{"id":24996,"date":"2026-04-07T21:07:25","date_gmt":"2026-04-07T11:07:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.starkafterdarkonline.com\/?p=24996"},"modified":"2026-04-08T20:19:41","modified_gmt":"2026-04-08T10:19:41","slug":"top-tens-fantasy-sf-top-10-sf-books-special-mention","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.starkafterdarkonline.com\/?p=24996","title":{"rendered":"Top Tens – Fantasy & SF: Top 10 SF Books (Special Mention) (1) Omni"},"content":{"rendered":"
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One of Omni’s highlights was its top quality SF (and fantasy) art, showcased by this hardcover book collection of it published in 2014<\/p><\/div>\n

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(1) OMNI (1978-1998)<\/p>\n

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O Omni \u2013 the iconic magazine of science and science fiction!<\/p>\n

Omni was founded by Kathy Keeton and her partner Bob Guccione, better known as the publisher of Penthouse magazine, in 1978. Unfortunately, it foundered with Keeton\u2019s death in 1997 and wound up in 1998, having ceased print in 1995 but continued online for a short time.<\/p>\n

I was introduced to Omni magazine when a spring-cleaning neighbor gave me their old collection of magazines, which also included an anthology Best of Omni Science Fiction. Omni was the gift that kept on giving, as it introduced me to a variety of SF writers, including many writers in my Top 10 SF list or special mentions.<\/p>\n

In its halcyon days, it obviously paid writers well as it was a leading light of SF stories, including genre classics. Its impact wasn\u2019t limited to stories \u2013 it also featured leading genre artists (including H.R. Giger) as well as feature articles on science and other recurring features. One of the latter was competitions for readers, with one such being for Partly Baked Ideas, the winning entry of which has lodged in my psyche ever since – the Partly Baked Idea for plant flight. Take certain plants that open and close their leaves with the alternation of day and night, combine them with gradually decreasing artificial light from the natural day cycle to strobe frequency, and you may just have plants that flap their leaves enough to fly…<\/p>\n

Or not – they were Partly Baked Ideas after all!<\/p>\n

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RATING: 5 STARS*****
\nS-TIER (GOD TIER)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    (1) OMNI (1978-1998)   O Omni \u2013 the iconic magazine of science and science fiction! Omni was founded by Kathy Keeton and her partner Bob Guccione, better known as the publisher of Penthouse magazine, in 1978. Unfortunately, it foundered with Keeton\u2019s death in 1997 and wound up in 1998, having ceased print in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[849],"tags":[24,141,235],"class_list":["post-24996","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-top-tens","tag-sf","tag-top-10","tag-top-10-sf-books"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p65BRB-6va","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.starkafterdarkonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24996","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.starkafterdarkonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.starkafterdarkonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.starkafterdarkonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.starkafterdarkonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24996"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.starkafterdarkonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24996\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25009,"href":"https:\/\/www.starkafterdarkonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24996\/revisions\/25009"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.starkafterdarkonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24996"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.starkafterdarkonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24996"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.starkafterdarkonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24996"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}