Here are the first 20 years of Wired covers in less than 30 seconds. I met Mark in 1993 around Wired's birth when we both worked at the magazine. I was Mark's intern! My first day on the job, Mark brought me downstairs to meet his wife Carla Sinclair who was editor of bOING bOING the print 'zine that I had been reading since 1990. Mark and Carla assigned me an article on the spot, handed me a half-empty bottle of Vasopressin, and we quickly became best pals. Ah, the good ol' daze.
The complete run of Omni, one of my all-time favorite magazines, is now available for free on the Internet Archive! In its late-1970s and 1980s heyday, Omni was a wonderful blend of technology, science, art, fiction, futurism, and high weirdness. It really inspired my own writing and interests.
OMNI Magazine Collection(via Warren Ellis)
In fact, as I've posted before, if I could launch a new Boing Boing print magazine I'd want it to have this logo, courtesy of Mr. Beschizza:
UPDATE: Rob now says that this is what Boing Omni would look like...
The Internet Archive is one of the great treasures of the internet, housing content in every media; texts, video, audio. It’s also the home of the Wayback Machine, an archive of the Internet from 1996. I thought I had explored the site pretty thoroughly—at least according to my own interests—but recently came across runs of some of the great gaming magazines of the 1970s and 80s; The Space Gamer, Ares, Polyhedron, The General, and—temporarily—Dragon Magazine. These magazines represent not only the golden age of gaming, but expose the thrill and excitement of gaming when it was still new, still on the margins. It was a time when gaming still felt a little, dare I say, punk.
In 1936, Ludwig Bemelmans painted scenes of the Twin Cities to illustrate an article in Fortune magazine. If the style looks at all familiar, it's probably because you're remembering Bemelmans' most famous creation — a Parisian schoolgirl named Madeline.
In this painting, you can see the Cathedral of St. Paul and what I am pretty certain is the James J. Hill House — a massive, red sandstone mansion that is actually across the street and down a half block from the Cathedral. Bonus fact: The Hill House was built by the railroad magnate behind what is now Amtrak's Empire Builder route from Seattle to Minneapolis. In fact, that was his nickname. James "The Empire Builder" Hill. I'm not kidding. The house is open for tours and it's pretty fantastic. Plus, you get to watch a nice video which assures you that while James J. Hill was, technically, a union-busting robber baron, he also really liked kittens. Again, not kidding.
A magazine called “WET” is difficult to explain. Particularly when you have, as I do, a stack of them. When snickering friends dig into the brittle pages, they soon discover something amazing: an artifact from the misunderstood era of the late 70s early 80s that cleverly combined hedonism, pop culture, and a great, iconoclastic sense of humor. Then they get it. Still, some wonder about the subtitle: The Magazine of Gourmet Bathing. Seriously?
Locus magazine, the venerable science fiction trade publication put out by the nonprofit Locus Science Fiction Foundation has expanded its digital offering, selling DRM-free PDFs, ePubs, and Mobis on a subscription basis or as singles. I'm proud to write a column for Locus, and really treasure each issue when it comes through the door.
Locus magazine, the venerable science fiction trade publication put out by the nonprofit Locus Science Fiction Foundation has expanded its digital offering, selling DRM-free PDFs, ePubs, and Mobis on a subscription basis or as singles. I'm proud to write a column for Locus, and really treasure each issue when it comes through the door.