on for his explanation of how Zine from the Future came to be, and what terrors from the present might bleed ahead.

Happy Independence Day!

Ed Vaca
head scrambler at the egg

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Zine: title and description, please.

"Zine from the Future Describing the End of Civilization." This zine is an artifact of future catastrophes. It survived multiple riots before being brought back to the present, and its content shows and describes why those riots happened.

Get in the weeds: tell our readers about the creative process behind Zine from the Future Describing the End of Civilization.

It seems to me many of Earth’s problems could be solved were it not for a small band of folks who seem bent upon preventing those solutions for purely selfish motives. One night I was sitting on my couch fuming about this. Suddenly I envisioned a day when humanity as a whole realized this truth as well. Suddenly we see that our many existential threats were solvable, but that they went unsolved because of the self-serving distortions of a few. AND IT’S TOO LATE!! So humanity goes berserk. It wreaks vengeance upon those selfish few.

As I sat witnessing this murderous vision, I wrote a 500-word description of what I was seeing. I felt better after representing humanity’s coming rage. I shared this vision with an e-periodical out of Philly, Eyeshot. They published it. Later, when I discovered the zine community and sat down to create my first zines, of all my writings these 500 words came first to mind. I put together some riotous images gathered from outbreaks of violence during the Arab Spring, and in Venezuela, to help portray what I had seen. The actual text in the zine I constructed collage-like, from a madness of typography. In the third iteration of the zine, I began distressing the pages severely, crumpling up the sheets before I stapled them – because that’s how it was when the crowds were casting these angry words upon those responsible for the catastrophes, and trodding over the zines and the criminals themselves with their broken soles and gasoline bombs.

Finally, in this fifth and final iteration of the prophecy, I’ve had to encapsulate the zine in a radioactive-proof bag to protect readers from the fallout of those scorching, self-destructive rampages. Warnings on the bag advise readers of possible exposure to the gamma rays and flesh-eating bacteria to come. This is all very alarming, of course; but take heart, the catastrophes don’t come for another couple of decades. And rest assured, the guilty will pay. ⬤

*and probable

Portions of this transcript have been edited for clarity.

You can find more of John’s work on his Instagram and his website, www.johndishwasher.org.

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