Starlog Magazine Free Online

Now you can read Starlog for free over at the Internet Archive. The magazine began in 1976 and its heyday was in the 1980s although it continued to appear until about five or six years ago.

I egoscanned the site and – hooray – found two pieces of mine Starlog published once upon a time.

In Issue #110 is my quiz “No Trivial Pursuit: The Hugo Awards” (page 19). Despite so many of the answers being obsolete it’s still a fun read.

And my Science Fiction Clubs list was serialized over six issues, #122, #124, #125, #126, #127 and #128. Mainly of interest if you are looking for your name in print. (This was definitely the peak of Baby Boomer generation fandom. How sobering to realize just 10 years later I was writing “Is Your Club Dead Yet?”)

[Via Robert Sawyer and io9.]

Naha Flees Montecito Fire

The wildfires in Montecito, California forced Ed Naha, a former Starlog editor, out of his house. An Associated Press story about evacuees quoted him:

Meanwhile, about 200 people spent the night at an evacuation center at a high school in nearby Goleta, but rest was out of the question for Ed Naha, a 58-year-old writer who lives in the hills above Santa Barbara.

“I don’t think we are going to have the house when we go back,” Naha said.

“We are used to seeing smoke because we do have fires up here, but I’ve never seen that reddish, hellish glow that close,” he said. “I was waiting for Dante and Virgil to show up.”

[Thanks to David Klaus for the story.]