• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

A rambling look back at an odd but interesting science magazine...

My dad got all kinds of magazines in the 70s and 80s: Omni, Analog, Popular Science, Popular Mechanics and at least one of the three car magazines (Car and Driver, Road and Track or Motor Trend). Oh, and magazines like Outdoor Life and Field and Stream, too.
 
July 11, 2017OMNI Magazine Back in Print This Fall

enthouse Global Media has acquired OMNI magazine, bringing back to life the beloved and groundbreaking science fiction magazine. It’s a fitting move, as Penthouse magazine publisher Bob Guccione co-founded OMNI in 1978 with his wife Kathy Keeton. The next print issue of OMNI will be available October 24.
Click to expand...

Alas, October 24 has come and gone, I've not seen anything.

This link says that a "Winter 2017 edition is available on newstands. Anybody seen it?
 
crescent said:
July 11, 2017OMNI Magazine Back in Print This Fall

Alas, October 24 has come and gone, I've not seen anything.

This link says that a "Winter 2017 edition is available on newstands. Anybody seen it?
Click to expand...

No I did some googling for reference and context before I wrote up the OP and came across the reference to a reboot/continuation and like you I saw references to an October or Winter 2017 edition but I can't actually figure out if an actual magazine was ever produced or distributed.

ETA: There's a copy up on Ebay so I guess it exists.
 
Arisia said:
.....Popular Mechanics.......
Click to expand...

Apart from 1001 different gun racks, I remember this magazine most of all for an article on building your own Indy 500 single seater racer! Great fun.
 
One of the early issues had the terrific short story, Sandkings by a young George RR Martin.

For those not on Amazon Prime, Archive.org has a number of issues. Here's the first one, downloadable in multiple formats.
 
Arisia said:
My dad got all kinds of magazines in the 70s and 80s: Omni, Analog, Popular Science, Popular Mechanics and at least one of the three car magazines (Car and Driver, Road and Track or Motor Trend). Oh, and magazines like Outdoor Life and Field and Stream, too.
Click to expand...

Analog was one of my favorites. That's where I first read about about black holes, and on-line computer time-sharing services. I subscribed to Compuserve in 1982 because of what I read in Analog. In those days, you could get online with a teletype machine and a 300 baud acoustic coupler (a modem into which you fit your telephone handset). 110 baud may have been available, but I never tried it.

Compuserve charged by the fractional hour and bit-rate and time of day. My wife threw a fit when I ran up a $100 bill for one month.

Also, we lived in a cardboard box in the middle of the road, worked 24 hours a day, and walked 5 miles to school and back, uphill both ways.
 
Last edited:
John Jones said:
Analog was one of my favorites. That's where I first read about about black holes, and on-line computer time-sharing services. I subscribed to Compuserve in 1982 because of what I read in Analog. In those days, you could get online with a teletype machine and a 300 baud acoustic coupler (a modem into which you fit your telephone handset). 110 baud may have been available, but I never tried it.

Compuserve charged by the fractional hour and bit-rate and time of day. My wife threw a fit when I ran up a $100 bill for one month.

Also, we lived in a cardboard box in the middle of the road, worked 24 hours a day, and walked 5 miles to school and back, uphill both ways.
Click to expand...

:D:D:D:D:D:thumbsup:
 
Omni yes! I was subscriber up to 1992 when I started working in Saudi and they would often 'lose it'. Great magazine. One of the editors, retired now lives in the town I do and I've meet up with her on several occasions.
 
I moved this past September. When packing I threw out about 30 issues of Omni from 1978 through the early 80s. I bought them back then as they came out.
 
Last edited:
John Jones said:
Also, we lived in a cardboard box in the middle of the road, worked 24 hours a day, and walked 5 miles to school and back, uphill both ways.
Click to expand...

You were lucky. We lived in a paper bag, worked 30 hours a day, and got up 4 hours before we went to bed.

You tell kids how it was, and they don't believe you.
 
JoeBentley said:
- Several ads for various book and records clubs. Another thing that I bet a lot of people under the age of... 25 or so don't quite get the utter ubiquity of at one time. Essentially you purchased an initial amount of the product (3 books for 99 cents each, 5 CDs for a dollar, whatever) but they would then automatically send you more that you would have to send back or get charged for at regular or even inflated prices. At some point these died off and I vaguely recall the government getting involved and squashing some of their more predatory practices.
Click to expand...

DVD versions of this club were still active as of 2003. If you were alert it was a good way to fill your collection but you had to watch out and make certain they didn't send the monthly full price item if you didn't want it. Too much effort and supplanted these days.

- An add for something called "Simulation Games from SPI." The weird thing is I read the ad from top to bottom and I have zero idea what they are selling. It's too early to be computer games so I'm assuming they are rule books for some kind of pen and paper D&D style game, but they aren't exactly clear on what exactly they are.
Click to expand...

SPI was a board gamimg company best known for wargames. They were a head to head competitor with Avalon Hill (known for Panzer Blitz and Squad Leader). SPI produced some excellent games in their era but were an early casualty of the move from war games. Didn't help that at the end they were either taking their games too seriously or not seriously enough with the ridiculously complex Campaign for North Africa, a game where you not only had to keep track of every pilot over a 3 year campaign, but also the extra water consumption Italian units needed to cook their pasta.

Ads where you have no idea what they are selling were typical of the company.
 
I think my favorite was the June 1980 article, "Save the Giant Flying Vampire Toad", by Norman Spinrad.

Y'see, there was this Florida resort with its own golf course, and the rough included the habitat which supported the previously-unknown Giant Flying Vampire Toad, which was discovered when golfers looking for lost balls started staggering out of the woods with the things clinging to their necks. The article ends with the call for volunteer golfers to support the population of this critically endangered species.
 
Wow, I had forgotten all about Omni and that TV expando-lens thing. Don't think we had the same one as noted above but dang those optics were crappy. It worked a bit better if you made a box for it and turned out all the lights but you still would have done better just looking through the bottoms of a couple of Coke bottles.
 
Trebuchet said:
The polaroid sonar autofocus was definitely a thing. One of the very first autofocus systems. It had a little difficulty shooting through glass.

If I'm recalling correctly, that was the one that introduced the battery in the film pack.
(Off to Wikipedia...)
Nope, I'm semi-wrong. The original SX70 did the battery in the film pack, they added the sonar later.
Click to expand...

Yep, the old SX-70. What was nice was after the film was done the batteries still had plenty of juice. I rigged a transistor radio, a flashlight and even an old 1960's Polaroid land camera to use them.
 
John Jones said:
Analog was one of my favorites. That's where I first read about about black holes, and on-line computer time-sharing services. I subscribed to Compuserve in 1982 because of what I read in Analog. In those days, you could get online with a teletype machine and a 300 baud acoustic coupler (a modem into which you fit your telephone handset). 110 baud may have been available, but I never tried it.

Compuserve charged by the fractional hour and bit-rate and time of day. My wife threw a fit when I ran up a $100 bill for one month.
Click to expand...

I remember Compuserve. Where I worked we used it to run a program called Profit II, which could provide cash flows for office building leases (1981-1982 or so). It was a real pain in the neck; all the inputs were ones or zeroes and you had to get them precisely right. It almost ended up being more trouble than it was worth, because we had to do some moderately time-consuming error checks. Fortunately we got Lotus 1-2-3 shortly afterwards and we started using that for the job.
 
crescent said:
July 11, 2017OMNI Magazine Back in Print This Fall



Alas, October 24 has come and gone, I've not seen anything.

This link says that a "Winter 2017 edition is available on newstands. Anybody seen it?
Click to expand...

JoeMorgue said:
No I did some googling for reference and context before I wrote up the OP and came across the reference to a reboot/continuation and like you I saw references to an October or Winter 2017 edition but I can't actually figure out if an actual magazine was ever produced or distributed.

ETA: There's a copy up on Ebay so I guess it exists.
Click to expand...

Well will wonders never cease. I saw this as bit of display bric-a-brac at our local Ikea of all places.

picture.php
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom