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(io9)   Set your nostalgia receptors to stun: every issue of Omni ever published is now available on line for free   (updates.io9.com ) divider line
    More: Cool, omni, Internet Archive, deluge  
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5660 clicks; posted to Geek » on 03 Nov 2012 at 1:36 AM (3 years ago)   |   Favorite    |   share:  Share on Twitter share via Email Share on Facebook   more»



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2012-11-03 12:09:35 AM  
My old man used to get Omni magazine, I remember reading most of them. Very cool.
 
2012-11-03 01:37:36 AM  

basemetal: My old man used to get Omni magazine, I remember reading most of them. Very cool.


Same here. Best SF magazine ever.
 
2012-11-03 01:45:59 AM  
I remember looking at one of these magazines awhile ago. It seemed really cool. Now, where can I get a legitimate torrent of the full set?!?
 
2012-11-03 01:46:17 AM  
Well .. f*ck, there goes my free time.

I'm headed back to the '80s, folks.
 
2012-11-03 01:52:19 AM  
What's Omni?
 
2012-11-03 01:58:07 AM  

kmmontandon: Well .. f*ck, there goes my free time.

I'm headed back to the '80s, folks.


see ya there.
I used to have all of them until that box was put under the house...then rain, mice etc etc..

Starlog, Omni, Future..

I remember the Starlog with the first Empire Strikes Back photos coming out of the box and going on the rack and people you wouldn't expect all coming over and looking at it.
sold out within 10 minutes...

Omni was better reading though...
 
2012-11-03 01:59:08 AM  

doglover: What's Omni?


well, if you read the link provided and weren't a lazy sod, you would know wouldn't you?
 
2012-11-03 02:05:59 AM  

Haliburton Cummings: doglover: What's Omni?

well, if you read the link provided and weren't a lazy sod, you would know wouldn't you?


I don't click links. It spoils the fun.

i25.photobucket.com
 
2012-11-03 02:13:37 AM  
Great, now I'm going to have to re-read "Sam and the Little Mudder".

/if that's the title
//and I can find it
///and a few other tales as well
 
2012-11-03 02:13:37 AM  
Oh thank God. I've been hauling around a bunch of them for years. I can get some garage space back.
 
2012-11-03 02:23:43 AM  

doglover: Haliburton Cummings: doglover: What's Omni?

well, if you read the link provided and weren't a lazy sod, you would know wouldn't you?

I don't click links. It spoils the fun.

[i25.photobucket.com image 480x320]


doglover, if you drew that yourself and posted in response, you are the coolest person in the world.
if you just c n' p'd it...well..shame...
 
2012-11-03 02:31:37 AM  
Squee.
 
2012-11-03 02:33:22 AM  
Someone get 15-year-old me a box of Pinwheels so I can hole up with these for a few days and read things like The End Of The Whole Mess and that Robert Silverberg story about a modern Moses in a world where Rome still dominates the planet. (Checking, that appears to be "To the Promised Land" from the May 1989 issue; excellent story.)
 
2012-11-03 02:35:39 AM  

Kittypie070: Squee.


SQUEE ^ INFINITY :D

(Seriously, this SO very much gives me a happy. Pretty much my favourite mags when I was a kid were Discover (for the science stuff) and OMNI (for the sci-fi stuff mixed with science stuff) :D)
 
2012-11-03 02:38:56 AM  
Dear Omni Forum, I always thought your letters were bogus until the following happened to me at the lab one night
 
2012-11-03 03:55:51 AM  
Oh yay! I loved Omni. The artwork, the fiction, the awesome crazy science... I'm glad I can look back at the 80's vision of the future and cry myself to sleep over how little we've achieved. (Other than tiny computers and cell phones)
 
2012-11-03 04:09:32 AM  
As someone who really enjoyed Omni as a wee lad, this is relevant to my interests. Unfortunately, when I went to download these to read on my Fire HD, all the issues I pulled down in PDF were really bad scans with text so pixellated that it is mostly unreadable. I also tried the .mobi versions, but those were a nightmare of bad OCR. Anyone got a better source?
 
2012-11-03 04:12:07 AM  

Mad_Radhu: As someone who really enjoyed Omni as a wee lad, this is relevant to my interests. Unfortunately, when I went to download these to read on my Fire HD, all the issues I pulled down in PDF were really bad scans with text so pixellated that it is mostly unreadable. I also tried the .mobi versions, but those were a nightmare of bad OCR. Anyone got a better source?


Yeah I just downloaded and was just going to post and say I needed a magnifying glass to read them. I know disk space is an issue for archive.org but these are pretty horrible scans. Still I guess beggars can't be choosers.
 
2012-11-03 04:17:16 AM  
i246.photobucket.com
 
2012-11-03 04:31:57 AM  

CBob: Great, now I'm going to have to re-read "Sam and the Little Mudder".

/if that's the title
//and I can find it
///and a few other tales as well


I'm gonna have to find "In the Hereafter Hilton".
 
2012-11-03 04:39:07 AM  

Haliburton Cummings: doglover: Haliburton Cummings: doglover: What's Omni?

well, if you read the link provided and weren't a lazy sod, you would know wouldn't you?

I don't click links. It spoils the fun.

[i25.photobucket.com image 480x320]

doglover, if you drew that yourself and posted in response, you are the coolest person in the world.
if you just c n' p'd it...well..shame...


I drew it for another thread. It's in my bukkit. TFD gets pretty intense sometimes.
 
2012-11-03 04:40:27 AM  
It sure would be nice if we could search the text, but I suppose this is better than nothing.

JosephFinn: Someone get 15-year-old me a box of Pinwheels so I can hole up with these for a few days and read things like The End Of The Whole Mess and that Robert Silverberg story about a modern Moses in a world where Rome still dominates the planet. (Checking, that appears to be "To the Promised Land" from the May 1989 issue; excellent story.)


I enjoyed "Last of the Wild Ones" in March 1981 and "The Microbotics Revolution" in August 1981. Of course, I was just a kid, then. I'm not sure they'd still hold up. Also, if anyone's interested "Johnny Mnemonic" is in May 1981. Maybe the short story is better than the movie. It was Omni where I first heard of "Foundation", too, when they published an excerpt of "Foundation's Edge".

In retrospect, I'm a little disappointed at how often they talked about questionable science as if it was serious, but whatever. I still enjoyed it.
 
2012-11-03 05:26:32 AM  
After skimming a bunch of issues from the 80s, I just noticed something (other than the fact that the scans are terrible): not one computer ad prior to about 1983. You'd think a magazine like Omni would be the first place you'd see them. Of course, almost all the ads are hilarious - especially the technology ads.
 
2012-11-03 05:56:08 AM  
There were some really good short stories in those.

Does anyone remember one of the early nanotech short stories? I can't remember the author or title, but the story has stuck with me ever since reading it.

A guy built a full sized robot that could scavenge for materials and then use them to build a fully functional miniature version of itself. Then the mini version would go on to do the same thing and the process continued until the robots were microscopic.

Due to a programming error the microsopic versions didn't just make one copy and turn off and soon they were running out of control disassembling things like the Eiffel Tower.

I think it might have been the first grey goo story. At least the first I remember running across.
 
2012-11-03 05:56:35 AM  
That's very cool. I used to have a lot of them, up until the last issue. It'll be fun to go back and read the earlier ones, and re-read the ones I had before.

//Something I can read on my tablet...
 
2012-11-03 06:22:18 AM  

Mad_Radhu: As someone who really enjoyed Omni as a wee lad, this is relevant to my interests. Unfortunately, when I went to download these to read on my Fire HD, all the issues I pulled down in PDF were really bad scans with text so pixellated that it is mostly unreadable. I also tried the .mobi versions, but those were a nightmare of bad OCR. Anyone got a better source?


I tried on my Kindle Fire HD, and it is less then optimal. I switched over to my iPad, and it's much better. These are probably best suited for reading on larger screens (full sized tablets and computers).
The PDF scans are nice for the illustrations, but I found the ePub better for reading, in spite of the less then perfect OCR.
 
2012-11-03 06:33:52 AM  
F yeah. Loved reading this as a kid.
 
2012-11-03 06:41:54 AM  
Great, now bring back Radio Electronics and I'll be all set. I especially enjoyed the 1991 issues talking about HDTV, and the DIY house robot that was going to change everything...

ConConHead: Oh yay! I loved Omni. The artwork, the fiction, the awesome crazy science... I'm glad I can look back at the 80's vision of the future and cry myself to sleep over how little we've achieved. (Other than tiny computers and cell phones)


Physics. Limits. I know, I know, terrible stuff. Better hunker down on this planet, we ain't going anywhere else.
 
2012-11-03 07:34:16 AM  
Dear Penthouse,

I never dreamed I'd be publisher of both a porn magazine *and* a sciencey mag, but there I was at the office one day...


-Bob Guccioni
 
2012-11-03 07:49:33 AM  
I found a bunch of back issues of Omni at a Goodwill last week, and my wife could barely understand why I was peeing my pants and hopping up and down.

//I'm gonna go home and gibber some more!
 
2012-11-03 07:55:52 AM  
Whoa.
 
2012-11-03 08:01:13 AM  
now i'm getting all nostalgia for Heavy metal and national Lampoon. m older brother is going to freak when i send him the link to OMni. he lived for that mag.
 
2012-11-03 08:07:31 AM  
I re-watched 2010 recently, and the oddly anachronistic thing that took me out of the movie for a moment wasn't the MacIntosh Portable that Roy Scheider was using on the beach (Wow! A portable computer! How futuristic.), or the Cold War politics, or the fact that the tech on the Russian ship looked older than the interior of Discovery (which was an older ship). No, the thing that made me go, "Wow, this movie's dated!" was that Scheider had a copy of Omni on the beach with him.
 
2012-11-03 08:27:49 AM  
Fantastic! They published some great fiction; George R. R. Martin's "Sandkings" was first published there.
 
2012-11-03 08:28:47 AM  
Now if only they would put all the back issues of ANALOG online...
 
2012-11-03 08:37:52 AM  

JosephFinn: Someone get 15-year-old me a box of Pinwheels so I can hole up with these for a few days and read things like The End Of The Whole Mess and that Robert Silverberg story about a modern Moses in a world where Rome still dominates the planet. (Checking, that appears to be "To the Promised Land" from the May 1989 issue; excellent story.)


And Hugh Downs "The Longest Story Ever Told." You read it in his voice...
 
2012-11-03 09:03:45 AM  
Wooohoooooooo!

But with one caveat: the PDFs are about unreadable - the online reader works far better.

/had a subscription way back when
//read Johnny Mnemonic when it came out
///just finished reading it again
 
2012-11-03 09:19:36 AM  
"by the year 2012, you will be able to read every issue of omni by using a small computer that connects wirelessly to a "web" of other computers storing hundreds of megabytes of data."
 
2012-11-03 09:40:15 AM  
Sweet. Thanks, subby.
 
2012-11-03 09:45:04 AM  
I wish search was up. I distinctly being freaked out as a kid reading a prediction that some time in the 90s a terrorist would detonate (or maybe just get hold of) a nuclear bomb, but I have no idea what issue it was in. But it was a long list of predictions that reached forward 20-30 years or possibly more, and I'd love to see how they hold up today.
 
2012-11-03 10:44:06 AM  
Is there anything like Omni now?

Orson Scott Card's "Unaccompanied Sonata" was one of my favorites from that mag. Loved the story so much but forgot (or didn't notice) who wrote it until I read Ender's Game later.
 
2012-11-03 10:44:38 AM  

Dadoo: It sure would be nice if we could search the text, but I suppose this is better than nothing.

JosephFinn: Someone get 15-year-old me a box of Pinwheels so I can hole up with these for a few days and read things like The End Of The Whole Mess and that Robert Silverberg story about a modern Moses in a world where Rome still dominates the planet. (Checking, that appears to be "To the Promised Land" from the May 1989 issue; excellent story.)

I enjoyed "Last of the Wild Ones" in March 1981 and "The Microbotics Revolution" in August 1981. Of course, I was just a kid, then. I'm not sure they'd still hold up. Also, if anyone's interested "Johnny Mnemonic" is in May 1981. Maybe the short story is better than the movie. It was Omni where I first heard of "Foundation", too, when they published an excerpt of "Foundation's Edge".

In retrospect, I'm a little disappointed at how often they talked about questionable science as if it was serious, but whatever. I still enjoyed it.


Also, George R. R. Martin's "Sandkings" is in August 1980, if you want something to creep the pants off of'ya.
 
2012-11-03 10:52:15 AM  

Dadoo: After skimming a bunch of issues from the 80s, I just noticed something (other than the fact that the scans are terrible): not one computer ad prior to about 1983. You'd think a magazine like Omni would be the first place you'd see them. Of course, almost all the ads are hilarious - especially the technology ads.


I just ran across an Apple ad in August of 1979 though: "What Kind Of A Man Owns His Own Computer?"
 
2012-11-03 11:21:31 AM  

carlb: I re-watched 2010 recently, and the oddly anachronistic thing that took me out of the movie for a moment wasn't the MacIntosh Portable that Roy Scheider was using on the beach (Wow! A portable computer! How futuristic.),..


Actually, it was an Apple IIc.
Source: I had one. When than scene came up it took me out of the movie because, hey, that's my computer and I can't use it on the beach.

/Still have it.
 
2012-11-03 11:34:52 AM  
First place I saw HR Gieger artwork. That guy was freaky.
 
2012-11-03 11:48:30 AM  
Didn't Bob Goo-chee-oh-nee publish Omni?

Omni - The Penthouse version of Scientific American.
 
2012-11-03 11:51:47 AM  

Thwack: carlb: I re-watched 2010 recently, and the oddly anachronistic thing that took me out of the movie for a moment wasn't the MacIntosh Portable that Roy Scheider was using on the beach (Wow! A portable computer! How futuristic.),..

Actually, it was an Apple IIc.
Source: I had one. When than scene came up it took me out of the movie because, hey, that's my computer and I can't use it on the beach.

/Still have it.


My bad. Didn't realize the IIc had that optional little LCD monitor.
 
2012-11-03 11:52:51 AM  
uh someone please send me a link that goes to one of 'em instead of this header/whatever page?
 
2012-11-03 11:55:30 AM  

douchebag/hater: Didn't Bob Goo-chee-oh-nee publish Omni?

Omni - The Penthouse version of Scientific American.


Bob Guccione and Hugh Hefner, two of the best publishers of science fiction from the 60s on after the collapse of the science fiction magazines. They had the smarts to hire really good editors like Robie MacAuley and Alice K. Turner, people with extremely good taste (MacAuley, by the way, needs a biography; dude worked US Army signal intelligence in WWII, was one of the liberators of Fosselburg concentration camp, taught at Iowa Writers Workshop and dated Flannery O'Connor even before he started at Playboy in 1966).
 
2012-11-03 11:56:28 AM  
Subby wins +1 internets today. Thanks very much for this.
 
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