As the title suggests, I have two 20+ year old Discover magazines in front of me, and (I suspect) a bunch at my moms. My son can read my name now and found my name on these magazines in a box in my parent’s basement, and insisted on bringing them home to me.
I have the April 1987 issue and the July 1989 (Space the Once and Future Frontier special issue).
So, anyone want to know about cutting edge 1980’s technology, or the ads for Toyota Tercels, cigarettes and alcohol, ask away.
Oo, any predictions for The Future in either issue?
Are there any articles predicting antigravity, flying cars, or moon bases by 2001?
No, no predictions of flying cars or cool stuff like that. But a lot of discussion about the mirror for the Hubble Telescope, and the “flaw the size of a teacup” in it.
Any articles about 80s computers and how awesome they are?
I am totally jealous! How about the medical news? What were the mysteries of the day? Anything that has been solved since?
Computers are actually going to revolutionize life as we know it.
No articles per se about computers but check out this advertisement.
The monitors in the pictures (should that be VDTs?) have the green-on-black screens of the future that we were promised in the 1960s and 1970s.
AIDS watch…the virus changes. AZT, this new drug that seems to work, well…sometimes it stops working, and the virus changes. One article… there is AIDS watch in every issue asks “Will AIDS make the Black Death look pale?”
I’ve got some old Discovers and Omnis (remember Omni?) in my garage, anyone want to come help me clean out my garage and find them?
I loved Omni magazine, although I think I was probably too young to fully understand all the articles I read, especially in my younger years. As a kid I read everything I could get my hands on, not particularly discriminating. I read Womans Day, Discover, Omni, Tiger Beat, books by John Updike and John Irving, Jean M Auel and John D McDonald. Portnoy’s Complaint I read at around 12 for Og’s sake!
No, I will not help you find your old magazines. On Sunday I was handed more stuff by my folks… boxes of mix tapes I made in the 1980’s and also my brother’s early 90’s skater and hip hop tapes. My grade two booklet bound in construction paper from our “science” section on Birds. Six binders of painstakingly copied song lyrics. My grade 10 history notes.
[sibling posturing] How come Dave doesn’t have to move his Star Wars toys out of your basement ?[/sibling posturing] (My brother lives on Vancouver Island)
As soon as I got a steady job in my 20’s (the 80’s) I started subscribing to all sorts of magazines. Dog, cat and bird magazines, Discover, Omni, National Geographic, wildlife mags, astronomy mags, Sci fi/fantasy mags, Mad and I was gifted a Cracked subscription. I kept all these for the longest time. I even kept alot of old school work but it kept moving with me and combined with newer stuff it was just too much to keep. When I started trying to clean out my garage I managed to get through and purge (recycle) several boxes of old school work and magazines but I am only about 1/4 of the way through my clutter. Admittedly, I did set some aside to look at again (like the Omni’s) but I realized I was going to have to let most of it go. Anything, I didn’t read then I wasn’t going to read now. I did save some nice pics from some of the magazines. It took me a while to go through the stuff but I felt like I accomplished something and I didn’t feel a sense of loss that I might have if I had just tossed everything without looking at it.
Maybe I should have posted that in a decluttering thread. Anyway, I can certainly understand the fascination with these old treasures.
Oh and your brother gets to leave his old Star Wars toys because they might be worth something. 
I subscribed to Discover in probably the early 90’s and didn’t renew because it seemed everything I read was supposed to happen 3 to 5 years down the road. There really wasn’t anything concrete in there. Was it like that in those old issues?
Pretty much. Some reporting of things that were going on, a lot of speculation, a lot of “these people want to do X” like look for certain particles at CERN. (I haven’t quite brought myself to read that article yet. Its long and I’d rather surf the dope or something)