This One Started It All: Starlog #1

Way back in the mid-1970s and I was a student at the University of Miami in Florida.  Besides taking classes I worked at the campus bookstore.

One of my responsibilities was to order and display magazines each week.

One day while pursuing the list of magazines to order I spotted a new title: Starlog.

Curious I checked out the description provided by the magazine distributor and discovered that the first issue would spotlight Star Trek The Original Series.

At that time Star Trek was gaining new popularity as the repeats from the 1960s were catching on fast with college kids and fans of the show.

A Star Trek Convention had been held and it was a resounding success.

Plans began to formulate about a possible new Star Trek TV show starring the original cast.

A few scant years later the TV show morphed into the first Star Trek movie as a result of the success of the first Star Wars movie.

It’s important to note that Starlog #1 was published in 1976 by Starlog Publications.  There was no Internet, social media, cable TV was in its infancy, no cell phones and 99% of the communication devices we take for granted today did not exist.  

Video games had just been introduced with Pong and other simple games and fan networks were established with newsletter, letters and over the phone.

In Starlog #1 a whooping 12-pages of color photos were included.

Articles covered were King Kong, Space: 1999, The Bionic Woman, the latest sci-fi news, David Bowie’s new movie and most importantly of all--Star Trek.

Articles on William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy highlighted the Star Trek info and for the first time ever a complete 79-episode guide to the original series was included.  Amazing.

It’s remarkable how much has changed over the years and it's fascinating to see fandom in its infancy.