After writer Harlan Ellison was finished with putting out his An Edge in My Voice columns, which began in
Future Life magazine and then migrated to other publications
after FL folded, he put out a book with the collected columns and new introductions. The book, also called
An Edge in My Voice (1985), was one of my favorites of that decade, and I gave it as a gift to several of my friends.
I always expected Ellison’s friend and fellow writer David Gerrold to one day collect his long-running
Starlog columns in book form. Gerrold began writing for the magazine with its fourth issue in
March 1977 and continued every month (later switching to bimonthly frequency) until
issue #101, rejoining its pages a couple years later to chronicle the birth of
Star Trek: The Next Generation, which he helped birth with Gene Roddenberry. Over the years, his columns ranged from controversial reviews of the first
Star Trek movie and
The Empire Strikes Back to computer insights to thoughts on life and encouragement for readers. I figured that was a no-brainer candidate to become a book, but none ever appeared. Gerrold seemed more intent on producing new novels and some television work, which is his right, of course. But still, a missed chance, no?
Then there’s been some talk in 2011 about a possible book collecting Kerry O’Quinn’s From the Bridge columns, literally hundreds of which were written over decades by the magazine’s co-founder and former publisher. In
Starlog #189, O’Quinn begins his column noting that he had recently received a letter from a friend, who wrote, “I’ve seen a few of your most recent Bridge columns, and they’re fun to read because you wrote them – but I haven’t seen a ‘reach for the stars’-type column lately. I hope you still feel that they’re important.”
O’Quinn then goes on to offer up just such a column, about Jok Church, creator of the
Beakman’s World TV series and the syndicated comic strip
You Can with Beakman. Reading the story about how the young man struggled to get his ideas off the ground and then found success in print and on television, I found myself agreeing with O’Quinn’s friend about how much I enjoy the “reach for the stars” columns. It’s one of the ingredients that is missing from all current science-fiction media magazines, not to mention any other magazine I can think of with a young audience. It’s easy to throw together a magazine with all the ingredients that your focus groups tell you are important and that the MBA in the corner office insists are critical; it is much more difficult to engage readers on the level of their dreams, their souls. Seeing them as consumers is one thing; seeing them as humans is another.
Let’s hope O’Quinn publishes that book.
Starlog #189
84 pages (including covers)
Cover price: $4.95
There is some personnel-shifting at
Starlog this month. Managing editor Michael McAvennie is heading off to greener pastures (actually, DC Comics; DC and Marvel seemed to hire away a lot of
Starlog junior staffers over the years). He will continue to write the magazine's video-game review column, Gamelog. Taking his place as managing editor is Maureen McTigue, who would herself end up working at DC Comics and Harris. In a long interview with
Sequential Tart in 2002, McTigue was asked about her
Starlog tenure:
ST: What was the main difference between being an intern at Starlog and being an assistant editor there?
MMT: [grins] I got paid better.
ST: Between being an assistant editor and being a managing editor there?
MMT: [smiles] More responsibility.
For more on the joys and tribulations of working at
Starlog, see my interview with former staffer Carr D’Angelo in my digital magazine-about-magazines,
Magma.
The rundown: It’s
Trek,
Trek, and more
Trek on the cover of this issue, where
Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and even animated
Trek get featured placement, with a note that inside there’s info on the oft-maligned
Star Trek V movie; on the contents page, we get a
Trek-breather and instead some comic-book aliens get the spotlight. David McDonnell’s Medialog column tells us that the little-talked-about CBS science-fiction series
Space Ranger, noted briefly
last issue, debuted months earlier than planned, in January rather than in spring, which seems to have wrong-footed
Starlog’s coverage of the series. That coverage starts this issue. The series, though, only lasted six episodes, so the magazine was left dribbling out coverage of the show after it had died. Michael McAvennie’s Gamelog reviews a
Star Trek: The Next Generation game called
How to Host a Mystery, which McAvennie warns “can take as long as
four hours to play.” And the Communications section is filled up with mostly kvetching about
Alien3, though the magazine’s recent 20th-anniversary
Blade Runner coverage gets some reader love, too; also, It (just
It) is featured in Mike Fisher’s Creature Profile.
Booklog reviews
Kingdoms of the Wall, Damia’s Children, Kalifornia, Dirty Work, The Red Magician, Demons Don’t Dream, and
Assemblers of Infinity.
Starship Invasions is out on home video, warns David Hutchison in his Videolog column. Maureen McTigue’s directory of fan clubs and publications and the convention listings fill up the Fan Network pages. In a two-page Tribute section, T.L. Johns remembers the late writer Fritz Leiber, while Tom Weaver does the honors for actor Robert Shayne. And, as noted at the top of this post, Kerry O’Quinn highlights Jok Church’s efforts to make science fun and understandable to young audiences.
Marc Shapiro kicks off
Starlog’s feature coverage of
Space Rangers with an interview of actor Jack McGee, who portrays the, um,
zaftig cyborg in the series, and who comments on similarities with Arnold Schwarzenegger’s
Terminator cyborg: “I guess you would say we’re quite the same. I know he would
love to have a body like mine.” Animated
Star Trek episode writer Larry Brody (“The Magicks of Megas-Tu”) is interviewed by Bill Florence; he also discusses his never-filmed script for
Star Trek: The Next Generation, how Harlan Ellison got fired from a TV series over one of Brody’s scripts, and other interesting tidbits from his career. Craig W. Chrissinger profiles actor Dale Midkiff, star of
Time Trax. And Marc Shapiro checks in with
Time Trax’s creator, Harve Bennett, to discuss his views of William Shatner’s
Star Trek V.
Kim Howard Johnson previews
ALIENS: Colonial Marines, a new series from Dark Horse Comics. Ian Spelling visits the set of
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Joe Nazzaro interviews
Red Dwarf’s Hattie Hayridge, who plays the ship’s computer. Ian Spelling also talked to actor Robert Patrick this month, and Patrick discusses his roles in
Terminator 2 and
Fire in the Sky; meanwhile, Kim Howard Johnson provides a sidebar chat with that latter film’s director, Robert Lieberman, who claims it’s “much more science fact than science fiction.”
Craig W. Chrissinger checks in with
Star Trek: The Next Generation story editor Rene Echevarria. Mark Phillips profiles actor Arthur Batanides, who discusses his roles in
Star Trek (“That Which Survives”),
Rod Brown of the Rocket Rangers, Land of the Giants, and others. Kim Howard Johnson talks with screenwriter Nicholas St. John about his new
Body Snatchers interpretation. Bill Warren chats with writer George R.R. Martin about
Doorways. And editor David McDonnell wraps it all up in his Liner Notes column by saying hello/good-bye to his managing editors, plugging the next issue of
Comics Scene magazine, and announcing a giveaway of new
Alien Nation novel
The Day of Descent. Did you get one?
“I told Bill [Shatner] that he was doomed to disappointment at the film’s [Star Trek V] end. It’s not that the film couldn’t be great, but that he was going to be stuck with a philosophical unsolvable. In the end, he would end up saying, ‘Well, it isn’t really God, folks,’ and the audience would know that you were going to have to say that. I explained my feelings to Bill until I was blue in the face. But he was very persuasive in defending his idea. It was the way he wanted it and everybody over at Paramount was telling me to do what Bill wanted to do. And ultimately I did because I love Bill. … Ultimately, my fears about that storyline came to pass. But the funny thing is that, not too long after [Trek V] came out, Bill came up to me and said that the next one we do should be about the Fountain of Youth.”
–Harve Bennett, producer, interviewed by Marc Shapiro: “School’s Out”
For more, click on Starlog Internet Archive Project below or visit the
Starlog Project's permanent site.
As the above announcement on the web site of Mate magazine notes, two of the nicest gay lifestyle magazines you can imagine have paired up, and it just might be that the only downside is that instead of two separate good non-adult gay magazines, we now will have only one. Apparently with the current issues, Germany's Mate magazine and the Dutch Winq magazine have merged, with the unified publication to be called Mate but carrying the Winq design (see above).
In the United States, we get only a quarterly version of Winq, which is published monthly or bi-monthly (I wasn't certain which) in Holland. We also have received the English-language edition of the German Mate, which has also been quarterly. Now, presumably, we will be the happy recipients of an English-language edition of the combined Mate.
The rundown: The cover, in case you weren't paying attention, features Star Trek: Deep Space Nine’s Armin Shimerman, who plays Quark in that show; the contents page is given up to an illustration for a story by Anne McCaffrey, who is interviewed in this issue. In his Medialog column, David McDonnell reports that ideas are brewing to do some new things with William Shatner’s TekWar stories, which have already appeared as novels and comics. One idea: A series of TV movies. Could it happen? Wait and see. Michael McAvennie’s Gamelog column reviews T2: The Arcade Game, Dragon’s Lair, Dark Force Rising, and other games. And the Communications section includes Mike Fisher’s Creature Profile of The Phantom of the Opera, plus letters on Trek, Red Dwarf, Star Wars, and more.
Award-winning fantasy novelist Anne McCaffrey (The Ship Who Sang, the Pern series, etc.) is interviewed by Drew Bittner. Bill Warren checks in with actor Peter Donat to talk about his role as the villainous Mordicai Sahmbi in Time Trax. Marc Shapiro profiles actor Jeff Kaake, one of the stars of the ill-fated TV series Space Rangers. When the original Star Trek was being put together, actor Malachi Throne was offered and rejected the role of the Enterprise’s doctor, though he later went on to make guest appearances on the series. He discusses those roles in an interview by Joel Eisner.
Dr. Michio Kaku will be coming to The Commonwealth Club of California in Silicon Valley later this month, and I'm pleased to say that I will have the honor and pleasure of moderating the program.
San Francisco faces a tragedy that no amount of budget scrimping or constitutional tinkering seems likely to change. Simply put, our fair city might lose its place in the national pantheon of political train wrecks.
These issues are from Japan, Spain, and Germany. I actually own two copies of the German edition of Omni, for which I paid a king's ransom in postage (photographed above). I also own a copy of the UK edition of Omni, which cost me considerably (and inexplicably) less. But, because Omni listed on its masthead many foreign editions, Guccione clearly had an aggressive international marketing plan.
Judging from the two German copies I own, it looks like Omni was smart and let the international editions include lots of (mostly?) local content, rather than forcing U.S.-created content down their throats.
But whether or not you agree with me, I think he's someone to whom you should pay attention if you're interested in the dramatically evolving world of periodicals publishing. In his PubExec column, Granger enthuses about the growing "entanglement" between all of a publication's media: print, web site, tablet computer.
The rundown: It’s Trek, Trek, and more Trek on the cover of this issue, where Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and even animated Trek get featured placement, with a note that inside there’s info on the oft-maligned Star Trek V movie; on the contents page, we get a Trek-breather and instead some comic-book aliens get the spotlight. David McDonnell’s Medialog column tells us that the little-talked-about CBS science-fiction series Space Ranger, noted briefly last issue, debuted months earlier than planned, in January rather than in spring, which seems to have wrong-footed Starlog’s coverage of the series. That coverage starts this issue. The series, though, only lasted six episodes, so the magazine was left dribbling out coverage of the show after it had died. Michael McAvennie’s Gamelog reviews a Star Trek: The Next Generation game called How to Host a Mystery, which McAvennie warns “can take as long as four hours to play.” And the Communications section is filled up with mostly kvetching about Alien3, though the magazine’s recent 20th-anniversary Blade Runner coverage gets some reader love, too; also, It (just It) is featured in Mike Fisher’s Creature Profile.
The rundown: Actor Dale Midkiff poses for the cover shot from his new TV series Time Trax; on the contents page, some artwork from the Beauty & the Beast comics are featured. David McDonnell’s Medialog column informs us that six episodes have been shot of a new science-fiction television series called Space Rangers, starring Linda Hunt. What? A new SF television program is coming out, and it earns nothing more than a two-sentence drive-by in an omnibus media news column? Well, I managed to watch more than five minutes of Space Rangers, and it was anything but Shakespeare, but at least it was at times amusing and I am almost always a sucker for space opera. But note that this CBS show only ever had the six episodes produced. What does that say about the obvious difference between Harve Bennett’s team and Space Rangers’ team when it comes to talking to the genre press?
