Yet another unimaginatively-titled genre mag from the publishing house behind such publications as
Space Wars, Star Encounters, Star Battles and
Star Warp,
Myron Fass' Stories Layouts and Press Incorporated: the short-lived and confusingly-numbered
Space Trek magazine from 1978. The eccentric Fass, who passed away in 2006, was a notorious publisher
of low-end magazines and comics, the print equivalent of an exploitation
film mogul, publishing anything and everything he thought might make a
few bucks,
especially if it appealed to the basest of tastes or could ride the coattails of some pre-established moneymaker.
As with it's corporate brethren,
Space Trek was a cheapo
Starlog knock-off,
indistinguishable from Fass' other scifi mags, complete with recycled
stories, B&W photos and fan art, haphazardly assembled and rushed to
press by the bottom-feeding publisher to separate young, starstruck
Star Kids from their allowances while the genre was still hot. How many
of these did
you buy?
I'm going to buck the trend with Fass mags and offer some (mildly) positive words!
ReplyDeleteI had fond memories of some of these from my childhood and accumulated a bunch last year. There is a period of about a year or so when the magazines, though largely interchangeable, were really pretty good. A fellow named Jeff Goodman was in charge then, and the issues he edited were imaginative and fun (though still cheap). There were a number of people from THE MONSTER TIMES (which had ceased publication) writing for them, and they covered all sorts of things you wouldn't find in STARLOG.
However, when he left, the quality plummeted noticeably, and they became pretty bad. Ironically, I was nostalgic for the bad ones, so it was a pleasant surprise to discover they had actually been decent once.
Had three of the four you show as well as some Space War too. Cheap, but still interesting especially when I was first chopping up magazines for their Star Wars content. I eventually realized I should save the whole articles and even the magazines as well. So I stopped cutting up magazines and started collecting them. My big box of pictures then became really cool scrapbooks for the original trilogy. I still have them and collect autographs in them but also still have some pictures to add to the books. I've been wanting to finish them and maybe make a website out of the pages...sigh, hopefully someday.
ReplyDeleteI used to wonder why their picture quality was so poor sometimes, until I noticed something very interesting. If you have the May 1980 TIME magazine on The Empire Strikes Back look at the pictures in that spread that they show on a space background. Notice the little half borders on the pictures TIME did. Then look at the same pics inside Space Trek (or maybe it was Space War) and you'll notice they have the same borders or they are trimmed to cut off an obvious overlap from another picture. They where reprinting pictures from other magazines at times. I felt like Woodward and Bernstein when I discovered that.
They did sometimes have an interesting picture or two. Like the one of a Darth Vader costumed person making a mall appearance or somewhere with throngs of Space Kids reaching for him. I to picked some of these up again in recent years. All just part of what made up Sci-Fi good times as a kid.
Hey what about G.A.S.M.? I think that's how it was titled. I think it was a Heavy Metal style ripoff they advertised inside as well.
- Rory O'Toole
"How many of these did you buy?"
ReplyDeleteEvery one of 'em!
Tex
(and I wish I still had the lot)
Yep, I don't care how cheap they were, I would have lapped them up if I saw them and had the money. In fact, there was something charming about the ignorance and naivety of some of those old magazines. What they and the reader didn't know, and the gaps filled in by our imagination, was usually more exciting and interesting than the reality. However, some of that may have come from mags of slightly higher quality/profile than those, I'm not sure.
ReplyDeleteMy favourite was a supposed 'scoop' of the plot for Return of the Jedi that could not have got things more wrong. I can't help but think, however, that I would have preferred seeing that film over the one we eventually saw.
Paul W. .
Was that the great Fantastic Films theory of what Jedi would be about? Theat was some hoopie thinking to paraphrase one Ex-galactic Head of all Creation.
Delete- Rory
It could have been, though I don't understand your second sentence. ;-)
DeleteIt was in regards to some alien showing up and being a big part of the plot, or something like that. It wasn't Yoda revisited, it was described differently.
Paul W.
As a boy in the '70s, I had a STARLOG subscription. However, I purchased these magazines and other science-fiction magazines at the book store too. It was a great time to be a kid.
ReplyDeleteSGB
I never bought any of these new (although I looked at them frequently), but I did acquire several copies used during the '80s. And thanks to eBay, I managed to snag a near-complete collection of Fass' sci-fi mags in great shape for about twenty bucks.
ReplyDeleteI believe it was Space Trek that had Han and Chewie on the cover which featured a story on the Empire Strikes Back where it is written that Luke and Leia will get married and there was even a photo of the supposed wedding.
ReplyDeleteI really have to go through some of my stuff and find that issue.
Jeff Goodman here. I post on the "Myron Fass Fanclub" Facebook page under the name "Fred Ogg". For privacy reasons. If you want some entertaining stories from the old days, I suggest you look it up.
ReplyDelete