This is one of the “outlier” magazines in the collection. It is more properly defined as a “media” magazine rather than a fiction publication, and with good cause: it featured, reviews, interviews. episode listings, reports on upcoming films and shows, but no fiction.
However, I consider some of them important and influential enough to deserve inclusion (or at the very least, important and influential enough to me to warrant inclusion) and so, there being no higher authority to appeal to, they are included.
Starlog is one such, and I chose to feature it today in honor of the various anniversaries for the Star Trek television show, which was first aired on 9/6/66 in Canada, and two days later in the US, and is now 57 years old.
I was almost 8 years old and sentenced to a bed time the normally precluded watching the show, which my father did on occasion. I managed to sneak down the stairs from my bedroom and watch over his shoulder a few times and can therefore claim to have seen the show during its initial run, but my real involvement came in the 70s during the re-run era. Star Trek aired at 6 pm locally, our family’s dinner time, and I won the right to watch it during dinner. So there is that.
I’ve become far less enamored of the franchise over the years, but that’s beside the point and doesn’t change the fact that it has been enormously popular and influential over the course of nearly 60 years now.
The magazine would spawn any number of associated publications, poster magazines, specials, etc., and, a couple of years later would have a fiction-related companion – Future, which was renamed to Future Life (and did not last that long).
