Fangoria Announces the Return of Starlog

Five years after ending the 374-issue run of legendary science fiction media magazine Starlog, parent company Fangoria Entertainment today announced the impending return. Starlog, according to Fango, will return first as a website this summer and then later in the year as a digital magazine. There is no word yet if a print edition is being considered an eventual possibility or if the digital edition is the intended main product.

It sounds as if the mag will be reimagined for a new age — as it should be — and will try to make the most of an electronic platform. Congrats to all involved. You'll be facing high expectations from Starlog's legion of former readers, as you no doubt already expect.

Luke Skywalker's Killing Spree

Some wags have created a calendar documenting the death toll of Star Wars Rebel hero Luke Skywalker.

It's here.

Don't even pretend you're not going to click on it.

David McDonnell's Starlogging Once Again

It's appropriate — both where Mr. McDonnell has reappeared and that I would note it on this blog.

David McDonnell, the longtime workaholic editor of Starlog magazine from the early 1980s to its demise in 2009, has reappeared with a column on StarTrek.com called "Starlogging with David McDonnell." As McDonnell had noted in past editorial columns of Starlog, it was he who kept up and even increased the amount of Trek coverage in the pages of the magazine, so his regular appearance on a Trek website is fitting.

And, of course, this blog has more than its share of Starlog news, issue-by-issue chronicling, and just general permeation with Starlogginess. Copyright that term.

Anyway, it's nice to see David McDonnell again.

Starlog Cover Fun

Okay, you're taking a break from all of the bad news about the sequester. What's a person to do? Here's something: See how many things you can find different on these two magazine covers. Start ... now.

Gerry Anderson, RIP

The Puppetmaster is dead; long live the puppetmaster.

More accurately, 83-year-old producer Gerry Anderson, who with his wife Sylvia was the power behind Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlett and the Mysterions, and other puppet series (not to mention the live-action Space: 1999 in the mid-1970s), passed away earlier today.

End scene.

Sci-Fi TV Arises: The Starlog Project, Starlog #201, April 1994

Starlog called this a special "Robots Issue," but it's really a special TV issue, and a good reminder from a point in history when SF TV was really establishing itself in a very big way. In early 1994, science fiction series are beginning to flourish on the small screen, especially in the syndicated market but also in the network world, where Chris Carter's The X-Files is starting its groundbreaking run.

A few months before The X-Files premiered, I was able to see the first episode thanks to a friend of mine who worked at a large advertising agency. She got a preview cassette of a different new TV show, which was what we really wanted to see; The X-Files was also included as an afterthought. I don't even remember what the other show was or if it lasted long before cancellation. But after we watched The X-Files premiere episode, we both looked at each other with surprise and said, "That was really good." And we were correct. It was.

We should note that on the upper left-hand corner of the cover, right above the "SPECIAL ROBOTS ISSUE" headline, is a photo of Star Wars' C3PO, who isn't featured in the issue. Oopski.

Starlog #201
84 pages (including covers)
Cover price: $4.95

The last two pages of this issue reprise a humorous if odd thing from issue #191: Fake trading cards of Starlog correspondents. This issue features Tom Weaver, Ian Spelling, George Kochell, Lynne Stephens, and Michael Wolff, who, when asked about "what he wants to be when he grows up," replies, "The dim face spotted at the end of a dream. Why? Because the shadows are blessed and there's treasure in a secret." Okay.

The rundown: Richard Eden, the newest actor to be RoboCop, graces the cover, while the contents page features Robert Llewelyn as Red Dwarf's Kryten. David McDonnell's Medialog rounds up the news bits, including the tidbit that RoboCop's Paul Verhoeven "may end up directing Starship Troopers," which of course happens and results in a film that in my humble opinion is far better than RoboCop. In his Gamelog column, Michael McAvennie reviews Absolute Entertainment's Star Trek: The Next Generation and others, including GURPS War Against the Chtorr, based on author (and former Starlog columnist) David Gerrold's well-received series of novels. And the Communications section ranges from a letter that almost single-handedly previews the entire SF TV landscape, to a complaint about the Sci-Fi Channel's hacking-up of genre series, as well as the final installment of cartoonist Mike Fisher's Creature Profile, this one featuring Dr. Cyclops. (In his end-of-the-book editorial column, editor McDonnell reveals that genre expert Tom Weaver provided some assistance during the 40-issue run of this comic feature.)

CBS/Fox Video unleashes some more Doctor Who episodes, according to David Hutchison's Videolog. A brand new column debuts from an old Starlog hand: former editorial staffer David Hirsch returns to the fold with Audiolog, reporting on records and CDs from SF media. Among Hirsch's many accomplishments during his years at the magazine was editing the Space Report column, which was written by producer Gerry Anderson (Space: 1999, Thunderbirds), so it's either very fitting or a case of astonishing coincidence that right next to Hirsch's inaugural column is an ad for a science fiction convention featuring Gerry Anderson. The Booklog department includes reviews of The Voyage, The Positronic Man, Under the Eye of God, The Fabulist, Nevernever, The Stalk, Brother to Shadows, Orion and the Conqueror, The Disinherited, The Woods Out Back, Firedance, The Broken God, The Outcast, Martin the Warrior, The Armageddon Inheritance, Eternal Light, The Legend of Nightfall, and Nimbus. The Fan Network pages include Marc Bernardin's listing of fan organizations, some comics, and the usual convention calendar. And former publisher Kerry O'Quinn uses his From the Bridge column to talk about NASA's attempts to regain its lost luster by creating a space station.

In another of his speculative genre overview articles (that's a category, right?), Michael Wolff sticks to the "Robots Issue" theme by looking at robotic characters in SF film and TV; illustrations are by George Kochell. One of the most famous television robots, the aptly named Robot from Lost in Space, was brought to life by actor Bob May, who tells interviewer Tom Weaver, "There was one requirement I had to meet in order to play the Robot: The outfit was almost completely built, so therefore I had to fit into it—there was no way around that!" And one of the most famous cyborgs (well, they're part robot) from television was the young Borg Hugh from Star Trek: The Next Generation. Pat Jankiewicz chats with Jonathan Del Arco, the actor who brought Hugh to life on the show as a guest star, having been unsuccessful in his screen test to portray Wesley Crusher.

Cover boy Richard Eden tells Peter Bloch-Hansen about his new gig bringing RoboCop to TV life every week. The British TV series Red Dwarf is updated in a report by Joe Nazzaro. Ian Spelling does the same for Star Trek: Deep Space Nine by talking with Siddig El Fadil. The magazine goes further back in time with a profile by Joe Nazzaro of Colin Baker, one of the 3 million British actors who portrayed Doctor Who. Tom Weaver's second article this issue is a Q&A with Kathleen Crowley, who starred in Target Earth, Curse of the Undead, Flame Barrier, and other films. Kyle Counts checks in with producer Chris Carter, who unveils his new Fox TV series The X-Files. And in his Liner Notes column, editor David McDonnell says goodbye to exiting managing editor Maureen McTigue, who's heading over to DC Comics and who was featured in the previous set of Starlog contributor trading cards. Circle of life.

"I have not read a tremendous amount of science fiction. … I wouldn't call myself a science fiction fan; when I go to the library, I don't gravitate toward the SF section. I was never a huge Star Trek fan. But I'm interested in certain types of science fiction, what people oftentimes call science fact. I prefer books that don't talk about a world in the future but rather that take human situations and play with them in a fictionalized, scientific way."
–Chris Carter, X-Files producer, interviewed by Kyle Counts, "Scientific American" 

For more, click on Starlog Project below or visit the Starlog Project's permanent site.

Another Century: The Starlog Project, Starlog 200, March 1994

Even though publishing 200 editions of a magazine is a huge achievement, it just doesn’t have the same celebratory sense of accomplishment as publishing the first 100. It’s not rational, really; magazine publishing has always been a risky business, so the longer you can keep going, the bigger the achievement.

Nonetheless, Starlog probably didn’t help itself with this special 100-page issue by basically repeating the formula of issue 100: The core of the magazine is made up of short profiles of the “200 most important people” in science fiction and fantasy. Not a bad idea, but after issue 100, not an original one, either. (It's a formula the magazine would repeat in issue #300.) The 200 referenced in that name actually refers to brief recaps of those first 100 people, then longer (though still short) profiles of VIPs 101-200.

Starlog #200
100 pages (including covers)
Cover price: $6.95

So what happened in the years since the company published Starlog 100? Quite a lot, really. The United States went from having basically three commercial broadcast networks plus public television and a smattering of cable to having four commercial networks plus public, lots of cable (including a science-fiction channel all to itself), burgeoning numbers of independent stations, and an expanding international market. All of that means there was greater demand for content, or, in the words of Hollywood money people, “product.” As a result, Starlog and other SF mags had a lot more genre programs (and movies) to write about.

Starlog itself had changed quite a bit over those 100 issues, though not as much as it had from issue 1 through 100. By March 1994, Starlog was still the core of a multi-title magazine publishing company, but many of those sister titles had changed. The page count of Starlog was higher, the cover price higher, the paper quality better, and many of the names on the masthead different – most significantly, arguably, was the departure from the company of co-founder Kerry O’Quinn, who had sold his share of the business and taken on a consultant's role.

The mid-1980s, when Starlog 100 was published, was a time when people weren’t sure where the economy was going. Things were still on an upswing from the brutal early 1980s recession, and that decade saw constant changes and uncertainty. But by the mid-1990s, when #200 was published, Starlog was in the middle of a solid decade of very low inflation (so no constant cover price increases every year or two) and apparently strong circulation and readership.

The rundown: The cover is a shiny standout that probably caught eyes on the newsstand, so in that sense, it might be a success. But as a well-designed cover, it just doesn’t make it; the Starlog logo is hard to see, the photos at the bottom of the cover aren’t the people listed right above the photos who are interviewed inside; and the background really serves no purpose other than to catch the eye – it’s not as if it’s a science-fictiony design. It’s just shiny. As for the contents page, it’s actually kind of cool: a large Frank Frazetta Barsoom painting sprawls over one full page and edges onto the next.

David McDonnell kicks off the celebratory section with an introduction to the 200 most etc., etc., etc. First we get the brief overviews of the first 100 folks; then begins the many, many pages devoted to the second 100 people, which fills up much of the remainder of the magazine, interspersed with a few normal articles (about which more in a moment).

There are some obvious choices on the 100 new additions to this list, of course, but the real pleasure of going through the profiles is finding people about whom you know nothing; never heard of them. For example, before you read the following name, August W. Derleth, had you ever heard of him? Before re-examining this issue, neither had I. But I was pleased to find that he came from my former home state of Wisconsin and was something of a pioneering editor, publisher, and writer. So I immediately began looking for his work and for information about him online. Philip Wylie, Arch Oboler, and John P. Fulton are other names on the list that might have sparked an interest among other readers. Taken together, this list can help enrich your appreciation of the history and breadth of science fiction and fantasy.

There can be an endless but sometimes fun game played with the list of the genre’s most important people. Who deserved to be on the list but was left off? I would add Starlog’s own former columnist David Gerrold, for one. Or you can go negative and ask who was on the list but shouldn’t be.

Such lists are inherently subjective, of course, but if they’re done well, they can burnish the publication’s authority. One of Starlog’s assets through much of its life was its assumed role as a standard-bearer of establishment SF; it helped define important topics, trends, and people. So, even with my basic skepticism about featuring a big list for a second time in Starlog’s every-100-issues tradition, the editors and writers have acquitted themselves well.

In other content this issue, Kerry O’Quinn uses his From the Bridge column to recount a speech he gave to a Mexican university, where he found a lot of Starlog readers. Stan Nicholls interviews longtime Starlog favorite Arthur C. Clarke, who discusses his latest novel, The Hammer of God, and some of his other works, including the Rama books. Bill Warren profiles filmmaker Joe Dante, who talks at length about the craze for remakes (and big-screen reinventions of old TV shows). And Kim Howard Johnson talks with director Terry Gilliam about films – live action and animated.

Marc Shapiro checks in with producer Gale Anne Hurd about Penal Colony, though she also discusses her work on Aliens and the Terminator series. James Mitchell contributes his first Starlog article, an interview with filmmaker Tim Burton; they discuss Batman, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Cabin Boy, and his upcoming Ed Wood, among other projects. Stan Nicholls talks with writer/editor/science-evangelist Ben Bova. And another first-time contributor, J. Stephen Bolhafner, interviews author William Gibson, who talks all things cyberpunk (including his experiences with and about Billy Idol).

“[L]ife was almost wiped out on our planet many times in the past, most recently 65 million years ago, give or take a week. The current thinking is that a large meteor or comet hit the Earth, causing an ecological catastrophe–the dinosaurs and three-quarters of all other species on land, sea and air were destroyed. Now, there are lots of craters on Mars, including one so big it’s not called a crater, it’s the Plain of helos. It’s 1,000 kilometers across. If something that large hit Mars, it might very well have destroyed any life there by blowing away the atmosphere. Whatever it was sent out a shock wave so powerful that it liquified the rock as it went through. Imagine sitting down to tea when THAT happened!”
–Ben Bova, interviewed by Stan Nicholls: “The Promise of Space”

For more, click on Starlog Internet Archive Project below or visit the Starlog Project's permanent site.

The Shatner Revival: The Starlog Project, Starlog 199, February 1994

William Shatner never really went away, of course. Before Star Trek, he had a long and varied career that included Shakespeare and more; after Trek, he acted in other movies (Trek and non-) and even starred in another prime time television show in the 1980s called T.J. Hooker. But in the mid-1990s, Shatner came back in a way that established himself as an immortal, or at least someone who clearly was going to be around a long time.

When he launched his Tekwar books, they were always likely multimedia candidates, and this issue Starlog highlights the Greg Evigan-starring television movies (it had already been translated into comics). Before the Tek wave had gone, it would also spawn a short-lived TV series and a video game.

There are lots of actors and other creative folks who have late-career resurgences; their rediscovery by the general public generally lasts a cycle and then recedes. But Shatner’s is still going strong in 2012, having conquered TV, social media (he’s got more than 1.4 million followers on Google+), dot-com success (Priceline), and yet more books, TV series (winning two Emmys for his Denny Crane portrayal), and videos.

But, as I noted, Shatner never really left. Even during that time that I tend to think of as his wandering through the desert phase – the 1970s – he was busy with stage shows, films, animated television, game shows, and commercials. Yet for all of that, it is fair to consider his Tek success as the birth of Shatner as multimedia entrepreneur, a role that he continues to play with much success today.

Starlog #199
84 pages (including covers)
Cover price: $4.95

This month, Starlog publishes its official statement of ownership, management and circulation. The total paid circulation for the issue closest to the statement's filing deadline is listed as 265,192 (a giant increase over the previous year's 164,886), including the number of paid subscriptions of 9,350 (little changed from 9,675 in the last year). Why did Starlog’s circulation take off like that? Part of it might have been a distribution strategy by the publisher; the total copies printed was a whopping 610,000 (more than twice what it was in previous years), which means there were way more than 330,000 returns unsold from the newsstand. As wasteful as that seems, it was possibly driven by the new newsstand competition Starlog was preparing to face from upstarts Cinescape, Sci Fi Universe, and Sci Fi Channel magazine (later renamed Sci Fi Entertainment), all of which would debut later in 1994. Control of the newsstands was something Starlog Group was experienced in.

Random classified ad under the “Miscellaneous” banner: “HOLLYWOOD WILL BE KILLING OFF STAR TREK – BUT! Hollywood has read our ‘strong support’ petition letter and – Hollywood says yes! This particular letter would definitely ‘force’ them to reconsider – if they are flooded with them! Please sign this letter and mail it back now! Or Star Trek is dead. To receive yours, enclose a S.A.S.E. within an envelope to …” It does make you think Starlog should have raised its classified ad pricing for each additional exclamation point used.

The rundown: This month, the magazine breaks with its usual photographic cover treatments and runs the illustrated image from the Shatner epic Tekwar; meanwhile Nana Visitor in Bajoran garb takes over the contents page. In his Medialog column, David McDonnell reports that “There will be another Star Trek TV spinoff, also following the adventures of a spaceship, one with a smaller crew complement than the Enterprise (and including a Vulcan, a Klingon, and possibly some Next Generation characters.” Which reminds me of the Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode featuring Laserblast, in which Mike saves the SOL by taking on Captain Janeway’s persona (and clothing) and saying at one point, “I’m responsible for the lives of 148 crewmembers aboard this ship, 144 of which we never see.”

Michael McAvennie reviews MechWarrior, Traveller, Magic: The Gathering, and more in his Gamelog column. The Communications letters from readers include a super-long letter defending Star Trek: The Next Generation, among other letters, plus Mike Fisher’s Creature Profile featuring the Mummy. Books reviewed in Booklog include Star Wars: The Truce at Bakura, The Far Kingdoms, Majyk by Accident, Growing Up Weightless, Turning Point, The Longing Ring, The Callahan Touch, ViraVax, When True Night Falls, Harm’s Way, The Chronicles of Pern: First Fall, Down Among the Dead Men, Out of Time, Crashcourse, Shroud of Shadow, The Cygnet and the Firebird, Catfantastic III (yes, a collection of short stories featuring “tales … of magical, mutant and mundane cats" – it’s what people did before LOL cats websites), Into the Green, and The Well-Favored Man: The Tale of the Sorcerer’s Nephew. In Videolog, David Hutchison reports the latest video releases, including Highlander, Robinson Crusoe on Mars, and a Twilight Zone boxed set. And in Fan Network, there’s the usual listing of conventions and directory of Trek fan clubs and publications (including Star Fetch: The Fun Fan Magazine, published in my home state of Wisconsin).

Ian Spelling, Starlog’s go-to guy for Star Trek reporting, interviews Nana Visitor, one of the stars of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Her role of a Bajoran officer aboard the space station was originally going to go to Michelle Forbes, who portrayed Ensign Ro on Next Generation, but Forbes reportedly wanted a movie career rather than being tied to a series. So Visitor stepped in. Craig W. Chrissinger talks with Ashley McConnell, a novelizer of Quantum Leap stories. She gives some interesting insight into the how-tos of writing licensed novels, such as negotiating her contract almost by accident, or how much freedom the writer has to write the stories (a lot, in her case). And Bill Warren profiles actor John D’Aquino, who portrays Lt. Ben Krieg on seaQuest DSV. (My favorite pullquote from the issue is in the D’Aquino article: “I was such a boring kid that I would memorize TV Guide.”)

Veteran film scorer John Barry tells writer Tom Soter about his work on James Bond films, The Black Hole, Howard the Duck, and more. Soter writes:

[Barry] remembers 1986’s Howard the Duck with a shudder and a chuckle. “I had just finished Out of Africa with the same company, which wound up a hugely successful movie; it won all the Academy Awards. I got this mad phone call [from the film company, Universal Pictures] and they said, ‘It’s George Lucas’ movie,’ and I thought, ‘Well, a cartoon death wizard, a ridiculous thing, it just might be fantastic.’ So I said, ‘OK,’” Barry scored sequences without seeing the special FX, recalling that “I went blindly, with confidence, and I thought that [Lucas] was going to be taking care of all that. That never worked out. I still don’t know what happened. It was such an unbelievable disaster. And I never met George Lucas.” 

Peter Bloch-Hansen previews the TekWar telefilm. John Vester interviews the seemingly tireless Star Wars novelist Kevin J. Anderson. Joe Nazzaro takes a look at Sylvester McCoy, who recalls his work as Doctor Who. Pat Jankiewicz continues Starlog’s eternal quest to interview every person ever involved with the Trek franchise, this time talking to actor Jan Shutan, who guest starred as Scotty’s girlfriend in “The Lights of Zetar.” Tom Weaver profiles Billy Benedict, co-star of the Adventures of Captain Marvel serials in 1941. In his From the Bridge column, Kerry O’Quinn highlights Mario, a friend who explains his inspirations for pursuing a film career. Mark Phillips interviews Robert Hamner, who discusses his writing credits in Star Trek (original), Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, and others. And in his Liner Notes, editor David McDonnell lays down the law about what Starlog’s staff can and can not do for you (hint: Don’t send them your fiction stories and don’t ask them to forward a letter to your favorite actor).

“I think, for sure, all the women who came before us made a difference in how our roles were destined. I’ve been in relaionships where you’ve tried to get a man to marry you, but he’s resisting the relationship. You figure he is just not the marrying kind and you leave him. Two months later, you find out he got married to the next woman he met. That seems to be a common pattern. He needed to be comfortable with [marriage], so he could finally do it in a fresh environment. I think, maybe, in a sense, that’s what happened with Star Trek. Marina [Sirtis] and all the other women had an effect on what Terry [Farrell] and I get to do on Deep Space Nine. And I’m very grateful to them.”
–Nana Visitor, actor, interviewed by Ian Spelling, “Major Player” 

For more, click on Starlog Internet Archive Project below or visit the Starlog Project's permanent site.

Famous Magazines' First Covers

Huffington Post has an amusing (but slim) gallery of the first covers of some famous magazines, such as Sports Illustrated and Seventeen. See it here.

For those of you who come to this blog because of its widespread fame as a source of info on science fiction publications, well, then here's something for you. The first issues of some famed SF mags, mostly film mags.

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.

Buy Me on eBay ... Apparently

I actually rather enjoy finding eBay sellers who use my Starlog Project (aka the Starlog Internet Archive Project) as their descriptive text for issues of Starlog they're listing for sale. I'm pleased that the Starlog Project basically has become the go-to source for information on back issues of the late Starlog magazine.

The only annoying thing is that some of the sellers don't give credit to me or link to the Project. So I was pleased to stumble across this seller, who links prominently to my blog series. Thank you. (Then again, s/he accidentally listed the item for sale as being "Starlog Internet Archive Project: Starlog #9, October 1977: Logan's Run Spotli" which is being a little too literal and not literal enough. Thanks for the link; but people, of course, won't be buying the Starlog Internet Archive; they'll just be buying that issue of the magazine s/he has for sale.  But whatever.)

And buy it you should (said Yoda). Hey, $1.99 and free shipping? It's a deal.

The Star Wars Holiday Special Goes Glee

From

The 1978 TV one-shot program featuring Bea Arthur, Wookie Life Day, Harvey Korman, an animated Boba Fett, and way too much singing, is being resurrected. It will be the basis of an upcoming holiday episode of Glee, reports Britain's SFX magazine.

Sort of a Muppets Meet The Carol Burnett Show, the Star Wars Holiday Special aired on CBS in 1978 and is generally an unloved – and oft-mocked – part of the Star Wars universe. It only snagged one magazine cover at the time (Starlog #19, above), despite the Star Wars fever raging in the young country at the time. Directed by Steven Binder and written by five writers, including Bruce Vilanch, the show was a hodgepodge of cameos by the stars of the original Star Wars film and new characters trying gamely to make a kiddie-friendly show.

It remains to be seen if Glee will treat it as aging cheese that has become good again or as a source for mocking.

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.

Looking at Wookies: This Week in Cool Magazine Covers

Apropos of nothing whatsoever, I serve up for you today two covers that feature the same cool photo of Chewbacca from The Empire Strikes Back.

The Fantastic Films cover on the left is the September 1980 issue, one of approximately 4 zillion Empire-themed covers that FF published. (Hey, you go with what sells newsstand copies; no argument there.) The cover on the right was actually not an external cover; it was inside the July 1980 issue of competitor Starlog, serving as the intro page to its special anniversary section.

Though I take second place to no one when it comes to over-the-top Starlog appreciation, I have to give first-place honors here to the Fantastic Films cover. It's colors are better, and even the piling on of endless cover text works in the manner they did it. Either way, we need more Wookies on magazing covers.

Click on the image to biggie-size it.

Cover Issues: Batman & Robin on German & English Starlogs

This post is really just for magazine geeks like me, though Batman geeks might also enjoy it. Below are three magazine covers.

The English-language Starlog #239 from June 1997 features the stars of Batman & Robin.

The same basic cover is used on the German edition of Starlog, though it was released as a special edition ("Starlog feiert Batman & Robin" – "Starlog celebrates Batman & Robin") in Germany. The German Starlogs were put together by the New York headquarters of Starlog Group, with the involvement of some German language translators and consultants.

And, finally, there's a special one-shot English-language Starlog Presents Batman & Other Comics Heroes magazine that utilizes a different cover photo but clearly the designers were enamored of the lettering used on the German magazine title.

All of this plus $3 will get you a cup of coffee, of course, but it's fun to contemplate magazine designs sometimes. Again, for geeks.

Why Didn’t Sylvester Stallone Run for Governor? The Starlog Project, Starlog #196, November 1993

The 1980s and 1990s were the era of over-muscled heroes, from Douglas Quaid to Rambo to the Terminator. Brains were out, cartoonishly rippled chests and arms were in. And two actors ruled in this era.

There were pretenders, such as Dolf Lundgren. But the two actors who were consistent box office gold were Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger. And, though I might not care for many of the pictures they starred in, certainly millions of others loved them and threw their money at any cinema showing the flicks. (Did Stallone and Schwarzenegger ever confront each other on screen? I don’t think so. But it would have been something to see.)

So they kept making the films. With 1993’s Demolition Man, Stallone takes the lead again, playing a police officer cryogenically frozen for several decades, who is awakened to find that the world has gotten stranger during his time asleep. The antagonist is Wesley Snipes, a criminal who was also frozen and thawed to provide some drama in 2032.

On page 29 of this issue of Starlog, a photo caption reads: “Death Race 2000 is Stallone’s only other SF venture up until Demolition Man. The future, however, holds quite a few more.” That would come true a year later with the release of Judge Dredd, the long-awaited but disappointing American film of the legendary UK comics.

Meanwhile, Demolition Man reportedly debuted at the box office in the #1 slot and went on to make almost three times its production cost.

Starlog #196
92 pages (including covers)
Cover price: $4.95

This classified ad on page 79 caught my eye: “SCI-FI + ROCK = AUDIO COMIX. Series on cassette. Buy one. $11.50. …” No, I still don’t have any idea what that equation means. Also this issue, the magazine advertises its latest licensed movie magazine: Jason Goes to Hell, featuring all of the gruesomeness horror fans need.

The rundown: Sylvester Stallone’s Demolition Man character takes up the cover shot, while a Joe Chiodo illustration of RoboCop controls the contents page. In his Medialog column, David McDonnell reports first news that Tom Cruise got the controversial call to portray the vampire Lestat in Interview with the Vampire. Has anyone told Anne Rice yet? Michael McAvennie’s Gamelog reviews Iron Helix, Acclaim’s Alien3, and more. Communications letters cover Star Trek, of course (including one writer who says that Star Trek: The Next Generation “is frequently a politically correct bore”), as well as The Abyss and Lost in Space, while Mike Fisher’s Creature Profile features an Invader from Venus. And Booklog reviews Virtual Light, Night of the Cooters, The Jaguar Princess, Retief and the Rascals, Camelot 30K, Dancer’s Rise, Icarus Descending, Manhattan Transfer, Greendaughter, Against a Dark Background, Hunty Party, Larissa, and On Basilisk Station.

Of course the Fan Network features the usual convention calendar and Scott Briggs’ directory of fan clubs and publications. David Hutchison’s Videolog includes Francis Ford Coppola’s movie Bram Stoker’s Dracula, plus other recent video releases. A two-page Tribute section includes Jean-Marc Lofficier’s obituary for publishing legend Lester Del Rey, and Tom Scherman remembers production designer Harper Goff, whose work includes Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and other classics. And Kerry O’Quinn’s From the Bridge column features a letter from novelist Simon R. Green talking about his early perserverence in becoming a successful author.

Marc Shapiro interviews actor Sylvester Stallone, who calls his new movie Demolition Man “a science fiction/action/comedy.” Kyle Counts talks with actor Richard Hatch, who – in 1993 – was just getting started trying to revive Battlestar Galactica. Joe Nazzaro chats with Red Dwarf star Robert Llewellyn, who also talks about his appearance in the ill-fated American pilot of the UK’s Red Dwarf.

Steven Spielberg, for all of his astounding successes at the movie box office, has never been a raging success on the small screen. His Amblin Entertainment would try again – with Spielberg as executive producer – on the submarine show seaQuest DSV (which, as I noted in an earlier writeup, was dubbed by one early critic as Voyage to the Bottom of the Ratings). Well, Bill Warren previews the new show; like all TV series preview articles, it’s filled with the actors and other creators making glowing, positive remarks about the show and telling you little of real insight or detail. A more successful sea voyage would be the 1993 Sea Trek cruise in the Caribbean, about which David Hutchison reports. A highlight of the trip – or at least an unexpected occurrence during the voyage – is the rescue of four Cuban refugees at sea.

On dry land, Ian Spelling interviews Trek’s Marina Sirtis, who describes how things might have been different if she had gotten the part for which she had originally auditioned: the security chief (eventually played by Denise Crosby). David Hirsch profiles composer Basil Poledouris, who discusses his work on RoboCop, Conan the Barbarian, and other films. Mark Phillips brings us back to the water with an interview of Allan Hunt, who portrayed Stu Riley in one season of Irwin Allen’s Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. (See? This entire issue is connected.) Ian Spelling also talked to Sigourney Weaver about Alien3, which she discusses in a one-page article. She admits that the film “was sort of a downer” but defends it as a brave attempt to continue making each Alien film different than the previous ones. And editor David Hutchison wraps it all up in his Liner Notes column with a report on his trip to Australia, where he did not pick up any Cuban refugees.

“Trying to generate renewed interest in Battlestar, either as a theatrical feature or as a three-parter for the Sci-Fi Channel … Hatch has written a script that picks up where the original Battlestar left off. … ‘It ties up all the loopholes and puts the characters on track to finding their home. My story tells what that journey would really be like, rather than suddenly having them find Earth, which is what they did in Galactica 1980. [While Hatch was offered a role in that incarnation of the saga, he turned it down due to work conflicts.] I think they threw the premise away and turned it into a gimmicky show. The original series had a much different mystical, profound quality to it,’ Hatch observes.”
–Kyle Counts, writer: “Life Beyond the Battlestars”

For more, click on Starlog below or visit the Starlog Project's permanent site.

Ed's Pop Culture Shack Takes the Fangoria Challenge

It looks like Schlockmania has competition:

Check out Ed's Pop Culture Shack for a new series of Fangoria magazine restrospectives, starting with the earliest issue in his collection, #2 from 1979.

Readers of my blog already know about Schlockmania's fun series chronicling the early years of Fango.

Is there room for both series? Absolutely. It's fun to get each person's take on the issue, the films highlighted inside, and the times (the '70s were a definite watershed for many folks!). I like them both, and I recommend them for any movie magazine fan and horror film fan who wants to do some digital time traveling back to those pre-digital days.

As everyone knows, I like to do that.

.