OMNI October 1980

 

painting by De Es Schwerberger

First Word, by Kathy Keeton
     Framed on a wall in this magazine's offices is a series of pencil sketches by Bob Guccione.  They represent Omni's moment of inception.  The first visualization of a moment so powerful it would precipitate a whole new era in magazine publishing.  Few believed that these bold and imaginative drawings would evolve into the world's next major publication, and fewer still, that it could be accomplished with something as dry and detached and noncommercial as science.   ...the impetus behind Bob's unique and prophetic vision.  He knew that the immediate postwar emphasis on science and technology would continue and that millions would share his own curiosity about the progress of man toward an ever more brilliant tomorrow.  The experts in our industry laughed, of course.  They predicted that Omni could not sell more than 200,000 copies, no matter how much we spent on advertising and promotion...  ...almost 4 million people read each issue of Omni.  They are a special breed - intelligent, highly educated, and affluent; activists...

Solar Options/Space, by Jerry Grey
     The Energy Department and NASA have been studying satellite power systems (SPS) for about three years now, working with a prototype developed for them by Boeing Aerospace and Rockwell International.  ...critics have used...uncertainties to "prove" that SPS can never be competitive with, say, ground-based photovoltaic arrays.  Planners at DOE just cut the $5.5 million SPS evaluation from their 1981 budget.  ...the prototype would use billions of small...solid-state converters...  The decentralized power generation...permits the use of "sandwich" construction, with the solar-cell array on one side and the microwave transmitter on the other.  ...big sun-facing mirrors ...could be built as concentrators...  They might even act as solar-spectrum splitters, like a prism, so that...solar cells could...convert several wavelengths of light into useful power.  ...the photoklystron...combines the solar cells and mircowave transmitter into a single device.  ...when we apply laser technology to the SPS.  ...the power beam...reduces the Earth receiver's diameter...to a few tens of meters.  A second, wholly different SPS concept relies on big, orbiting mirrors to reflect sunlight directly to Earth-based solar-electric power plants.

Music/The Arts, by John Whitney
     What is the theory behind video music?  We hear music...in...a space that exists vividly within our minds.  The mind's eye shares with the ear...architectonic spatial constructions and would perceive them with the same pleasure were they to exist.

Minnesota Attack/UFO Update, by James Oberg
     "I would have killed someone if the UFOs had told me to do it."  Those words...are from the drama of a real life UFO cult...  It all began with an ordinary UFO sighting one night in January 1973.  Thomas and Susan Kolb, a young couple from Kiel, Wisconsin saw an orange flashing light...  The Kolbs soon joined...the UFO Education Center in Appleton, Wisconsin.  They had unwittingly stumbles on a renegade sect of the old George Adamski cult.  Members of the cult claimed to communicate by telepathy with Orthon, a great scholar living on Venus...a reincarnation of Jesus.  ...Susan swallowed it all... A month after Mrs. Kolb moved into the UFO Education Center, a rescue party, led by her father and husband, broke down the front door and carried her off.  She...signed complaints of false imprisonment against the men.  The charges were eventually dismissed.  Late in October 1977...one of the country's most famous deprogrammers...succeeded in breaking the cult's spell.  That first UFO, which started it all in 1973, turned out to be a neighbor's lighted tractor, plowing at night.

To Pay for the Future, by James S. Albus
     ...robots should spread throughout our society, eventually taking on every kind of job and creating new ones. If we don't change our present patterns...robots will come at the cost of...social unrest and violence... In a robotic society we won't work.  Robots will bring an age of universal prosperity.  They will help us create...synthetic resources...  They will help us...to provide an adequate diet...