Since the last time we spoke I took a trip to Lehigh County, Pennsylvania. It wasn’t just for the unusual hot dogs, but to visit the biannual Antique Book & Paper Show at the awesomely named Allentown Fairgrounds Agri-Plex.

Imagine an enormous concrete showroom stuffed with extremely well-curated junk, with the only rule being it should be on paper. That means everything from postcards of tropical birds, seaside hotels, zeppelins, and kangaroos, to home photos of people who died in the Korean War, plus flattened out Yummy Mummy cereal boxes, and, yes, a great many well-preserved issues of STARLOG magazine.

I enjoy rooting around in antique shops in general, but I really like visiting booths brimming with hand-selected material with a specific point of view. One table at Allentown is gonna make the person searching for French Perfume ads from the 1890s swoon while another will make the guy collecting every brochure from the Seattle 1962 World’s Fair (not the lamestream NYC ‘64 World’s Fair!) lose his mind.

Maybe you love old AAA maps? Maybe you, unlike the main character in William Gibson’s Pattern Recognition, love the Michelin Man? Maybe, for some godforsaken reason, you collect instruction manuals from kitchen appliances sold during the Johnson administration? Maybe you are the person I saw at the show with a t-shirt that read “I Buy Old Newspapers.”

There’s a reason I’m bringing this up. I’m worried about future generations.

So much of the treasure at the ephemera emporium is, today, not being printed. I don’t use a map, I use Google. We all do. (Although STARLOG podcast guest Andrea Hairston tries not to; go listen to the episode with her on it for more about this.) Appliances and gadgets often come with a link to a PDF. Fewer and fewer people buy printed newspapers. The home delivery price of my local rag, The Asbury Park Press, just shot up 20 percent. I’m still subscribed but I had to think about it.

What will someone born years from now be able to rummage through when they turn 50? I see stray pieces of advertising from before I could tie my shoes and think “wow, this takes me back to my grandmother’s house.” How will that work when so much of mundane life, the unimportant stuff that ends up being so important, is a collection of intangible pixels on a screen?

Living digitally has its benefits. We don’t need to list them here. Also, importantly, overdosing on nostalgia is a dangerous drug. If you pine for the past too much you lose your present, let alone your future. I do think, however, some balance is necessary.

Which is why it’s so exciting to me that STARLOG isn’t just returning, it is returning to print. If nothing else, shows at the Agri-Plex in years to come (maybe under a glass dome due to pollution and climate destruction) will have copies of what we’re creating for you. Hold on tight, the future is coming.

Jordan Hoffman, Communications Officer

Which brings us to this week’s dip into the archive. Since we’re talking about magazines, how about magazines that can talk? Back in 1980 some publishing exec at TIME thought subscribers should also be able to hear what they were reading about, something easily achievable today online with a simple click. But back then, what was the solution? Suffice it to say, the idea sounded good on paper (or very thin vinyl) but the execution was difficult.

You can hear all about this wacky concept by clicking the “listen” button below.

Science fiction and science fact. The STARLOG Podcast recognizes you can’t have one without the other. We’ve had several true blue eggheads on the show before — like Dr. Erin Macdonald and Prof. Scott Hughes — and Dave and I were thrilled to have space reporter Swapna Krishna on the show this week. (If you are one of the few who watches the show as well as listens to it, you may notice that “Diamond Hard” Dave Gonzales wore his vintage Space Camp t-shirt during the recording.)

I first met Swapna at a Star Trek event in New York City and count myself lucky that I have someone I can go to directly for all my basic “I know I should know this” questions about Artemis, NASA, Blue Origin, SpaceX, the current Russian space program, and all the other programs orbiting our pale blue dot. There’s a lot happening in modern life right now, and sometimes you can get behind in the news, even when it’s a topic you care deeply about.

I think the best part of our conversation — longer than the typical STARLOG Podcast interview — is when Swapna explains the current horse race between Blue Origin and SpaceX. And how Blue Origin seemed to be in the lead before a big fat explosion happened earlier this year. (See image below if you missed this.)

Also, she explains that, yes, there is a box on Mars loaded with soil that probably proves that life existed or maybe even still exists up there … we just have to figure out a way to get it back to Earth.

The new episode of The STARLOG Podcast, like the ones before it, is on whatever podcasting platform you prefer. Or you can just click the little “listen” button below.

SCI-FI

Becky Chambers’s new book, As You Wake, Break The Shell, is available in stores this week, and it’s a major event for sci-fi lovers around the world. The new one is the first in a new series, so if you’ve never entered the chambers of Chambers’s mind, here ya go. She spoke on camera recently with Gamereactor, and you can watch that interview here.

SCIENCE

So what will actually happen when Sol (our sun) downgrades from a yellow star to a red giant? Dr. Alfredo Carpineti has the details, and it ain’t looking too good for Uranus.

CULTURE

Just when you thought there was no brilliant ST:TNG supercut left for YouTube to serve you, the geniuses behind the Picard Looking account come up with one of the best ones in the galaxy. Click this link for five minutes of perfection.

ETHICS

Hollywood and AI are on a collision course. A new production called Gods Don’t Give Gifts, made with AI (but, its producers stress, also with human voice actors), aims to be the first feature-length motion picture released in theaters later this year. The pullquotes praising the company behind it include Joe Rogan. You can watch the trailer and judge for yourself.