Search results
Starlog was an American monthly science fiction magazine that was created in 1976 and focused primarily on Star Trek at its inception. Kerry O'Quinn and Norman Jacobs were its creators and it was published by Starlog Group, Inc. in August 1976.
Starlog #1, August 1976: It All Begins. In 1976, Norman Jacobs and Kerry O'Quinn -- owners of a small periodicals publishing firm in Manhattan (Daily TV Serials, Beatles Forever, Screen Greats) -- put together a one-shot magazine devoted to the long-dead science fiction TV series Star Trek.
- Overview
- Notable issues
- External links
was a monthly print magazine devoted to science fiction film and television and was conceived in 1976 by Norman Jacobs and Kerry O'Quinn. David Houston, who came up with the concept with O'Quinn, became an editor for the magazine as well as a contributor with numerous articles and interviews. Originally published under the imprint "O'Quin Studios, Inc.", it was later accommodated in "Starlog Press" as the founders started to bring more and other genre publications into the mix, starting in 1979 with the horror/fantasy orientated magazine Fangoria. According to the web-master of The Starlog Project, their original intent was to put out a one-shot magazine covering Star Trek: The Original Series. On the urging of their distributor the magazine was enhanced with articles about other genre productions to make it more appealing to a broader general public. Still, its first issue, dated August 1976, did feature The Original Series on its cover and over the years the magazine remained Star Trek heavy with frequently published Star Trek-related articles, features and interviews. Given the founder's original intention and the fact that it was launched shortly before its conception, coverage of Star Trek: The Motion Picture was particularly heavy.
The formula caught on with the readership, and within two years the magazine was upgraded from a quarterly magazine to a monthly magazine. Apart from being one of the earliest specific genre publications, Starlog has also been one of the longest running, outliving its main contemporary competitor, Cinefantastique, by three years. Issue 268 of August 2008 – six issues before the magazine's print run was terminated – became the last one to feature a Star Trek-related article.
In order to dampen the heavy Star Trek nature of the magazine (not altogether too successfully one might argue), particularly so in the years 1986-1993 during the production of Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home through Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, it was decided to split off the majority of their Star Trek coverage from 1987 onward, when the spin-off television series went into production, into a number of officially endorsed "Official Star Trek Magazine" series publications, The Official Star Trek: The Next Generation Magazine, The Official Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Magazine, and The Official Star Trek: Voyager Magazine, each running for several years, with a couple of (prior) film one-shot specials to boot.
Aside from the "official" magazines and the below mentioned Future Life, Starlog magazine served as the source publication that spawned a slew of other spin-off serial publications, most of which also containing additional Star Trek material, including, The Best of Starlog, The Starlog Reporter, Starlog Poster Magazine, Starlog Spectacular, Starlog Yearbook, Starlog Scrapbook, CineMagic (which specialized in focusing on VFX production staffers and techniques, intended to be a "light" version of American Cinematographer), Science Fiction Video Magazine, SFX Magazine, Starlog Photo Guidebook, and Starlog photo guidebook Special Effects, each of which with varying degrees of success and longevity.
As with the other publications of Starlog Press, Starlog, where its behind-the-scenes features were concerned, was notable for the reproduction of production material (quite often made available by the production staff themselves), seldomly seen afterwards. Nevertheless, as far as Star Trek was concerned, neither Starlog, nor its "official" spin-offs, quite achieved the wealth and the depth of the later 1990s volumes of competitor Cinefantastique, a bit ironically perhaps, considering the original intent of the founders.
Yet, what Starlog did do that set them apart to this very day in an unique manner, was giving attention to the more obscure and peripheral contributors to the franchise, such as guest actors, guest directors, guest writers, people like novelization authors, as well as to lesser known production staffers and companies, who were rarely, if even at all, referenced to in other publications as far as their Star Trek contributions were concerned. Starlog Press staff writers Edward Gross and Pat Jankiewicz specialized in tracking down and interviewing these by the Star Trek franchise overlooked contributors.
Issues 1-50Issues 51-100Issues 101-150Issues 151-200Issues 201-250Issues 251-300•Fangoria.com – current homepage
•Starlog.com(X) – archived original Starlog homepage
•Starlog at Wikipedia
•Starlog wiki at Fandom.com
•The Starlog Project – Website with content descriptions.
•FUTURE LIFE: THE ENTIRE RUN – Subpage with content descriptions of the sister publication •Starlog magazine – former online Starlog archive at Archive.com (defunct)
Mar 28, 2017 · Starlog was founded in 1976 by Norm Jacobs and Kerry O’Quinn. Both worked in print media in the ‘60s, and prior to Starlog, they published a magazine about soap operas called Daily TV...
- Ryan Britt
Feb 26, 2014 · Starlog was a monthly science-fiction film magazine published by Starlog Group Inc. The magazine was created by publishers Kerry O’Quinn and Norman Jacobs. O’Quinn was the magazine’s editor while Jacobs ran the business side of things, dealing with typesetters, engravers and printers.
Apr 14, 2009 · Spurred on by the popularity of the Star Trek conventions that cropped up in the wake of the classic series’ cancellation, editor Kerry O’Quinn and publisher Norman Jacobs launched Starlog in...
Nov 2, 2012 · Unlike Forrest J Ackerman's Famous Monsters of Filmland, Starlog and Fangoria were written by adults for adults, whereas the entirely FJA-penned FM was aimed at monster-loving tweens and younger....
