In Memoriam: Starlog Magazine, 1976-2009

[thatcrazycajun]

Sad news has come to me from the SFCrowsNest.com website: Starlog magazine, the first monthly national publication devoted solely to science fiction and fantasy in films, TV, comics, books and other media, has announced it will cease publication after nearly 33 years with next month's issue, its website having already gone dark as of December last. (No, I am not counting the late Forrest J. Ackerman's Famous Monsters of Filmland; though Forry was beyond question a fan of SF, his magazine itself was at least nominally focused on the horror-film genre.) Read the story here.

This is personal for me, and not just because I was one of those who bought the rag for years from the day that first issue hit the stands in August of 1976. One of its founders and its first editor-in-chief, Kerry O'Quinn, was for many years a personal friend of mine, ever since he appeared as one of the main guests at Lafayette, LA's first SF convention, AcadianaCon I, in 1979. I still consider him a friend, though we haven't spoken for over a decade; no falling out, just the usual loss of touch that often happens with people who live far apart. He was among the first pros, if not the first, to reach out to a skinny teenage geek from what was then a backwater Southern town and encourage the talent for art and enthusiasm for the genre he too loved that he spotted in that kid. That I have not made nearly as much of that talent as I should have by this time of my life is my own fault, not his.

And even if he had not done that, the magazine he co-created with Norman Jacobs would have earned him my undying love. For the first time ever, in that far-back year before the Internet and the Sci Fi Channel (I refuse to dignify their loathsome new name with a mention) were even gleams in someone's eye, I could read on a regular basis detailed, glorious-color-photo-laden advance news of movies and TV shows on the way and ones already out that featured the type of themes and characters I loved; in-depth interviews with their stars, writers, directors and creators; and respectful, non-sniggering coverage of the activities of fans thereof at conventions and other events. And even though Kerry is no longer affiliated with the magazine, and even in the face of growing competition from within the print world and without, Starlog has continued to offer that same level of quality right up to today, un-dumbed-down and uncompromising. Its demise is the no-longer-avoidable, inevitable result of the escalating costs of printing and distributing news on dead trees and the changing habits of its readers in the age of websites (by both fans and pros) containing coverage at least sometimes as good...and usually far more timely than once a month.

So for me, this is like saying one's last farewells to a cherished family member on her deathbed. But if by some chance Kerry should read this, I hope he will realize that the legacy his magazine created remains with us...and will for all time to come. And fergossakes, man, send me an e-mail or make a phone call sometime, willya? I'm in the book.

Comments

[boogiebabe-smap.livejournal.com]

I'm with you on this one. Starlog is my favorite magazine and has been from issue 1. They covered every angle of my favorites and did it well. I will miss it terribly.

[sffilk.livejournal.com]

Are you serious!!! I remember when Starlog first came out, and I've got not only the first 189 issues (I stopped getting it after that long), but I also have the original promotional flyers for the first few issues that were sent out.

[darrenzieger.livejournal.com]

I discovered Starlog around issue 10, and read it fanatically until around issue 150 or so.

Honestly, it hadn't been the magazine I fell in love with for well over a decade, maybe 15 years. But you can't fault them for getting slicker as they had more resources to throw at the publication. Or for the fact that even as the genre exploded into the mainstream, and they had more films and TV shows to cover than we could have dared dream back when one of the mag's biggest draws was episode guides to SF shows that were long off the air, the actual number of genre offerings that were (at least to me) even remotely interesting or worthwhile, didn't increase proportionately. Or at all. As a result, by the early 90s, it had become corporate rock. Well-wrought corporate rock, to be sure, but the zine ran out of indie-cred before the term was even coined.

So I've kind of been grieving over Starlog for a long time.

The first hundred issues or so, particularly the first, say, 50, were labors of love, full of brilliant original content.

In particular, David Gerrold's "Implications" series of columns taught me more about thinking critically (in the literary sense) than any English class I ever attended; and that was my major. If those haven't been collected somewhere, I'm going to see to it that they are, even if I have to start my own imprint to do it.

So many treasures. Those precious photos of spaceship models and matte paintings in progress; interviews with Harryhausen before his skill-set went the way of Caffelery and Pantography, or Lucas when I had some actual respect for him; production sketches from upcoming films; rumors future productions (back when checking your favorite film blog or Wil Wheaton's latest tweets wasn't an option)...these are vivid sense memories.

I remember biking each month down to the local magazine shop -- a free-standing structure, independently owned, remember those? -- on the exact release date, trying to read it on the way home at extreme risk to life and limb -- though not as much risk as when an issue slipped out of my hand and into dense oncoming traffic and I made the split second decision to try to rescue it because I didn't have enough cash to replace it, and to do so _immediately_, because the first car in line would probably rip it to shreds as it passed over it.

The possibility that I would get ripped to shreds myself in the process didn't occur to me until the moment I reached down for Issue 42 and the oncoming car's horn blared, and I could tell out of the corner of my eye that I was about to be at the wrong end of a distance and velocity equation. But I still grabbed the magazine before I leaped out of the way -- there were conceptual sketches for a film adaptation of Childhood's End in that issue, for ghod's sake!

It wasn't until about 10 years later that something clicked more or less randomly in my head, and I realized just how close* I'd come to becoming a red smear on a four lane highway in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, my severed hand discovered hours later, 200 feet away, still clutching a bloodied copy of Issue 42 of Starlog. I kid you not, in that moment of insight, I got dizzy and puked right there on the sidewalk in Coconut Grove.

(Given the concentration of bars and other liquor-dispensing establishments on that block, this sudden and seemingly unmotivated act of disimbibment** went unremarked by so much as a raised eyebrow.)

...Anyway, that's my Starlog story, and it's just a long way of saying that while it's been years since I'd be willing risk my pocket money on an issue, much less my life, I still have tremendous affection for the publication and the people who created it.

The last ~100 issues (which were perfectly decent, just not *special*) notwithstanding: Best. Zine. Ever.

Gonna go dig out that copy of issue 42 now...


* exact figure <1 meter, with the vehicle in question moving at about 50 mph

** I know it's not a word. But it should be. Check my livejournal page next week for a petition.

[terriwells.livejournal.com]

"If those haven't been collected somewhere, I'm going to see to it that they are, even if I have to start my own imprint to do it."

And if you DO do this, I will certainly buy a copy.

[thatcrazycajun.livejournal.com]

What she said, in spades.

[sodyera.livejournal.com]

I had an interview there at 475 Park Av. So. decades ago.
I actually got a couple of Letters to the Editor in print in its sister pub Future Life in 1978. Unfortunately it didn't have much of a future. Aye, tis a pity.