Slashdot Mirror
Omni Magazine To Reboot
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Adi Robertson reports in The Verge that classic science fiction magazine Omni, created in 1978 by Penthouse mogul Bob Guccione and partner Kathy Keeton, is coming back — and with it, questions about how our vision of science and science fiction has changed since Omni closed up shop in 1996. 'There's a heavy dose of nostalgia in the proceedings, and it's not just about bringing back an old name,' writes Robertson. 'Longtime editor Ben Bova has described Omni as "a magazine about the future," but since his time as editor, our vision of the future has been tarnished — or, at the very least, we've started looking at the predictions of the past with rose-tinted glasses.' Omni's resurrection comes courtesy of Jeremy Frommer, a collector and businessman who acquired Guccione's archives earlier this year. Like the original magazine, now available at the internet archive, the new Omni will publish a mixture of new fiction and nonfiction publishing the old illustrations that helped define Omni alongside the stories. Longtime science writer Claire Evans will edit the new online project described as an 'Omni reboot' but plans to jettison one of the magazine's most dated elements — a fondness for extraterrestrials and conspiracy theories. 'Omni always had a distressing new agey tinge to it,' says Bruce Sterling. 'There was a lot of "aircraft of the pharaohs'"rubbish going on, which I didn't have very much tolerance for.'"
I hope it does well. Print is not doing well these days. Perhaps a heaily web-integrated setup like Wired would help....
Just for the nostalgia effect.
"Chance favors the prepared mind." ~Me
OMNI's golden years were the early 1980s. There was so much of what we now call "junk" science that made the magazine so compelling. It took Popular Science and stretched it to the extreme edge of believability which is a big part of what made it so interesting and entertaining.
Kriston
First Art Bell gets back in circulation and then so does Omni. Clearly the end times are upon us.
Before there was Internet, there were things like Omni to feed us geeks. It's dead. Let it rest in peace. Some version of the future that it may or may not have predicted is here. A dystopian future with mass state surveillance and pocket computers. No flying cars; but a future anyway.
Omni used to be a great magazine in the 80s and gradually shifted to a "magical technology will save you" magazine. I remember seeing a headline to the effect of "Ours will be the first generation to live forever". That magazine was one of the first grown up magazines I used to buy as a kid. That, and National Lampoon.
---- The above post was generated by the Turing Institute. Maybe.
plans to jettison one of the magazine's most dated elements - a fondness for extraterrestrials and conspiracy theories.
They're just doing what their new insect overlords command them to.
Have you read my blog lately?
If that's a tired theme, turn it into spoof fodder. SciFi and comedy are a match made in heaven (in outer space?).
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
No smiling allowed in science. No joy. No room for the human soul. Just rows and columns of numbers. And mobile phones. Lots of mobile phones.
> "Omni always had a distressing new agey tinge to it"
Created by a guy in the 1970s who had a half-unbuttoned polyester print shirt exposing a hairy chest with gold chains? No way!
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Anyone know which Claire Evans is referred to. Google not producing a single definitive answer.
I think this idea is fine if they bring in a new world of "magazine" and what magazine means to people. Content is king after all. Become Flipboard's flagship news source. Master RSS/Atom syndication. Something that stands out. But don't do it the same way all over again. I think Science readers are at an all time high. Would be a grand time to have a go to source, that did it in a easy to consume manner.
@Valentinial
This sounds exciting. I was a huge fan of the magazine and still have many copies gathering dust in various places. Omni introduced me to new artists and writers I'd never heard of before, posted light articles about various scientific matters, and from "Continuum" to "Anti-Matter" gave readers a chaotic, but often optimistic glimpse at possible futures.
Please don't leave the optimism out. There's been a resurgence of neo-Malthusian gloom in the last decade or so. If the new Omni becomes a mouthpiece for doom-mongers, I'll gladly walk the other way. Oh, and a little fringe science is kind of fun, too. Maybe ESP and flying saucers have become passé, but I'd like a serving of zero-point energy and parallel universes, please.
"Aircraft of The Pharaoh". Isn't that a The Clash song?
The article said it will live on the web, with weekly updates. I am pulling for them, but I too am skeptical of the viability of print for a product like this. Nostalgia is great, but it doesn't usually make money in the long run.
I know I don't know what I don't know.
I read Omni from it's inception till the very end (I only have a few issues left, but the "We're Back!" issue was ironic). There were great SF stories and articles to read, but the UFO stuff just won't work now, IMHO.
Compute was by the same publishers, and I enjoyed it as well.
" This is just as stupid as the fake shows on the Discovery channel like Amish Mafia ..."
But unlike italo-Americans, the Amish don't complain, because they won't know it exists.
Now you've gone too far. If that doesn't deserve a "Flamebait" mod, I don't know what does.
Imagine (those born roughly in the 70s/80s/90s, what their "mind- and character-development" would have been like without these great influences, such as OMNI, science fiction in general, basic arts, computer science, games and the accompanying magazines, boardgames, all the great artists, etc. etc. Man..There are so many possibilities these days for OMNI to prosper. Excellent development, simply excellent. 8)
s/progres/progress/ .. not able to re-edit on /. as anonymous, what a pain in the mind. I should pay more attention while posting. ;b
s/bett/best/ .. This is getting hilarious, heh. Side note: Luckfully I won't be an editor at OMNI or any other magazine. Phew. :>
https://archive.org/search.php?query=collection%3A%22omni-magazine%22
6 Great Drug-Induced Creations - http://matadornetwork.com/bnt/6-great-drug-induced-creations/
LSD: The Geek's Wonder Drug? - Wired - http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2006/01/70015?currentPage=all
Fermented fruit, mushrooms, and others. This idea thing. From pointy sticks to fire in the sky at night.
Another reason the overlords try to control it exclusively for themselves. Not homeostatic.
This trash was not part of the *original* Omni, but what it became towards the bitter end. When Omni finally closed up shop it was a shadow of what it was in the early days, and long overdue.
Ill check it out of course, but ill hold hopes until i see if they can recover the old magic. I doubt they pull it off.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I would buy that for a dollar!!
Is it going to redo every old issue?
I don't recall it being very "new-age-y" until the last year or so, when it got very thin and most of the articles were about alien 'stories', crystal healing, ect. There was always the beginning page of the one section about UFOs, but that was it--usually.
I also loved it,,,,, except for the declining era. Easily my favorite magazine growing up. It'd be fun to see it again but print is a tough business to be in. There are huge foundations behind the magazines that deliver quality stories and glossy content regularly, like Smithsonian and National Geographic. To attempt such a thing isn't a minor task.
I have read elsewhere that usually about 85% of a print magazine's income is advertising. The main reason they place the cover price at a given point is to help tailor the demographics (why the Robb Report costs $15 an issue, or is it higher now?). These days it seems like most geeks I know (including myself) are heavily predisposed to shopping online for most items. Whenever I pick up a magazine I sometimes glance at the ads and think "would I buy any of this stuff?" and my answer is usually "no, no, no, no, no,,,,"
Stop calling every resurrection a fucking reboot! You reboot a computer, not a magazine, not a movie, not a TV show. The ONLY thing that can be rebooted is a computer, outside of that the term "reboot" has zero meaning. For fuck's sake, it's like when all those marketing pieces of shit latched on to "cyber" and "virtual" for every fucking thing.
If you use the word "reboot" and you aren't referring to a computer, then you are a fucking moron and you don't have a clue.
(A)bort, (R)etry, (F)ail.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
How about the documented aircrafts and warheads in the Vedas. Zero tolerance for thousands year old scriptures describing modern technology too?
Why bring back an old magazine title when it will end up being more full of ads then actual articles? 10+ years ago I used to read Popular Science, Popular Mechanics, and Scientific American all the time and it was worthwhile reading. Now in the last 4-5 years i've noticed in the above mentioned magazines there is literally twice as many ads with the majority of them being 3-8 page ads trying to hype some product, car, etc, the usual two page ads, and so on. Plus, a lot more mail in cards that everyone basically rips out and tosses in the trash anyways.
I know the magazine publishing companies whine they have to survive in this era to keep making issues but keep a lot less ads in the magazines and way more articles and stories and you'll get more subscribers who prefer magazines that aren't 85% ads and 15% articles.
You must master your joystick like a fisherman masters bait! - Gimpy
OMNI magazine was my introduction to James Randi, who's adeptness at politely skewering the spoonbenders of the world has greatly influenced my own level of skepticism
I have to wonder if Randi's level of involvement with the magazine was coincident with the inclusion of 'fringe' stories
Now?
We have pervasive police-state surveillance, US Government cocaine flights from central America and "Conspiracy Realities" exposed by Snowden, Assange, Michael Hastings and Andrew Warren, among others.
The dark future of Stanislaw Lem's "Memoirs Found in a Bathtub" is here.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
oh, what's the point though, the web is full of free porn no anyways
And what do you get?
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Guccione should be described as something and Penthouse mogul e.g. millionaire-playboy and Penthouse mogul, not just 'Penthouse mogul.'
Remember before there was 50 Shades of Gray there was Penthouse Forum.
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
Funny you mention Wired. I was just talking about OMNI the other day and the closest example I could come up with was Wired. The same sort of starry-eyed promotions about technologies 'only 5 years away' and endless prognostications about the glorious or terrifying future.
http://www.masturbateforpeace.com/
Brilliant...thanks
Wired is still around? Really, not being snotty, I thought they were long gone.
"He's lost in a 'floyd hole"
The high point of Omni magazine was the Frank Herbert interview in the 1980s. I have a copy of it (somewhere) but don't remember the exact issue. Came with artwork and everything. Those days are gone, though, when one magazine could interview one of the leading sf authors - now there are too many voices. Half the news stories on the Internet are interviews with people trying to sell a book.
I dunno, if they include a couple of pics of good looking, fit, naked chicks in it, maybe brandishing light sabers....it will sell pretty well, no?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Who pays for porn?
"Unheard of means only it's undreamed of yet,
Impossible means not yet done." ~~ Julia Ecklar
The Internet Archive originally had all the issues except for February 1984, but some others have since been removed at the request of the content provider. Most if not all of the original Archive issues are available on a torrent created before they went missing. (No, it wasn't me.)
Unfortunately, at least some of the issues were scanned selectively, with some ads being left out, for example.
What about my subscription? Back when they went under, I had 18 months left and they died. Are you gonna make that up to me?