The commercialisation of space and the recent solar eclipse across Europe has reignited interest in space and astral travel, and new magazine Space Junk seeks to build on that excitement, reminding us of the thrilling possibility of breaking out of our Earth’s atmosphere.

The magazine was launched with a spectacular space-themed party at the magCulture Shop a few weeks back. Editor/writer Jack Mills and photography director Jo Evendon have collaborated on the project, which combines respect for the cold war era space race with the new space age.

Jack is currently editor of culture menswear title publication AnOther Man, was previously editor of Dazed, and has written for many other publications including The Guardian, American GQ and Frieze.

What are you doing this Monday morning? 
I’ve found this straight-line route from my flat (above) to the office. There aren’t many walking ley lines in the city so it’s weirdly satisfying, moving through the Golden Lane Estate, past old haunts, karaoke bars and the square where William Wallace was killed—this massive brick sinkhole connecting the lower levels of Smithfield.

I’ve bumped into Timothy Spall loads of times in the area, he seems to know the single-file alleys around St Johns from memory. They’re gentrifying the area and relocating the market soon—it feels like one of last genuinely strange regions of central London, where bloody butchers heading into cafes meet ravers leaving Fabric, or what I’d imagine the Meatpacking District was like in New York in the eighties. It reminds me of this New York magazine cover from 1997 (above): ‘Can lawyers and club kids and drag queens and butchers find happiness together in Manhattan’s meatpacking district?’

Describe your work environment.
I’m mostly in Clerkenwell, where the AnOther and Dazed HQ is. Our offices above Smithfield are lined with pictures of butchers wheeling meat in and out of the market. I work from home now and then—I get easily bored and unmotivated, like a kid. I’m listening to quite a lot of Tom Waits at the moment.

I just did this massive 165 mile walk around the coast of Kent for my birthday, tracing a Roman military defence line. It’s full of battered docks and twisted iron everywhere, so his music was perfect for the vibe. Other than that, I love all the Japanese ambient stuff from the eighties—a group of luxury high rise architects commissioned local artists to make furniture music for the lobbies, and accidentally sparked a scene there. The new Chat Pile record is cool too, lots of mad grooves everywhere, also Duma and Kai Whiston. I actually just rediscovered Drum’s Not Dead by Liars, totally incredible.

Which magazine do you first remember? 
Probably The Beano, which I still look at every so often. I was digging into it when we put together a story about this classroom of kids in Wales helping NASA track potentially humanity-threatening asteroids using advanced telescopes. The idea felt really absurd and Beano-like to me. When I was about nine I had a subscription to Empire, and became obsessed with harsh movie reviews and writers like Kim Newman, a horror movie scholar who dressed like he ran a magic shop in Golders Green or somewhere.

I used to collect Leslie Halliwell’s ‘Film Guide’ and haul these massive annuals to family holidays—his reviews were incredibly ungenerous, so you paid attention to the movies he was excited about. 

Aside from yours, what’s your favourite magazine/zine? 
I really like the look and feel of Savage Messiah, a xerox magazine from the 2010‘s about urban decay, walking and the outskirts of cities. Steve Beale and Scott King’s Sleazenation is always a touchstone.

Steve is a massively underappreciated writer and method editor—he famously got facial plastic surgery for a feature once. His way of writing feels like a puzzle to me, but is free-form and punk, both complex and simple.

It drives me slightly insane, actually. I don’t pay too much attention to contemporary magazines, there’s lots of good stuff out there obviously, but I don’t really get inspiration for making magazines from reading them—ideas usually come to me in the middle of a conversation or a walk or a film, and it’s more about listening to your body if it reacts well to a vibe or a sentence, and following your thought to its conclusion. 

What other piece of media would you recommend?
|I read a book recommended by a writer called John Douglas Millar on my walk around Kent, called ‘All The Devils Are Here.’ It’s basically the ‘London Orbital’ of Kent, and the writer, David Seabrook, was actually discovered by Iain Sinclair. He died young, after it was published—and there was a rumour he was working as a rent boy in Canterbury when he wrote it.


Where did you view the recent solar eclipse? 
I was staying in a bedsit in Dover and hobbled up this hill to catch the vibe on the street. I did the one thing you’re not meant to and stared directly at the eclipse for a second, and my vision was flooded with crescent suns. It was strange standing on a hillside with families, watching cars move slowly along the motorway below, unsure whether they should turn their headlights on yet.

Describe Space Junk in three words

Endless childhood junk.


What was your first contact with ‘space’ and how did you come to be publishing a magazine celebrating it? 
Space is a weird one, it’s a bit like jazz or jungle or something—99% of space talk is corny and Hollywoodised and performative and more about your LinkedIn profile than anything legitimate, but the 1% is some of the most inspiring, creative and progressive thinking I've come across, like Ballard’s ‘Memories of the Space Age’ or Charlie Fox’s stories in the issue.

I wanted to follow that 1% vibe—I think it’s serendipitous that interest in a new, semi-privatised, quasi utilitarian space race coincided with Covid, a time of sci-fi thinking, with philosophers and influencers talking about the remaking of road systems and public services. There wasn’t a magazine that was discussing this new obsession with relocation, speculative fiction and 21st century space propaganda.


How did you go about researching space, and avoid drowning in cold war nostalgia and the contemporary commercialisation of space? 
I think SpaceX and Blue Origin have replaced NASA and the Soviets in using space to colonise public opinion and galvanise political support—so I’m not worried about drawing parallels to the Cold War. I love all the Hobsbawm books and am really into wider throughlines. It’s all good journalism and storytelling to me.

Did developing the magazine make you feel optimistic about the future of space travel?
It’s always a mixture of positive and negative, that’s the fun of it—and it wasn’t really up to me and Jo Evenden, the visual director, to nominate it a good or bad thing for human progress, but a process of asking people how they felt, and how their obsessions manifested. The idea for issue two is insanely ambitious and exciting, and we’re really into the idea of keeping this magazine going forever, I don’t see why it wouldn’t.

Highlight one story in the issue that sums up the new magazine.
Damn so hard, there are tonnes—I really like our Archives Editor Lula Ososki’s interview with Luca Parmitano, the ex commander of the International Space Station. He discusses the crushing regret he felt when he returned to earth after realizing he’d spent most of his time in orbit taking photos rather than living in the moment. He couldn’t look upwards for a year after returning, but the experience made him form closer bonds on earth. It was perfect because it explained his motivations, and the effect reaching his goals had had on him. It’s a universal story, too—we all struggle to feel as though we are in one place at one time. Our minds are scattered, and it can be completely shattering.


What has publishing taught you that may be helpful to anybody else planning to make their own magazine?
Just make sure you’re sitting on something that no one else is really doing. Knowing it will keep you faithful to the project. You’re basically airtight after that, but you’ll definitely go through moments of hell getting to the finish line, it’s a fight sadly. Just keep going and push the negatives to one side, they don’t matter.


What are you most looking forward to this coming week? 
Not sure—every week is a bit insane at the moment. I love it.

Art director Brent David Freaney

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