My Future Life, and Yours

From FutureLife March 14, 2012

Several days ago, I finished reading the final article in the final issue of a long-dead magazine, Future Life. It was the culmination of an off-and-on effort over several years to read the entire 31-issue run of the magazine.

It’s an achievement of dubious status, I realize.

Some things have changed since I began the effort to read every issue of the magazine. My original intention had been to come up with a business plan for a similar magazine. But over the next several years, I realized that there already were a number of publications that served the market for science-interested people who also love science fiction. None of them were the same as Future Life, naturally, but they covered more than enough of the same topics that there would not have been room for a new magazine in the same market space.

And yet, I continued reading, partly out of a self-induced urge to complete what I’d started, and partly because I was learning a lot about publishing by reading these 30-year-old magazines. I’ve been in the editorial business long enough to be able to tell when a short news article is nothing more than a warmed-over press release; I have a pretty good sense of when an article is published basically as a favor to someone; I know enough about paper weights, page counts, and coatings to be able to gauge the financial health of a publication.

I was also learning other things, though; perhaps it is better to say I was being reminded of other things. Future Life published its last issue in late 1981 (the cover date is December 1981, so it was actually released in late October of that year). Its entire life spanned only four years of eight annual issues. But the articles it contained reminded me of the public mood at the time and how it changed dramatically over the next decade. In the late 1970s, despite all of the country’s economic problems, the expectation was that we would keep exploring space, building permanent orbiting space colonies by the end of the century. The feature interview in Future Life #31 was with James Beggs, the Reagan administration’s newly installed administrator of NASA. The interview is largely devoted to him explaining all of the economic restraints that were being placed on the space agency. Basically: We’d like to do A, B, and C; but budget director David Stockman is only going to allow us to do A, and we’ll have to scale that down, too.

From FutureLife March 14, 2012

Naturally, NASA didn’t get to do much of squat, other than limp along with the already-outdated space shuttle, and colonization plans – commercial or private – simply receded from memory as the deep economic recession of the early 1980s took hold. It was a time when Americans went through something the British have gone through numerous times in the postwar years: austerity. We didn’t like it then any more than we like it now.

The country would come roaring out of that recession, its economy partially Reaganized (the full Reaganization would really take place under successors Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama) and its priorities much more refocused on the ground in front of us. But the futures dreamed of and written about by Future Life’s staff were largely forgotten. In that four-year period, those futures included everything from galactic civilization to farming the seabeds to floating cities to life extension to ion drives to orbiting space junk to space warfare to overpopulation to laser art and on and on.

To its credit and unlike competitor Omni magazine, Future Life always remained refreshingly skeptical about UFOs. If Future Life had an obsession, though, it was scientist Gerard K. O’Neill’s “high frontier” concept of orbiting space colonies, and many articles, columns, space art, and news briefs were taken up with working out the practical steps of such a plan. What would be the economics (and the economy) of colonies? How would you transport people and cargo to them? How would you exercise in zero-g?

From FutureLife March 14, 2012

Future Life was a mixture of science and science fiction (films, books, paintings, etc.), and I think the magazine was an attempt to take the energy that the science fiction fan often burns off on daydreaming and self-absorption, and expend it instead on solving real problems and setting the fan’s sights on how to put their ideals to real-world uses. That, too, is an approach that I think has been lost. It might have been the particular interests of Future Life’s publishers and editors at that point in time, or it might have been a marriage between their efforts and the huge influx of new fans inspired by Star Wars, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and the Star Trek movie, but after Future Life died, science fiction media coverage elsewhere tended to grow ever-more narrowly focused on feeding fanboy obsessions, without introducing any higher expectations for that fan.

I had only begun reading Future Life magazine a couple issues before it stopped newsstand circulation and became a largely subscription-only publication. By the time my eighth-grade self was able to scrape together enough money to pay for a subscription, the magazine ceased publication altogether. It would be almost three decades before I cobbled together a complete collection of the magazine and begin reading what I’d missed. That’s how I came to see what we’ve all missed out on these past few decades.

From FutureLife March 14, 2012

• For my issue-by-issue description of Future Life, see my main website.

Magazine Cover Copies

A continuing (if very irregular) (and just odd) feature in this blog is my highlighting of magazines that use the same cover images. Years ago, someone did a study of Time and Newsweek covers to see how many times they used the same images on their covers, and it turned out that they did it very, very rarely.

But the genre of the fantastic appears to be less lucky. Or less picky. Here are some dual-use images from several decades ago. In the ancient past, when America ruled the world and the future looked bright.

The Japanese edition of Starlog magazine ran this arresting cover image – which apparently also made it to the cover of the Japanese edition of Omni magazine.

Fantastic Films, Dynamite, and Starlog all made use of this Luke Skywalker lightsaber picture from Luke's sojourn on Dagobah to promote their cover stories about The Empire Strikes Back. The strange thing about its popularity is that it's not a very good photo; it's too dark, grainy, and simply unclear. However, it is moody, which is good. But there are better Empire pics they all could have run with.

From

From

Daryl Hannah's starring role in Clan of the Cave Bear got the cover treatment in Heavy Metal (which is odd, because HM never put film shots on its cover, unless it was for Heavy Metal's own movies) and Starlog (which is also odd, because Starlog was a science fiction magazine, and Clan was a caveman film). Same photo, horizontally flipped by one of the magazines.

The Slings and Arrows of Outrageous Copyediting

 As often is the case when I write a post about magazine covers, this is apropos of nothing particularly significant.

This morning I found online the above cover of a 1992 issue of Omni magazine. I immediately figured I should order a copy, because it features an article on Mystery Science Theater 3000, one of the great TV shows of all time. Except ... Omni mistitles MST3K on the cover text: "Laughing at the Future with Mystery Science 3000."

It would not be the last time that MST3K was incorrectly identified on a genre magazine cover. Four years later, Starlog would announce the MST3K motion picture by shouting on its cover, "Joel, Tom Servo & Crow make a movie!" Which would have been great, except that creator and host Joel Hodgson had left the show some time earlier and it was his successor, Michael J. Nelson, who made a movie with the help of his robot friends.

Omni Magazine in Japan, Spain, and Germany

In my never-ending dedication to informing the world about foreign language editions of American magazines (here, here, here, and probably elsewhere), I offer up this link to a web site that displays some neat covers from the late, great Bob Guccione science/science-fiction magazine Omni.

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.

Check out Apogeebooks' gallery for more foreign Omnis.

Penthouse, Omni Publisher Bob Guccione Dies

Bob Guccione, creator and publisher of Penthouse and many other magazines, has died, notes MSNBC.

Out of the public eye for a number of years since losing control of his media empire (following a series of bad business decisions compounded by a changing media market – especially in the adult niche where he made most of his money – and government harassment), Guccione died in Plano, Texas, at the age of 79.

Guccione was a very controversial figure in society in general and publishing in particular. He started Penthouse magazine as a way to supplement his art career in England. The early years of the publication (as noted in this blog post of mine from a while back that continues to be one of my most-read posts – probably because a lot of people do searches on the magazine's name) were almost a comic affair, with the editor and a small handful of staffers trying to make the magazine and its impact look bigger than it was, working out of a small office and doing all the work themselves.


Of course, Penthouse grew dramatically, eventually reaching millions of copies in monthly sales and spawning a publishing empire that included everything from Omni and Longevity to Viva. The company also produced television programs, books, videos, web sites, comics, and more.


Viva was a 1970s attempt to do a magazine aimed at women, featuring somewhat nude men (less explicitly than Penthouse showed the women) along with health and political articles. It was a rather odd attempt; if you like Mickey Rourke and want to see him naked, then maybe you'll like the men in Viva. But Viva did bring to the publishing world something of greater value: its fashion editor, Anna Wintour, who would go on to great success at Vogue.

Throughout his career, Guccione careened from successes (such as Penthouse, or the early years of the science/science-fiction magazine Omni, which topped a million copies in monthly sales in the early 1980s before beginning a long decline) to failures (such as failed investments in casinos that were never built or in energy schemes that went nowhere). Along the way, he had the expected battles with feminists and the religious Right, winning some battles and losing others.

Though his core product, Penthouse, was not aimed at my demographic, that doesn't mean I'm unaware of his impact on the media world. I do not think Guccione is an icon in the way that Hugh Hefner is; Hefner changed the society instead of just riding a wave, and I think he set (and continues to set) a higher bar for thought and publishing. But Guccione made an impact by being willing to be brave and bold in his moves. Though far too many of Penthouse's articles were conspiracy-mucking, they could also be brave, such as when they took on Scientology. He also championed some of the top writers and editors in the country, such as Wintour, Ben Bova, Harlan Ellison, Carl Sagan, James A. Michener, Isaac Asimov, Orson Scott Card, Philip K. Dick, and so many more.

Whether one liked or disliked his publications, I think it's worth noting that it was possible for one man to conceive of and then build a media empire the way he wanted to do it, to publish the ideas and artists that he wanted to showcase, and even to make the mistakes that he wanted to do. Far from being a bean-counting MBA heading up a soul-less corporate publishing company, Guccione ran his empire from his heart. Again, Penthouse wasn't my cup of tea (though Omni was), but I hope we haven't lost the ability for someone to do the same thing.

Discover Magazine Purchased by Kalmbach Publishing

Kalmbach Publishing, located in suburban Milwaukee, Wisconsin, has bought Discover Media, which produces Discover magazine. Discover will become Kalmbach's 17th periodical.

Kalmbach is a respected publisher of "enthusiast" magazines such as Astronomy. It's a great fit; Kalmbach's a good publisher and they should take good care of the magazine, its 700,000+ readers, and the brand. They're not a buy-and-sell type of company.

Discover will remain headquartered in New York, reports Folio:, which will make the staff that works there happier, no doubt, but it'll be a waste of money. Perhaps the location will shift in future years, but for now it probably helps the company retain staff. (Publishers often say they need to be in Manhattan to get visibility among large advertisers and to get media "buzz," but there are plenty of successful publications produced outside of the Big Apple, so we can dispense with those rationalizations for paying sky-high rents.)

Discover was founded in 1980 by Time Inc., and it was then in the vanguard of a new movement of science writing for popular audiences. The articles were written by scientifically literate professional journalists who were able to bring science to mass, non-expert audiences. The magazine has been owned by quite a few companies in the meantime, including the Walt Disney Company and a company that included magazine entrepreneur Bob Guccione Jr (who later flirted with the idea of resurrecting his father's popular science/futurist magazine Omni, but I haven't seen anything on that possibility for years now, so I assume it's not going to happen).

So at least one happy ending in the magazine marketplace these days.

Check out Omni Magazine Tribute Site

A Chicago tech consultant named Mirko Cukich is building a very cool-looking web site devoted to the late great magazine Omni. Omni was a science and science-fiction magazine produced by Penthouse publisher Bob Guccione from 1978 to 1995; at its height, its circulation was larger than 1 million, but it dropped down to around 600,000 at the time of its closure.

Omni was launched just months after Starlog launched Future (renamed Future Life a year later), and Guccione's company was just too much larger for Future/Future Life to compete, so it died four years later. (Though it should be noted that the second issue of Omni excerpted Starlog/Future's great Space Art book of space paintings.)

I loved both magazines, though I was probably more attached to Future Life. That led me a couple years ago to make my own online tribute to Future/Future Life, and I still occasionally hear from the magazine's writers, other readers, or researchers with questions about the magazine because of that tribute page. The feedback from that page is what has led me to my ongoing project to chronicle all of the issues of Starlog -- a project that will likely take me more than a year to complete, but I'm starting it here on my blog and will soon begin storing it on my main web site.

But frankly, Cukich's site is kind of putting my efforts to shame. Give his site a look and bookmark it so you can keep visiting as he populates it with more issues.

Ben Bova on Christmas: Deciphering Santa's Political Preference

Ben Bova is a major figure in the science fiction landscape, having authored numerous views, been at the vanguard of arguing the scientific point of view, and edited Analog and Omni magazines. He's still at it, producing books and more, but a quick web search this morning revealed that he also writes a column for his local newspaper, the Naples News, in Florida.

In one of his latest columns for that paper, he tackles the toughest question of all: Is Santa a Democrat or Republican? If you're used to Bova writing tough-as-nails science-and-political thrillers, you might want to check out his column for a little Christmas holiday cheer.

Personally, I think Santa's showing his northern European ("old Europe," in Donald Rumsfeld's eyes) roots with his extravagant giveaway of toys to kids, an overindulgence that simply can't be easily understood in this economic climate. The real question is whether he's a Christian Democrat or a Social Democrat. Any ideas?

Bonnier's Putting Money into Magazines

Bonnier Group is one of the largest magazine owners in the United States, and it's looking to take advantage of other owners' pain by making more acquisitions.

Crazy? Aren't all the anti-print people saying magazines are dead? Readers of this blog know I don't think that. But I'm pleased to see someone with hundreds of millions of dollars agree with me.

Terry Snow, chief executive of the private Swedish company's U.S. magazine division, told the Financial Times that his company expected to be able to make moves that public companies and other investors could not.

“The public companies, unfortunately, are pressured by quarterly earnings, and then you have venture-backed companies which are fighting the banks,” he told the FT. Bonnier expected some large magazine owners to sell once credit markets improved, he said, “and I think we will be one of the few strategic buyers.”

But Bonnier's not stuck in the past, even though it's a 200-year-old company. It's exploring a wide array of multimedia and online extensions of the magazines it's been adding to its stable.

Even though Bonnier's a big player, it illustrates something I've been thinking about lately. Back in the mid-1990s, after cash-strapped Bob Guccione ceased publication of science fiction/fact magazine Omni, I pitched a smaller multi-title publisher the idea of a start-up (actually, a revival) magazine in the same market space. The publisher declined, but we talked at length about Omni, which was killed despite having a circulation of more than 600,000. He said -- with something sounding like astonishment -- (this is a paraphrase, of course, more than a decade after the fact), "I could make Omni work. But they can't. Guccione has to do everything big -- big staff, big salaries, high costs. But I could make it work for less."

What was a terrible money drain for Guccione at 600,000 would have been a high circulation for this other publisher, whose normal titles sold less than half that. It would have been a different magazine, of course, because money does buy a certain level of artistic and professional talent. But it wouldn't necessarily have been a bad magazine, as hundreds (thousands?) of small magazines have proven over the years.

And Omni's only one example. Some big publishers have commented that they can't make a magazine work financially if its circulation is below something like 750,000. So they close or -- here's my point -- sell magazines that don't attain that level.

That means there are a lot of magazines that could come to the auction block, and a well-funded publisher/investor could snap up a lot of them, publish quality titles at lower cost, and make a bundle. Hello?

Magazines that Go Bump in the Night

Here's a funny song about the death match known as the magazine publishing industry. Love it.