Before OMNI existed here, it was a flesh-and-blood publication that thrived for 18 years, filling the mailboxes and newsstands of its devotees with thrilling dispatches from the edge of tomorrow. It’s difficult to overestimate OMNI‘s impact on a generation of minds. In taking the first hesitant steps in these big editorial shoes, I’ve crossed paths with countless people–scientists, artists, hackers, dreamers, engineers, critics–who trace the genealogical lines of their inspired, polymathic thinking to a single origin point: OMNI. It’s daunting.
OMNI‘s own lineage is complex. It was the brainchild of Bob Guccione, known to most as the kingpin of the Penthouse empire. Bob cared deeply about both art and science, believing that the mysteries of the universe could be made comprehensible if the right combination of analytic and experimental inquiry was continuously applied. This may have been an ambitious notion, especially for a man known primarily as a pornographer, but it was sincere, and its scope allowed for nearly two decades of radical, invigorating, gonzo exploration. Bob, all gold chains and leather pants, with his eyes to the sky, is our unlikely patron saint now.
The new OMNI will not be the magazine you remember. We will never be able to compete with your nostalgia. We can’t. If you’re here, catalyzed to explore our OMNI Reboot by your fond memories of OMNI as it once was, you know what I mean: it’s too sacred to imitate. No one–not even a fan–should crawl into its crazy, lucid, beautiful skin and attempt to speak through it like a puppet. That would be living in the past–and OMNI was a magazine about the future.
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