Well it’s not a glossy mag, butIO9 kinda reminds me of Omni, except of course for the lack of fiction. Lots of good science content, though.
My brother bought it, but I would grab them as soon as he was done. I found the October 1985 issue at Goodwill a couple of months ago and picked it up. Still holds up as a good read 25+ years later.
I had completely forgotten that I really liked Omni when it first came out. All I could remember was the bitter aftertaste of a magazine that made no discernable distinction between science and science fiction.
Thanks for reminding me.
Sorry. I agree that that would be a better idea. Here it is.
http://img684.imageshack.us/img684/4152/showtowriteasciencefict.jpg
I don’t know if anyone here noticed, but on the Omni Shrine site, they’ve got a project where someone has scanned every issue. They’ve got them as JPG, PDF, or CBZ. I’m traveling fit now, so, I dumped a number of issues from 1981 on to my iPad and am working my way back through them. Oddly, I’m a little disappointed at ow few ad pages there are. The old ads are at least half the fun!
Another one who misses it.
Also enjoyed old pulp SF and Fantasy mags that my uncle had collected over the years.
Always full of adverts for Rosicrucians and Scientology, but incredibly imaginative stories, the like of which are a dying breed nowadays.
The Future Soon, by J. Coulton is about how someone might feel at 12 years old, sitting alone in their room and reading Omni. Rings a bell to anyone?
(the cite)
http://www.jonathancoulton.com/wiki/The_Future_Soon
(the song)
I remember being told by people how awesome Cyberpunk was and how I had to read these authors. And finally getting my hands on the collections and realizing… Gibson… Sterling… I’d read all these when they were first published. In Omni.
I remember reading about dimensions and zero point energy and aliens and the crazy wonders of the world, some real, some insane.
And the art. The art. An education in what art could be, not paint on a wall, but things that had meaning, that moved a young mind, in the context of the culture I lived in.
I still have the issue with plans for a robot, somewhere.
To Omni!
You mean here? http://omnishrine.wetpaint.com
I cannot find the scanned issues, can you point me in the right direction?
Guccione (of Penthouse reputation) launched Omni. I kinda figured they used the same print-house so that’s why they had the same format (11 x 17 stapled in the middle and folded over – except there was no “centerfold” in Omni :().
Didn’t Omni spin off Games magazine (or Puzzles, or some such name)? Wasn’t that a plot device in
I remember the weird planet sci-fi story. Something about the astronauts realizing the stones were sentient and communicating (and mobile) and one of the team going off on his own and figuring out how to get the rocks to “shit sulfur” and some accompanying art work showing human-looking rock formations…
Perhaps one of you collectors can retroactively settle a bet that I lost in 1999:
I bet that the Y2K “problem” was predicted in Omni magazine in the mid-1980s. I got subscriptions after I left High School (Class of 1984), but I don’t remember how long I was getting them and I foolishly threw out my copies in the mid-1990’s. However, I distinctly remember there was a brief blurb about this obscure little date-related impending doom if people didn’t program around it soon. It was in the grey-colored pages at the beginning (or end?) of the magazine where they put all the little newsy tid-bits that didn’t warrant a full-page article.
I made my bet against 5 other guys, figuring I’d win 50 from each ($250 total) then discovered I had pitched my copies of Omni months earlier.:smack: Without proof, I lost my bet. I argued my friends down to splitting $50 (instead of paying them $50 each:D) but I still swear that blurb was published. Who can confirm?
—G!
Mem’ries…
Like the corners of my mind…
Check your PMs.
Can I check my PMs, too? I’d love to read those.
Ditto.
Done…
…and done.
Didn’t get it.
Sorry about that, I just tried again.
I remember the heady days of the “high frontier”-and articles by the late Dr. Gerard O’Neill-about how we were going to colonize asteroids, have bases at the earth-moon Lagrange Points, build space colonies.
alas, that stuff never happened-but the pictures were great!
UPDATE
I have good news for you, self from 03-15-2011! Omni is now on the Internet Archive:
https://archive.org/details/omni-magazine
Not sure if it’s complete or not. Nice that you can download in many formats.
I miss it too. I still have the first issue, in mint condition.
I may still have, somewhere, a rejection letter from Omni where the person who had read my story had taken the time to hand-write at the bottom, “Please try again!”
Good times…
Was it Ellen Datlow maybe?