Ahh... this stunning cover painting of Star Trek's Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock by Jack Thurston graced the first issue of Starlog magazine, back in August, 1976. Which means that this month marks 40(!) years since the debut of the 70's greatest science fiction media periodical, a magazine that was literally my bible for two decades.
(Actually, as former Starlog honcho David McDonnell points out in the comments below, the first issue actually went on sale in June of that Bicentennial year. I stand corrected. Still... better late than never!)
Starlog not only kept me informed of new and upcoming genre films and television, but opened my mind to the classic (and not-so-classic) productions of the past. It was in the pages of Starlog that I first discovered the films of George Pal, the television series of Irwin Allen, and the original Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon movie serials. It fed my insatiable hunger for behind-the-scenes information on special effects and gave me countless cool photographs of miniature spaceships and alien monster to obsess over.
Yeah, Starlog was an important part of my formative years... in many ways, the biggest part.
In retrospect, maybe I should have called this site Starblog...?
I've been looking for this clip for a long time, and thanks to a head's up from Jerome Wybon (of the Forgotten Silver blog), I can now share it here with the rest of you Star Kids!
I dimly recall that I saw this rare Starlog TV commercial just once, and I believe it was during the 1978 airing of the Saturn Awards show. Amazingly, the Saturn Sci-fi Movie Awards, presented by the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films, actually aired on one of our local television stations (WCSH) for two years during the height of the Space: 1970 era - in 1978 and '79. If I recall correctly, the 1978 awards were co-hosted by Mark Hamill and Caroline Munro! (The '79 show was hosted by William Shatner, and his performance of "Rocket Man" has since become legendary!)
Anyway, here's the great Robby the Robot pitching a subscription to Starlog magazine - the periodic Star Kid bible - in its late 70s prime!
Virtually every single month of my adolescence, I made a pilgrimage to our local Mr. Paperback bookseller to purchase the latest issue of Starlog magazine. I loved that mag, and tried to collect not only the monthly issues, but their spin-off publications, as well. The annuals, the poster magazines, the souvenir movie mags, and, most of all, their "Photo Guidebook" volumes.
At $4-$5 each, that was actually not easy for me to accomplish on my meager, dollar-a-week allowance, so I only managed to buy less than half of the books they put out (Spaceships, Aliens, and two Special Effects volumes - I really wanted Weapons, but never got it).
The Starlog Photo Guidebooks were exactly what they sound like - thin, 8 1/2 x 11" paperbacks filled with stills from science fiction movies and TV shows, with descriptive captions and articles. Here are some of the covers from that series. Enjoy!
Remember these? Poster magazines were another distinctly 70s piece of memorabilia. These were basically one huge sheet of paper, one side of which was a giant poster, while on the other side, articles and photographs were printed. Then, the whole thing was folded up into 8 1/2" x 11" magazine size. These magazines were cool and all, but once you tacked it up on your wall, it was a bit difficult to go back and re-read the articles.
I had several issues of the Star Trek Poster Magazine that was published in the 70s, and also a couple of the movie/TV tie-in poster mags (Salvage 1, Moonraker and CE3K) that were published during the Space: 1970 era. I also had this one, the SFTV Color Poster Book, published by the Starlog Group. As far as I know, only this one issue appeared. Unfortunately, I don't seem to have it any longer....
ADDENDUM: Apparently these kinds of mags were published well into the 80s - my wife just showed me a few celebrity-type poster mags that she bought in the 80s. One of them was also from Starlog Press, so I guess they just kept cranking them out....
ADDENDUM 2: It turns out that there were, indeed, at least two issues of this poster mag. Courtesy of Space: 1970Facebook Fan Scott Weller, here's the cover to the second issue of the SFTV Poster Book:
Although this is - according to the YouTube poster - from 1984, and a little bit past my usual Space: 1970 chronological cut-off, I just had to post this television commercial for Starlog magazine.
When the print edition of Starlog ceased publication in April of 2009, it hit me pretty hard. I hadn't read the magazine in years, but I still felt its loss. It was like a childhood friend had passed away....
Back in the mid-1970's, being a science fiction fan just was not cool. Prior to Star Wars, anyone admitting to liking science fiction – at least in the rural Maine schools I attended – was subject to ridicule and occasional physical abuse. As far as the adults in my life, they were all practical New England yankees who had no time for or thoughts to spare for make-believe fantasy stuff about spaceships and aliens. I felt very much alone in my obsession, hiding my James Blish and Alan Dean FosterStar Trek paperback adaptations from my schoolmates, and keeping my thoughts about the short-lived Planet of the Apes and Logan's Run (both of which I loved as a eleven year-old) TV shows to myself.
But sometime around 1976, while browsing the comic book shelves at the local Mr. Paperback bookstore while my mother shopped for groceries next door – the same Mr. Paperback store where I had bought most of my Blish Trek books – I spotted a colorful painting of Kirk and Spock on the magazine shelf above the comics. Normally those shelves were off-limits to me, but certainly this particular magazine had to be okay – it was Star Trek.
Better – it was Starlog.
I was a regular reader from that day until around 1990, when I moved on to magazines like Cinefantastique and Filmfax. For many years, the magazine was my best friend in a way; my only link to the unknown others around the country who shared my love for the fantastic. As Famous Monsters of Filmland was to the "Monster Kids" of the 60's, Starlog was my lifeline in the 70's and 80's. Not only did Starlog cover all the major science fiction blockbusters from Star Wars on, they also covered B-movies, classic films, current and vintage TV shows. They interviewed not only stars, but writers, directors, authors and – especially – special effects wizards. The writers never wrote down to the readers and they opened my eyes to all the wonders of science fiction media. Even now, I will occasionally stumble across something on DVD that I've never seen before but recognize because Starlog covered it 20 years ago. And then I usually buy it.
It was Starlog that introduced me to shows and movies of the decades before my birth – shows like The Invaders, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, The Prisoner, and movies like This Island Earth, The Time Machine, The Incredible Shrinking Man, Buck Rogers and the Ray Harryhausen classics. Because I read about them in the pages of the magazine, I sought them all out, and I can't imagine my life without having experienced and enjoyed them.
And it wasn't just TV and film; the magazine introduced me to SF authors, too – folks like Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, Harlan Ellison, Richard Matheson, David Gerrold, Ray Bradbury. I was first exposed to the artwork of pulp illustrator Virgil Finlay through an article in an early Starlog and Ron Goulart's articles on SF comic strips gave me my first exposure to Alex Raymond's work on Flash Gordon.
Like I said above, I haven't read the magazine since around 1990, but I still lament it's passing. It was one of my most important childhood friends....
