Every Tuesday, get to know a bit about the stories behind the books you love, and discover your next favourite novel.

Rachel: Nick Mamatas and I go way back on the internet, but it was only last summer that we finally met in real life. He was launching the first issue of a new zine, Billions Vs. Billionaires, which is so my jam it’s not even funny (unlike the zine, which is hilarious). The second issue is out now, and Nick is here to talk about it!

Tell us a little bit about the project. Why use a zine to fight back against the fascist billionaire class?

Nick: Well, there are forces at work. Forces inspired by DOGE and the weird nerds who enthusiastically signed up as Elon Musk’s anti-spending budget-cutting squad. While DOGE actually didn’t cut much out of the federal budget despite expansive claims about millions of dead people on Social Security rolls etc, plenty of damage was done. USAid for example, was all but destroyed–all the good stuff the program did was cut, but the imperial interventions (spying, funding dirty little wars etc.) were just integrated into the State Department without the public-facing vaccination programs or cultural programs.

The idea, from a former acquaintance of Musk, was to try to make Elon seem less cool to the sort of very online audience that he had cultivated. And the acquaintance had a little bit of money. So zines via itch.io, YouTube shorts, RPGs, bumper stickers and badges to be handed out at science fiction cons and the like.

Rachel: I remain big sad that I didn’t get one of the badges at Worldcon. 

So even for a zine, there’s a ton of formal experimentation in Billions Vs. Billionaires, from a fold-out one-page RPG to…math questions??? (Dear readers, I promise they will make you wish you paid more attention to math in high school.) Did you seek this out, or did it happen organically?

Nick: Surely seeking something out is organic! We use our spongy brains to do things. But we basically wanted multiscale meme warfare, so any bundle of ideas is good.

Rachel: What can we expect to see in the second issue? Is there anything that really stood out for you?

Nick: The infographic! A little two-page play (but with three actors, so a role for an entire polycule!), a story by Rich Larson, who is a very successful short story writer (which is why nobody has ever heard of him).

Rachel: I’m clearly one of the cool kids, having hung out with Rich Larson on several occasions. He’s rad af.

Whenever I go to zine fairs, I’m impressed that there are more, and more sophisticated zines, than there were even before social media and print-on-demand made the photocopier less of an influential technology. What’s the state of the zine publishing scene?

Nick: Print is back, baby. The algorithm, and the five big social media platforms that are all just screenshots of the other four, have ruined online, so people are returning to print, and with the graphic design skills people learned online.

Rachel: I’m here for it. 

Given the level of surveillance and repression of speech in the US, were you and/or other American contributors worried about putting this out?

Nick: We had a brief conversation about even using the word “antifa” in the zine, and we always ask if contributors wish to be pseudonymous. We also recommend people print out the zines in such a way that printer-identification marks can’t be used to trace where the zine was printed. But thankfully, as Musk himself once said, “comedy is legal.”

Rachel: What’s next for Billions Vs. Billionaires, and where can we find you/more of your work?

Nick: At least two more volumes of the zine:
COMMUNIQUES FROM THE GRIMES LIBERATION FRONT

And

ENTER…THE KILLIONAIRE K-HOLE.

And if anyone wants to produce the play “Grimes and Elon In..Roko’s Basilisk!” from our new zine BREAD AND JAM FOR BIG BALLS  and put it online as a tiktok or reel or short or or or or…drop me a line!

Find Billions Vs. Billionaires on itch.io!