A new STARLOG for a new age.

Greetings and felicitations, people of Earth!

There has never been a better moment than right now for the return of STARLOG. More so than ever, we are living in the future. There are self-driving cars, there are privatized aerospace companies, there are dating apps that make ‘The Circuit’ from Logan’s Run seem tame. Arthur C. Clarke predicted how personal computers would radically change communications and information retrieval, but never went so far as to suggest it could all fit in your pocket and there’d be an ancillary industry devoted to soft plastic casings found in every mall. The ‘All Thing’ from Dan Simmons’s Hyperion sure did seem weird before the social media explosion, now it just seems obvious. Science fiction and science fact have long borrowed from one another; the borders are more porous now than ever. The new print publications of STARLOG, regular engagements of The STARLOG Podcast, and weekly transmissions of The Lodestar will act as an examination and extrapolation of it all.

It’s also a pretty terrific time to be a fan. The warhorse properties are still out there. A new season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is around the corner, as is Lanterns, another stab to bring one of the nerdiest corners of the DC Comics universe to wider popularity. For All Mankind, one of the finest alternate history series ever, has debuted Star City, a mirror universe of sorts to this imagined reality. Next year brings a wholly original Star Wars led by Ryan Gosling, star of this year’s wildly popular adaptation of Andy Weir’s Project Hail Mary. There’s also the brand new Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, which isn’t just about sci fi, but does have a lot of junk in it that its main benefactor, George Lucas, wanted to clear out of his garage. And perhaps most importantly, Rush is back in tour.

STARLOG is here to help you make sense of it all. This is a place to revel in fandom and approach each tech breakthrough with optimism. That doesn’t mean loving it all – kids faking their college admission essays with LLMs is doubeplusungood no matter how you spin in – but exploring our world in good faith is oftentimes the more difficult path. (Also, did you know Claude was named after a real guy? And he rode a unicycle?)

Luckily, we have the 32 years of STARLOG legacy to lean on. Our objective is to honor the past as we embrace our future. There’s plenty of room on this ride.

Jordan Hoffman, Communications Officer

“The Trekkies are intelligent, interesting, and involved people with whom it is a pleasure to be,” he wrote, succinctly silencing any critics. You can hear more from Asimov’s article, and commentary from 50 years later, on the podcast.

For the first episode of The STARLOG Podcast, it felt important to check in with our fearless Fleet Admiral, Annalee Newitz, who is guiding the sculpting and refining of our relaunched magazine – coming soon to a grocery store checkout counter near you.

Annalee, a Hugo Award-winner, has been writing and speaking about futurism, science, and sci-fi for decades, and is well-remembered as the founder of the website io9. They are also the author of several sci-fi books like the recent Automatic Noodle, as well as previous bangers The Terraformers, The Future of Another Timeline, and Autonomous. Their nonfiction work includes Stories Are Weapons: Psychological Warfare and the American Mind, Four Lost Cities: A Secret History of the Urban Age, and Scatter, Adapt, and Remember: How Humans Will Survive a Mass Extinction.

This first convo on The STARLOG Podcast is, we truly hope, only one of a series, as we just scratched the surface, but it’s a great way to get a taste of what is in store.

SCI-FI

The specialty film division of Universal which brought us this year’s sensation Obsession is clearly going all-in on weirdness. The first trailer for Agnieszka Smoczyńska’s Hot Spot just came out, and features a blend of retro-futurism, desert apocalypse, and something called “cyber witches.” What’s best about the short clip is how much of the story it doesn’t give away. Check out the trailer here.

SCIENCE

The scientific mind is compelled to know everything it can about the world around it. Read more here.

CULTURE

Isaac Asimov never won the Nobel Prize for Literature, but that doesn’t mean he’s not represented at the Nobel Prize Museum, as this Redditor shared.

ETHICS

Synthetic “mirror” proteins, self-replicating scientifically-created organisms that could lead to tremendous medical gains, could also quickly transform into an unchecked biological kudzu that kills us all. Read more here.