Bob Guccione, publisher of Penthouse and Omni magazines, has died

Just saw over on Gizmodo that pivotal magazine publisher Bob Guccione has passed away. He founded Penthouse, yeah… that was the dirty stuff compared to Playboy... Full frontal, multiple women, what!?! And what about that dope “key” logo?

But what I’m really bringing it up for is that he also published OMNI, the freaky sci-fi magazine that was always “the future” to me as I was growing up. I didn’t read it very often - I only had a few old issues that I had gotten from the swap meet (that’s “flea market/boot sale” outside of SoCal) but I always saw it on the 7/11 newstand. It was a little beyond me at that age.

It wasn’t steeped in reality like Popular Science before it, or the post-personal-computer, tangible directions that WIRED has covered after it - and unlike those magazines, since Guccione was involved, it also felt like the future was gonna have some freaky robot/artificial intelligence sex, along with space travel. Probably happening during space travel. OMNI seemed like it had the knob permanently set on a Syd Mead/William Gibson/Hajime Sorayama gouache-and-airbrush vibe.

In a way, selfishly, I’m glad the magazine isn’t around anymore (it ended in 1995) because it’s now locked on a weird pre-teen esoteric sci-fi plane in my mind that I can’t fully decode. It’s distant and misty like the weird airbrushed photo illustrations in the magazine.

Check out the huge collection of the ill pre-Photoshop covers at this site.