Many Daily Grail readers would, I’m sure, be old-school Omni Magazine readers, given our shared interest in the fringes of science. If you’re in that group, then you’ll definitely be interested to learn that the seminal magazine is being ‘rebooted’:
In 1998, classic science fiction magazine Omni closed up shop. Created in 1978 by Penthouse mogul Bob Guccione and partner Kathy Keeton, it had published some of the biggest names in science fiction — William Gibson, Robert Heinlein, and Orson Scott Card, to name a few — and given scientists like Freeman Dyson and Carl Sagan a platform with a freewheeling, irreverent bent. But after shepherding Omni into online-only format in 1996, Keeton died of breast cancer, leaving the magazine adrift.
Today, though, Omni is coming back — and with it, questions about how our vision of science and science fiction has changed since its launch. Omni’s resurrection comes courtesy of Jeremy Frommer, a collector and businessman who acquired Guccione’s archives earlier this year. Inside a warehouse full of production assets lie thousands of Omni photos, illustrations, and original editions, which Frommer plans to release as prints, books, or collector’s items. But he wasn’t content with mining the past. Instead, he hired longtime science writer Claire Evans as editor of a new online project, described as an “Omni reboot.”
Remember too that the entire archive of Omni issues is available online, for those that would like a refresher. I’m looking forward to more good things from Omni Reboot in the future.
Link: Omni Reboot
News link: “Omni, reboot: an iconic sci-fi magazine goes back to the future“
