This
week at Flashbak, I remembered the colorful and well-illustrated Starlog Photo
Guidebooks.
Here’s
snippet and the url; (http://flashbak.com/gallery-starlog-photo-guidebooks-59048/).
“When
I was growing up in the 1970s, Starlog Magazine felt, without exaggeration,
like a godsend. There were other quality genre magazines out there too, of
course (like Fantastic Films…), but few which had possessed the longevity,
stability and depth of coverage readers could find in Starlog.
In
the pre-Internet age, Starlog magazine was great for publishing news about
upcoming science fiction films, television programs, and literature. Many correspondents for Starlog went on to
successful and even award-winning writing careers, and the magazine featured
great interviews, retrospectives, illustrations and cover art. It was also,
most of the time, a damn good read.
But
there was another part of the Starlog Empire that I also loved for a different
reason; for purposes of reference, you might say: The Photo Guidebooks.
For
many years, Starlog published a series of heavily illustrated books on specific
genre-related topics.
For
instance, there was a Photo Guidebook devoted to movie and TV aliens, and at
least two editions of another great topic; movie and TV spaceships. The texts
featured examples from productions that you might have missed, forgotten about,
or wanted desperately to see.
I
remember earmarking my copies of the Guidebooks on Robots, Weapons and
“Fantastic Worlds” specifically. The entries were brief, but incredibly informative,
and the pages upon pages of illustrations -- some in color -- were tantalizing.
The
photo Guidebook series had an ambitious reach.
There was an edition published about science fiction toys, for example.
There were several editions devoted to the art of special effects.
There
was also another set too; one devoted to sci-fi heroes, its book-end to sci-fi
villains.
But
my favorites were undoubtedly the photo-guidebooks devoted to “episode guides”
of classic and current TV series.
Very
few writers in those pre-IMDB days were meticulously cataloging and recording
for future scholarship episode titles and plot-lines (let alone focusing on
things like “robots,” “spaceships” or “aliens,”) and so these books were a much-needed
resource...”
Please
continue reading at Flashbak.
The good old days. I miss them.
ReplyDeleteAs a boy in the late '70s, I received a subscription to STARLOG. The STARLOG PHOTO GUIDEBOOKS were impressive. I still have Spaceships volume 1, Spaceships volume 2, Fantastic Worlds, Robots and my entire Starlog subscription '70s to '80s. STARLOG was our internet.
ReplyDeleteSGB