OMNI Magazine Remembered 131
An anonymous reader noted that Slate is doing a bit of a retrospective on OMNI. If you're anything like me, reading it was a treat. At home I suffered through Popular Mechanics, but OMNI was what I wished I had. There's many interesting things in the article, like the fact that OMNI is the place where William Gibson first coined the term "Cyberspace."
I remember the artists (Score:5, Insightful)
OMNI had the coolest illustrators of the day - about the only one of my longstanding favorites that I don't recall ever seeing
in the mag was Frank Frazetta.
OMNI was ... (Score:2, Insightful)
OMNI rocked in all the ways that matter.
As mentioned, the sci-fi, the science, the palpable sensuality of it's envisioned future ... it was the death of OMNI which led me to seek solace in the emergent WIRED. For a time, it was a suitable heir.
And the death of WIRED (just try and argue that it ain't) has led me ... nowhere.
I'd gladly pay $36 a year for a worthy successor to either one.
The explanation is simple (Score:3, Insightful)
Omni died for one simple and oft overlooked reason - it stayed in stasis from the day of it's birth. Really, pick up practically any issue from the late 1980's and compare it to any issue from the early years - and it's exactly the same, stylistically, thematically, and in content. The world moved on and Omni didn't.
Hence, it's readership and ad revenue declined steadily across the 80's, leading to the now infamous 'ad-on-the-cover'. In the background, but increasingly visible in the contents, the editors frantically tried to update their material without actually changing their editorial philosophy. By the time it died, it was already a relic propped up only by the unwillingness of Guccione to either change the status quo or to disconnect the feeding tube.