Starlog (magazine)

Starlog 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 . 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 appealing to a more general public. Still, its first issue, dated, featured 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 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 contemporary Cinefantastique by three years.

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 through, Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, it was decided to split off the majority of the coverage for Star Trek 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 (previous) movie features one-shots 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, Starlog Poster Magazine, Starlog Spectacular, Starlog Yearbook, Starlog Scrapbook, Science Fiction Video Magazine, SFX Magazine, Starlog Photo Guidebook, and Starlog photo guidebook Special Effects, each of which with a varying degree of succes.

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), rarely 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 somewhat apart to this very date, was giving attention to the more 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 at all, referenced to in other publications as far as their Star Trek contributions were concerned.

In, Starlog decided to "temporarily" discontinue publication of the magazine in a print format with its most recent issue (#374), choosing to go exclusively into digital format at "Starlog.com". The "temporarily" nature became permanent when that site shut down, surviving contents being accommodated on the website of its sister publication Fangoria.

Future Life
Very early on, from 1978 onward, real-world space exploration related articles were included in Starlog as background articles for illustrative purposes. This gave O'Quinn and Jacobs the idea to launch a true and similar sister magazine Future Life that broached the subject from the opposite site of the spectrum; real world space exploration articles, lightened up with articles stemming from the realm of science fiction film, television and literature. The magazine, featuring interviews with real world scientists such as Isaac Asimov and, launched in April 1978 as a (bi-)monthly publication. The publication did not enjoy as near a success as it sister publication had, and publication ceased after 31 issues in December 1981, with a special released in October 2006, on the occasion of the 40th Anniversary of Star Trek. Three issues of the regular run, issues 9 (March 1979), 16 (January 1980) and 17 (March 1980), contained Star Trek-related material. Despite its short life, the web-master of the above mentioned The Starlog Project has, nevertheless, cited accessibility, humaneness, being less dry, and realism as the strong points of the publication. 

Notable issues
As stated, Starlog has been very heavy on Star Trek throughout its entire run. However in some cases, content was restricted to short editorials, reviews, announcements and columns by staff writers. Listed below are those issues that contained larger and more in-depth articles and interviews.

Issues 201-250

 * note:This list is currently incomplete.