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OMNI Magazine Remembered
An anonymous reader noted that Slate is doing a bit of a retrospective on OMNI. If you're anything like me, reading it was a treat. At home I suffered through Popular Mechanics, but OMNI was what I wished I had. There's many interesting things in the article, like the fact that OMNI is the place where William Gibson first coined the term "Cyberspace."
The Alien Chicks with the glossy lips were hot!
But yeah, loved that magazine and especially the short stories. Not very reliable science stuff but overall a very optimistic and stylish mag that back then was a nice counterpoint to Heavy Metal which was less rooted in reality.
But both had Hot Alien Chicks! :)
OMNI had the coolest illustrators of the day - about the only one of my longstanding favorites that I don't recall ever seeing
in the mag was Frank Frazetta.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
(by 2010, robots will--yes!--"clean the rug, iron the clothes, and shovel the snow.")
Roomba is there. and they have these dryer cabinets that dry your shirts on the hanging on a rack so you don't have to iron them. and global warming will mean no more shoveling of snow.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
It was more on an entertainment magazine than a science magazine really. I always prefered to get my Sci Fi straight up via publications like Analog, but I found Omni to be entertaining often enough in my youth. It really was more Sci Fi than a true science mag though.
"Why pizza burns the roof of the mouth" articles that ran on the last page. 2 or 3, IIRC, arguing over whether it was the Melted Mozzarella Layer (MML) or Tomato Sauce Layer (TSL) that caused the burning.
Best Slashdot Co
It lived with a solid core of futurism. Futurism is kind of dead now, now that we're using phones to surf the web and cops are using sonic weapons against crowds. The future's here and Omni guessed a lot of it right in the 70's and 80's.
Only if Letters to Penthouse could be this accurate. BRB. Pizza delivery girl is here.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
Man that just flicked the coolest retro switch in my head ... guess its time to read Neuromancer again.
--Greg
I once saw a new magazine on the news stand called "The world in Focus" billing itself as a whole newsstand of features for £1.75. It later became Focus, which became BBC Focus, which I think is still running. Was a pretty good read last time I saw it in the UK. There was a time when it had an editor who had a good sense of humour and the articles were written in a light-hearted way. For example there was one about what Europe would have looked like had Napoleon stopped trying to annex every bit of land that touched his, referred to him as 'Boney' all the way through the article.
Print is dead? Not quite yet. There's something about the experience of a nice glossy magazine with an attractive magazine layout, instantly accessible and not so big that you need a search engine.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
Vernor Vinge first mentions the Technological Singularity in the January 1983 issue in the First Word. I've got that one in a closet along with all the first 3 years except the first issue.
It all starts at 0
until the mass media got a hold of it. Then it was cyberthis and cyberthat. Nowadays, every time I see the cyber prefix, I want to find William Gibson and smack him one on the mouth.
I only remember this as the other publication by the publisher of the once-great Penthouse. ;-)
Porn or science, resistance is futile to the Internet. ;-)
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
Wow. That takes me back. My dad got me a subscription to OMNI in the late 80's. It was always a good day when the latest ish would show up on the kitchen table when I got home from school. When it folded I looked around for something to replace it, but there never really was its equal. Wired came close during its peak in the mid- to late-90s, but it didn't have the usually short fiction or kooky charm. Realms of Fantasy magazine continues to be my source for short fiction (though it was strictly fantasy, nothing approaching sci-fi is allowed to touch its pages), kooky ads, and the Folkroots column is great. But by the 2000s I had dropped all my print science mag subscriptions and moved solely online. Thanks /.!
obviously no deficiencies vs. no obvious deficiencies
I remember reading it when they started and it seemed to be kinda the "Wired" magazine of the day, but then they got into pop sci-fi stuff (probably to appeal more to the masses) and then it just got weird with stories of Alien abductions and alien sex and alien whatever. yeah...the "alien whatever"...that's when I stopped reading it.
Oh man I used to love this mag, I had long forgotten about it. I subscribed for several years. I was in college from '78-'81 and that is that main period I remember reading. I read an article about the development of video games and how flight simulator technology was being applied. When I left college I went in the air force and became a flight simulator technician. I chose that job from the list based on reading about it in Omni.
Definitely the best decision I ever made. I found I had a knack for technology and working on/with computers. At my high school there were no computers, most people had never seen one. I never saw a computer in college except maybe in the administration building when they took my money. If I had not read that article and chosen a technology field in the AF I would probably be a burnt out school teacher.
For years, I kept the very first edition of OMNI magazine safe in my room at my father's house.
Trips to work in Yellowstone, five years in the Navy and my travels since, last time I checked, the magazine was no longer in the bedroom any more as of about 10 years ago. Seems dad threw it out with a few other things he considered "clutter". Oh well. :/
I read it occasionally when I was a little kid. The combination of actual science along with fringe or outright pseudoscientific claims (alien visitations and hauntings seemed common choices) left a lasting impression on me as a kid. I ended up eventually adopting a sane, skeptical outlook but it took many years. I have to wonder how many people got lost in nonsense from reading OMNI at an impressionable age and never really recovered.
Sadly as a growing adolescent it became clear to me Omni had jumped the shark when they showed full page color illustrations of dinosaurs mating...as a featured article. Omni, I loved you, but that was the end.
Anyone remember Mondo 2000? I bought & read issues of that, but looking back, it was just pure performance art garbage. I swear that magazine tried to worship anyone related to The WELL in every issue. Oooh! Circuit bending! Ooh! My life on a webcam! Boy did that get old.
Exactly. Omni was like the National Enquirer of science magazines. It was geek porn, which makes sense, considering the publisher.
Back in the 80s I recall reading an article in OMNI that debunked many of the popular sci-fi myths. Among the notable points:
* Invisibility implies blindness since your retinas wouldn't absorb any light.
* Time travel without space travel would suck too, since you'd most likely re-materialize in empty space.
* Giant insects will collapse under the own weight.
i wonder if i could sell my slightly worn copy of omni from the 80's. the one where the stephen king short story firestarter was first published?
OMNI rocked in all the ways that matter.
As mentioned, the sci-fi, the science, the palpable sensuality of it's envisioned future ... it was the death of OMNI which led me to seek solace in the emergent WIRED. For a time, it was a suitable heir.
And the death of WIRED (just try and argue that it ain't) has led me ... nowhere.
I'd gladly pay $36 a year for a worthy successor to either one.
See you space cowboy
I cut and pasted the top of the page here, go to the link to read it in all its glory.
http://www.deepscience.com/justsilly/fun006.html
Results of a contest for "theories" sponsored by Omni magazine.
Back -- Next
GRAND PRIZE WINNER:
When a cat is dropped, it always lands on its feet. And when toast is dropped, it always lands with the buttered side facing down. I propose to strap buttered toast to the back of a cat; the two will hover, spinning inches above the ground. With a giant buttered cat array, a high-speed monorail could easily link New York with Chicago. [see below for further info on buttered cats - Ed.]
RUNNERS-UP:
#1 If an infinite number of rednecks riding in an infinite number of pickup trucks fire an infinite number of shotgun rounds at an infinite number of highway signs, they will eventually produce all the world's great literary works in Braille.
#2 Why Yawning Is Contagious: You yawn to equalize the pressure on your eardrums. This pressure change outside your eardrums unbalances other people's ear pressures, so they must yawn to even it out.
#3 Communist China is technologically underdeveloped because they have no alphabet and therefore cannot use acronyms to communicate ideas at a faster rate.
#4 The earth may spin faster on its axis due to deforestation. Just as a figure skater's rate of spin increases when the arms are brought in close to the body, the cutting of tall trees may cause our planet to spin dangerously fast.
HONORABLE MENTION:
The quantity of consonants in the English language is constant. If omitted in one place, they turn up in another. When a Bostonian "pahks" his "cah," the lost r's migrate southwest, causing a Texan to "warsh" his car and invest in "erl wells."
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
....it was indeed !
Omni died for one simple and oft overlooked reason - it stayed in stasis from the day of it's birth. Really, pick up practically any issue from the late 1980's and compare it to any issue from the early years - and it's exactly the same, stylistically, thematically, and in content. The world moved on and Omni didn't.
Hence, it's readership and ad revenue declined steadily across the 80's, leading to the now infamous 'ad-on-the-cover'. In the background, but increasingly visible in the contents, the editors frantically tried to update their material without actually changing their editorial philosophy. By the time it died, it was already a relic propped up only by the unwillingness of Guccione to either change the status quo or to disconnect the feeding tube.
I was a charter subscriber to OMNI. Actually, it wasn't OMNI I subscribed to, it was called NOVA at the time. There was apparently was a fuss made by WGBH and their NOVA TV series so the magazine's name was changed to OMNI before the first issue was published.
In the beginning it was quite good but in the later years it veered into pseudo-science and other nonsense and I lost interest and let my subscription lapse.
Beta sux! Join the Slashcott! http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4760465&cid=46173047
[Mother]
Now far off to your right, we have a welcome neighbor...
[Father]
Our GE nuclear power plant, dear.
In Mirrorshades.
I did read the William Gibson short stories in Omni though.
Ellen Datlow Rocked as a editor
Awesome short story. It so opened my eyes to what Sci-fi could be. My dad got it and I remember thinking "WOW".
All this text, and not a mention of OMNI Magazine. Was this post somehow placed by a futuristic cyberspace type program, a snow shoveling robot, or an alien chick with glossy lips?
I was a snot-nosed little kid when I first picked up Omni and read "Flying Saucer Rock And Roll". I had learned about the Great East Coast Blackout from reruns of Bewitched and other shows. I had learned about doo-wop music because that's what records my parents had. Howard did a mash up that blew my little elementary school mind and I added Omni to the pile of comics I'd buy every month. I remember how SHOCKED I was when I finally got into porn and discovered that Omni and Penthouse had the same publisher and very similar designs. Continuum was essentially the Vietnam Veteran's Advisor for geeks!
I still have a bunch of copies stashed away somewhere that I found when cleaning out my dad's attic. Now I want to go find them! Good winter project for one of these weekends...
I really wish I could find a comprehensive online index. A few things I'd really like to read:
--The world's hardest crossword puzzle. A friend and I worked on this together, spending hours ( pre-WWW ) at the library searching for answers to clues like "four dimensional hypercube" and "piniped". I'd like to give it a go now with Google's help as well as seeing the answers, which I never saw.
--Someone took a mobile home and worked to make it as energy efficient as possible. I remember it was super-insulated, even having foam "corks" to block off deep set windows at night and keep heat in. A tiny woodstove, maybe one intended for an ice shack, provided all the heat needed.
Every once in a while I'll see someone on Ebay selling issues from the periods I think these ran, and ponder buying a several year set to see if I can find them.
Of course, even better would be if someone put all the old issues online.
Does anyone know where I can get the plans for that paper airplane from around maybe 1983? That sucker flew a good 200ft at a pop. I'd love to make another one to show off to skeptics.
I loved the magazine, then they became a magazine for the supernatural and other crap that I could care less about.
It was a nice run for the first year or so, then I stopped buying it.
When you sympathize with stupidity, you start thinking like an idiot.
Later that year, I was at a trade show in Dallas. His other publication, Penthouse was present as well as his competitor - Playboy.
The contrast between the two companies could not have been more different. The Playboy booth was marginally tasteful and people were laughing and enjoying themselves with the pretty 'girls-next-door' - OK, 'fantasy-girls-next-door'.
The Penthouse booth was full of wary, pouting sluts who paced from side-to-side as they were beeing leered at by the mostly male passers-by. It looked more like a zoo enclosure than a booth.
Omni was somewhat similar in that it wrote in a style that was condescending and often trite. Here or there, I enjoyed an article, but most of it was so fanciful as to be disengenuous.
In short, I don't miss it.
*** Don't be dull.***
It was part of the era of when scientists were still able to dream big! I remember an article from Dr. Forward (God bless him and may he rest in peace) using condensed matter to nullify gravity, seriously excellent article.
God, how I miss those slick, pheremone-impregnated [citation needed] pages. The first issue I ever bought was the one with "Johnny Mnemonic" in it.
OMNI magazine is alive and well in 2010. What's the matter with you people?
Here's proof. (Ignore the Apple IIgs thingy he hauled to the beach though..)
Clip from 2010: The Year We Make Contact
I definitely have some fond memories of looking through my dad's stacks of OMNI. Of course, I also liked looking through his stacks of Penthouse...
OMNI had a lot of neat-o stuff, like some pretty awesome paper airplane designs. It was also the first place I saw a stereogram, which at the time was just an array of black and white dots, but started showing up everywhere a few years later, in colour, as those "Magic Eye" pictures.
Didn't care too much for all the supernatural stuff, but I always liked that montage scene in the middle of Ghostbusters where the dudes start showing up on magazine covers, and an OMNI cover goes by with pictures of their proton packs and ghost traps.
Not to be overlooked here on /., OMNI's very title was early 733t-speek (it's a launch countdown, if you don't get it).
First place I read Gibson and lots of others, plus those glossy ads for Compuserve eventually led me to ring up a year's allowance in gaming fees in the first month over the 300-baud modem on my Color Computer.
We've come a long way with both technology and sci-fi. As much as I loved reading Clark and Gibson, these days I'm blown away by the likes of Charlie Stross ( Accelerando ) and Peter Watts ( Blindsight ).
Reading OMNI always felt a bit like an exercise in wishful thinking. It was like reading car magazines that feature incredible prototypes. Yes they're awesome, but you're never going to see one in your lifetime. OMNI was about what was possible, not what was actually happening.
To read about real advances, I preferred Scientific American, especially back when Martin Gardner wrote for them. Prior to that, I never used the terms "recreational" and "mathematics" in the same sentence.
On a side note, there was a fantastic 3D illusion created as a tribute to Gardner. It's still available for download here.
people got lost in nonsense from reading OMNI at an impressionable age and never really recovered.
Why would you want to recover? The world had a lot more possibilities between those covers.
My dad was proud to have had a joke published in OMNI. I think it was for a contest. It's here: http://www.jpnordin.com/fun/science.htm
The short story Johnny Menmonic first appeared in OMNI, and was probably my first exposure to Gibson as a kid. The other OMNI SF story that sticks in my head was Sandkings by George R. R. Martin. OMNI showcased some great SF and art. The art for Johnny Menmonic was a Helnwein self-portrait - some of you might recognize it as the cover of the Scorpions album Blackout, similar to the cover of Rammstein's Sehnsucht. There was even an occasional long poem.
I also recall an issue where there were various political predictions, including that the USSR would become more capitalist while the US would become more socialist by 2020, IIRC. Not bad predictions (although terribly general), even though the USSR dissolved. Russia has become more capitalist and the US has expanded social programs even before the current congress (think SCHIP, etc.).
OMNI introduced me to my favorite limerick:
If binary digits are bits,
Then decimal ones could be dits,
And when things get weary,
Try something less dreary,
Like playing with trinary tits.
And the "Anti-Matter" section was always a fun read. AFAIK, there's nothing like OMNI around anymore. These days, futurism, when one can find it at all, tends toward either the intolerably bleak or some virtual reality mental masturbation. No, Star Trek doesn't count as futurism. With so few of us eagerly anticipating brighter futures, I wonder if enough of us are being inspired to create them.
- T
... glossy, slick, intelligent in the right places, readable from cover to cover. Orson Scott Card's A Thousand Deaths was my first introduction to him, and that story still creeps me out. When Omni's staff inexplicably began to promote those silly UFO and parapsychology pieces, I allowed my subscription to lapse.
Or how many of us now watch SyFy (still hating the name change, as much as when Omni left for the web). I used to steal my big brothers copies and read them and loved this magazine. Guess its a good thing I didnt take his Penthouse and Playboys as often, or I would have thought that was how women are supposed to look and act ALL the time.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your politician, and hitting them?"
Sitting on my bookshelf is the first issue, with a copy of the ORIGINAL Ad for the magazine (I assume Dad cut it out of Penthouse - I was a tad young), with it's Original name - NOVA
-- 73 de KG2V For the Children - RKBA! "You are what you do when it counts" - the Masso
Anybody know where to get back issues or scanned issues of Mondo 2000? Whole thing seems to have dropped off the face of the earth, except for a few single issues that surface occasionally on Amazon.
"These people look deep within my soul and assign me a number based on the order in which I joined" --Homer re:
I loved it in the early- and middle-years of its publication; there certainly wasn't anything else like it. I was young so perhaps it would not strike me the same now.
Later towards its death, it veered way off into "bigfoot and UFO hunting" stuff. If you had been reading it all along, you could tell the end was near.
~
I recently watched the movie 2010 in honor of it actually being 2010. There was a scene with Dr. Floyd sitting at the beach using a laptop with an OMNI magazine next to him that I think was supposed to show what an intellectual he was. :)
Yes I remember OMNI fondly right along with Future magazine. I even have the OMNI music collection.
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
It was great for a naive teenage geek looking for the new and weird, but looking back at some old issues I still have it's way too new age and filled with crap I really don't believe in anymore.
Back in the early 80s my mother developed angina, and was prescribed nitroglycerine tablets for it - you popped one under your tounge when you felt the onset of chest pains and it helped keep your coronary arteries open. Although they worked, as they were reactive rather than proactive, they weren't so useful if the chest pains and breathlessness were particularly debillitating. Then OMNI had a short piece about a new treatment from the US: a patch that contained the drug and slowly released it through the skin to stop the angina attacks happening in the first place. I showed this to my mum, who showed it her doctors and she became just the second woman in the whole UK to receive the treatment.
Thanks OMNI, I still miss you.
It isn't really the same. When something is on a channel labeled science fiction has all sorts of clearly fictional material it isn't going to have the same potential impact. Also, OMNI wasn't the only influence in that regard, but one of a few.
I built my first hexahexaflexagon following instructions and cutting up the pages of Omni...good times. Beautiful little paper topographical wonder.