OMNI was a
scienceScience Magazine was a half-hour television show produced by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation from 1975 to 1979.The show was hosted by geneticist David Suzuki, who previously hosted the daytime youth programme Suzuki On Science...
and
science fiction magazineA science fiction magazine is a publication that offers primarily science fiction, either in a hard copy periodical format or on the Internet....
published in the US and the UK. It contained articles on science fact and short works of
science fictionScience fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
. The first issue was published in October 1978, the last in Winter 1995, with an internet version lasting until 1998.
History
OMNI was launched by
Kathy KeetonKathryn "Kathy" Keeton was a magazine publisher along with her partner, and later husband, Penthouse publisher Bob Guccione. Her title was President/COO of General Media Communications, Inc. She was also plantiff in the U.S. Supreme Court case of Keeton v...
, long-time companion and later wife of Penthouse magazine publisher
Bob GuccioneBob Guccione was the founder and publisher of the adult magazine Penthouse. He resigned from his publisher position in November 2003.-Early life:...
, who described the magazine in its first issue as "an original if not controversial mixture of science fact, fiction, fantasy and the paranormal". Before launch it was referred to as
Nova, but the name was changed before the first issue to avoid a conflict with the PBS science show of the same name,
NOVANova is a popular science television series from the U.S. produced by WGBH Boston. It can be seen on the Public Broadcasting Service in the United States, and in more than 100 other countries...
.
The magazine was initially edited by Frank Kendig, who left several months after the magazine's launch.
Ben BovaBenjamin William Bova is an American science-fiction author and editor. He is the recipient of six Hugo Awards for Best Professional Editor for his work at Analog Science Fiction in the 1970's.-Personal life:...
, who was hired as Fiction Editor, was promoted to Editor, leaving the magazine in 1981. After Kendig and Bova, Editors of OMNI included
Richard Teresi- Author and coauthor :Dick Teresi is an American writer. He is a co-author of The God Particle: If the Universe Is the Answer, What Is the Question? He is also a former editor of Omni....
, Gurney Williams III, Patrice Adcroft, Keith Ferrell, and Pamela Weintraub (editor of OMNI as one of the first major standalone webzines from 1996-1998). Kathleen Stein managed the magazine's prestigious Q&A interviews with the top scientists of the 20th century through 1998.
Ellen DatlowEllen Datlow is an American science fiction, fantasy, and horror editor and anthologist.-Biography:Datlow was the fiction editor of Omni magazine and Omni Online from 1981 through 1998, and edited the ten associated Omni anthologies...
was Associate fiction editor of OMNI under Robert Sheckley for one and a half years, and took over as Fiction Editor in 1981 until the magazine folded in 1998. The very first edition had an exclusive interview with renowned physicist,
Freeman DysonFreeman John Dyson FRS is a British-born American theoretical physicist and mathematician, famous for his work in quantum field theory, solid-state physics, astronomy and nuclear engineering. Dyson is a member of the Board of Sponsors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists...
, the second edition with American writer and futurist,
Alvin TofflerAlvin Toffler is an American writer and futurist, known for his works discussing the digital revolution, communication revolution, corporate revolution and technological singularity....
.
In its early run, published a number of stories that have become genre classics, such as
Orson Scott CardOrson Scott Card is an American author, critic, public speaker, essayist, columnist, and political activist. He writes in several genres, but is primarily known for his science fiction. His novel Ender's Game and its sequel Speaker for the Dead both won Hugo and Nebula Awards, making Card the...
's "
Unaccompanied Sonata"Unaccompanied Sonata" is a short story by Orson Scott Card, first published in the March, 1979 issue of Omni magazine. It appears in his short story collections Unaccompanied Sonata and Other Stories and Maps in a Mirror...
",
William GibsonWilliam Gibson is an American-Canadian science fiction author.William Gibson may also refer to:-Association football:*Will Gibson , Scottish footballer...
's "
Burning ChromeBurning Chrome is a collection of short stories written by William Gibson. Most of the stories take place in Gibson's Sprawl, an anonymous, shared setting for most of his cyberpunk work...
" and "Johnny Mnemonic",
Harlan EllisonHarlan Jay Ellison is an American writer. His principal genre is speculative fiction.His published works include over 1,700 short stories, novellas, screenplays, teleplays, essays, a wide range of criticism covering literature, film, television, and print media...
's novella "Mefisto in Onyx", and
George R. R. MartinGeorge Raymond Richard Martin , sometimes referred to as GRRM, is an American author and screenwriter of fantasy, horror, and science fiction. He is best known for A Song of Ice and Fire, his bestselling series of epic fantasy novels that HBO adapted for their dramatic pay-cable series Game of...
's "Sandkings". The magazine also published original sf/f by
William S. BurroughsWilliam Seward Burroughs II was an American novelist, poet, essayist and spoken word performer. A primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodernist author, he is considered to be "one of the most politically trenchant, culturally influential, and innovative artists of the 20th...
,
Joyce Carol OatesJoyce Carol Oates is an American author. Oates published her first book in 1963 and has since published over fifty novels, as well as many volumes of short stories, poetry, and nonfiction...
,
Jonathan CarrollJonathan Samuel Carroll is an American author primarily known for novels, which can be characterized as magic realist, slipstream or modern fantasy...
,
T. Coraghessan BoyleTom Coraghessan Boyle is a U.S. novelist and short story writer. Since the mid 1970s, he has published twelve novels and more than 100 short stories...
, and other mainstream writers. The magazine excerpted
Stephen KingStephen Edwin King is an American author of contemporary horror, suspense, science fiction and fantasy fiction. His books have sold more than 350 million copies and have been adapted into a number of feature films, television movies and comic books...
's novel
FirestarterFirestarter is a novel by Stephen King first published in 1980. It was nominated for a British Fantasy Award in 1981.The book is dedicated to the author Shirley Jackson: "In Memory of Shirley Jackson, who never needed to raise her voice."...
, and featured a short story, "
The End of the Whole Mess"The End of the Whole Mess" is a short science fiction story by Stephen King which was first published in Omni Magazine in 1986, and later published in the Nightmares and Dreamscapes collection and Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse .-Plot summary:The story, narrated by Howard Fornoy in the...
". OMNI also brought the works of numerous painters to the attention of a large audience, such as
H. R. GigerHans Rudolf "Ruedi" Giger is a Swiss surrealist painter, sculptor, and set designer. He won an Academy Award for Best Achievement for Visual Effects for his design work on the film Alien.-Early life:...
,
De Es SchwertbergerDe Es Schwertberger , commonly known simply as De Es , is an Austrian artist, painter and modeller...
and
RalléRallé, also known as Master of the Town of Consuls , is an American artist whose work has most recently been shown in the Meisel Gallery and the Bruce R. Lewin Gallery in New York City. His paintings have accompanied several articles in Omni, as well as appeared on the covers of several books...
. In the early 1980s, popular fiction stories from OMNI were reprinted in "The Best of OMNI Science Fiction" series and featured art by space artists like
Robert McCallRobert McCall was a conceptual artist, known particularly for his works of space art. McCall was an illustrator for Life magazine in the 1960s, created promotional artwork for Stanley Kubrick's film 2001: A Space Odyssey and Richard Fleischer's production Tora! Tora! Tora! and worked as an artist...
.
OMNI entered the market at the start of a wave of new science magazines aimed at educated but otherwise "non-professional" readers.
Science DigestScience Digest was a monthly American magazine published by the Hearst Corporation from 1937 through 1986. It initially had an 8 x 5 inch format with about 100 pages, and was targeted at persons with a high school education level...
and
Science NewsScience News is an American bi-weekly magazine devoted to short articles about new scientific and technical developments, typically gleaned from recent scientific and technical journals. Science News has been published since 1922 by Society for Science & the Public, a non-profit organization...
already served the high-school market, and
Scientific AmericanScientific American is a popular science magazine. It is notable for its long history of presenting science monthly to an educated but not necessarily scientific public, through its careful attention to the clarity of its text as well as the quality of its specially commissioned color graphics...
and
New ScientistNew Scientist is a weekly non-peer-reviewed English-language international science magazine, which since 1996 has also run a website, covering recent developments in science and technology for a general audience. Founded in 1956, it is published by Reed Business Information Ltd, a subsidiary of...
the professional, while OMNI was arguably the first aimed at "armchair scientists" who were nevertheless well informed about technical issues. The next year, however, Time introduced
DiscoverDiscover is an American science magazine that publishes articles about science for a general audience. The monthly magazine was launched in October 1980 by Time Inc. It was sold to Family Media, the owners of Health, in 1987. Walt Disney Company bought the magazine when Family Media went out of...
while the
AAASThe American Association for the Advancement of Science is an international non-profit organization with the stated goals of promoting cooperation among scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific responsibility, and supporting scientific education and science outreach for the...
introduced
Science '80Science was a general science magazine published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science . It was intended to "bridge the distance between science and citizen", aimed at a technically literate audience who may not work professionally in the sciences...
. Advertising dollars were spread among the different magazines, and those without deep pockets soon folded in the early 1980s, notably Science Digest, while Science '80 merged with Discover. OMNI appeared to weather this storm better than most, likely due to its wider selection of contents.
International editions of OMNI magazine were published in at least five markets. The content in the British editions closely followed the North American editions, but with a different numbering sequence and British advertising. At least one British edition was entirely unique and was shipped under the banner of "Omni UK". The Italian edition was edited by Albert Peruzzo and ran for 20 issues from 1981 to 1983. The Japanese edition ran from at least 1982 to 1989. German and Spanish editions were also published.
Webzine
After the print magazine folded in 1996, the OMNI Internet webzine was launched. Free of pressure to focus on
fringe scienceFringe science is scientific inquiry in an established field of study that departs significantly from mainstream or orthodox theories, and is classified in the "fringes" of a credible mainstream academic discipline....
areas, OMNI returned to its roots as the home of gonzo science writing, becoming one of the first large-scale venues to deliver a journalism geared specifically to cyberspace, complete with real-time coverage of major science events, chats and blogs with scientific luminaries, and interactive experiments that users could join. The world's top science fiction writers also joined in, writing
collaborative fictionCollaborative fiction is a form of writing by a group of authors who share creative control of a story.Collaborative fiction can occur for commercial gain, as part of education, or recreationally - many collaboratively written works have been the subject of a large degree of academic research.-...
pieces for OMNIs readers live online.
In 1998,
Kathy KeetonKathryn "Kathy" Keeton was a magazine publisher along with her partner, and later husband, Penthouse publisher Bob Guccione. Her title was President/COO of General Media Communications, Inc. She was also plantiff in the U.S. Supreme Court case of Keeton v...
, whose vision inspired OMNI, died from complications of
breast cancerBreast cancer is cancer originating from breast tissue, most commonly from the inner lining of milk ducts or the lobules that supply the ducts with milk. Cancers originating from ducts are known as ductal carcinomas; those originating from lobules are known as lobular carcinomas...
, the staff of OMNI Internet was laid off, and no new content was added to the website. General Media shut the site down and removed the OMNI archives from the Internet in 2003.
Television
A short-lived syndicated television show based on the magazine's format (and called OMNI: The New Frontier) aired in the
United StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
beginning in September 1981, hosted by
Peter UstinovPeter Alexander Ustinov CBE was an English actor, writer and dramatist. He was also renowned as a filmmaker, theatre and opera director, stage designer, author, screenwriter, comedian, humourist, newspaper and magazine columnist, radio broadcaster and television presenter...
. A French-language, dubbed version of the show appeared on the Canadian public TV network Radio-Québec (now known as
Télé-QuébecTélé-Québec is a French language public educational television network in the Canadian province of Quebec. Known legally as Société de télédiffusion du Québec , it is a provincial crown corporation owned by the Government of Quebec...
) in 1994. In 1985 extracts of the 1981 television series were re-edited and repackaged into four television shows hosted by
Keir DulleaKeir Dullea is an American actor best known for the character of astronaut David Bowman, whom he portrayed in the 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey and in 1984's 2010: The Year We Make Contact...
under the title Omni: Visions of the Future. Episodes were titled Futurebody, Space, Amazing Medicine and Lifestyles in the 21st Century.
Comics
An equally short-lived spinoff magazine called OMNI Comix debuted in 1995, and was published in the same glossy, newsstand magazine format as its sister publications OMNI, Penthouse and
Penthouse ComixPenthouse Comix was initially an American mass-market, magazine-sized comic book, published by Penthouse International from its inception in spring 1994 through July 1998, and thereafter by General Media Communications, parent company of Penthouse magazine. Initially edited by writers George...
. OMNI Comix ran for only three issues, and the third and final issue featured an abortive revival of the classic 1960's superhero series The THUNDER Agents.
External links
Some of the archives can be located at http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.omnimag.com/ Warning: the links past Jul 21, 2003, will go to Penthouse magazine instead, but most of them are web-archived Omni pages, including chats, short stories, and articles.