Every WIRED Guest Editor, From Rem Koolhaas to President Obama
Eight esteemed luminaries have stepped in to guest-edit seven issues of our magazine, from athletes and politicians to tech titans and A-list directors.
WIRED
WIREDRem Koolhaas (June 2003)
The [first WIRED guest editor](https://www.wired.com/2003/06/newworld/) was Pritzker Prize-winning architect Rem Koolhaas, who oversaw "The Ultimate Atlas for the 21st Century." It's a fascinating time capsule—there's a feature about Silicon Valley as a bust town written just a few years before the second tech boom—and Koolhaas' architectural think tank AMO made maps for the issue that illustrated the nations with the most prisoners, most television viewers, and highest GDP growth. Turning over the design of a small, ephemeral object like a magazine to a man used to designing monumental structures meant to stand for decades led to fascinating results.
WIREDJames Cameron (December 2004)
Between *Titanic* and *Avatar*, [award-winning director James Cameron](https://www.wired.com/tag/magazine-12-12/) took time away from narrative filmmaking to become an ocean explorer. He made over 60 submersible dives, often taking along with him a 3-D camera system he developed with Sony and Fujinon to create nature documentaries. This issue focuses on the (at the time) new extremes of exploration: the bottom of the ocean, the deepest caves of the world, and the business of private space travel.
WIREDWill Wright (April 2006)
Legendary videogame designer Will Wright (*The Sims*) [took over WIRED in 2006](https://www.wired.com/2006/04/wright-2/) and oversaw an issue about the frontiers of gaming. Ten years later, it's still interesting to go back and see what we thought the future of gameplay would be back then. There's no real inkling of how big virtual reality would be, but looking back on how gamers used to view designers like [Hideo Kojima](https://www.wired.com/2016/06/hideo-kojima-death-stranding-interview/) (*Metal Gear Solid*) and how the design of Disneyland influenced videogames makes it worth revisiting this moment in history.
WIREDJ.J. Abrams (May 2009)
Most of the issues on this list you can find somewhere in a digital archive. But for this one, it's worth tracking down a physical copy. That's because the entire [J.J. Abrams-helmed Mystery Issue](https://www.wired.com/tag/magazine-17-05/#) is a puzzle, and there a clues hidden between those stories on CIA secrets and Stonehenge. We'd love to tell you more, but we'll take a cue from Abrams here. "There are things occurring within these pages that are not apparent at first or second glance," he said in [his essay](https://www.wired.com/2009/04/mf-jjessay/) for the issue. "That's the only hint I will give you." Happy hunting!
WIREDBill Gates and Bill Clinton (December 2013)
It rarely gets bigger than uniting a former president and the co-founder of one of America's most successful technology companies. The focus of [this issue](https://www.wired.com/magazine/21-12) was fixing the world, from how to end poverty and cure diseases to how smart product design and advanced mapping techniques can help improve society. Gates is the primary guest editor, but President Bill Clinton joins for [a prescient interview](https://www.wired.com/2013/11/bill-gates-bill-clinton-wired/) on philanthropy, infrastructure, and how to balance surveillance and security.
WIREDChristopher Nolan (December 2014)
To coincide with his space exploration epic *Interstellar*, Christopher Nolan directed [this 2014 issue](https://www.wired.com/2014/11/wired-nolan-issue/), dividing the magazine into five distinct dimensions: line, plane, space, time, and multiverse. It covers everything from the story behind the modular robots on the spaceship in *Interstellar* to the metaphysics of wormholes to an oral history of *The Right Stuff*. There's even a piece on the complex ethics of intergalactic colonization.
WIREDSerena Williams (November 2015)
After a tennis season in which she won three straight Grand Slam titles and reached the semifinal of the fourth, [Serena Williams oversaw](https://www.wired.com/2015/10/serena-williams-guest-editor-race-gender-equality/) WIRED's November 2015 issue on equality in the digital age. It features a lineup of trailblazers such as transgender model Geena Rocero, civil rights activist Deray McKesson, and rapper/actor Common and his mother Mahalia Hines. There's also a roundtable discussion about how to make the Internet safer for users who aren't white men. "I want young people to look at the trailblazers we’ve assembled below and be inspired," Williams said in the issue. "I hope they eventually become trailblazers themselves."
WiredPresident Barack Obama (November 2016)
What's better than a former president serving as guest editor? Having the sitting President of the United States, [Barack Obama, at the helm](https://www.wired.com/2016/10/editors-letter-november-2016/). Obama's edition comes at the culmination of a historic eight-year presidency, and sees the magazine divided into five parts dedicated to the personal, local, national, international, and final frontiers of the future. Within those sections are [the president's thoughts](https://www.wired.com/2016/10/president-obama-guest-edits-wired-essay/) on [everything from artificial intelligence](https://www.wired.com/2016/10/president-obama-mit-joi-ito-interview/) to public health to [*Star Trek*](https://www.wired.com/2016/10/potus-star-trek/).
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