Legendary videogame designer Will Wright (The Sims) took over WIRED in 2006 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 (Metal Gear Solid) and how the design of Disneyland influenced videogames makes it worth revisiting this moment in history.

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 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 for the issue. "That's the only hint I will give you." Happy hunting!

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 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 on philanthropy, infrastructure, and how to balance surveillance and security.

To coincide with his space exploration epic Interstellar, Christopher Nolan directed this 2014 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.

After a tennis season in which she won three straight Grand Slam titles and reached the semifinal of the fourth, Serena Williams oversaw 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."

What's better than a former president serving as guest editor? Having the sitting President of the United States, Barack Obama, at the helm. 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 on everything from artificial intelligence to public health to Star Trek.