The Unexpected Bonus
Aug. 30th, 2014 10:04 amNow that I've managed to see just about all of Creative Computing, the old computer magazine most intriguing to me for being out of reach at the moment seems Softalk. It showed up in the early days of "system-specific magazines," devoted to the Apple II with part of its startup funds coming from game show winnings. Unlike some other early magazines (including Creative Computing itself), it stayed independent even as it spun off magazines devoted to computer gaming, the IBM PC, and the Macintosh, but that independence did seem to doom it exactly four years after its first issue as deeper-pocketed competitors pressed into its market and advertising dollars stretched thin. (Of course, this far from the early days, the magazines that sold out to big companies all wound up closed down by corporate penny-pinching sooner or later...) The Apple II users who read it still seem to remember it with fondness all the same. This, though, hasn't yet translated into all of it being scanned and put online as with Commodore and Atari magazines, but when I saw someone had at least done that with the slim first issue I didn't hesitate.
Beyond the obvious novelty of a "first issue," I could also take definite interest in its cover story, "Apple Helps The Empire Strikes Back." I'd already seen the Apple II system the article talked about (which not only catalogued the pieces of special-effects film being produced by ILM but also calculated "start frames" to speed putting them together) pictured in "The Making of The Empire Strikes Back"; the picture in the magazine was just as recognizable with its fairly small monitor and the single disk drive right on top of that monitor. What I hadn't expected was for the references to the second sequel to follow the success of the first (and there was a sense of "things aren't what they used to be" when the article led off by talking about how "the conventional wisdom in Hollywood" was that "sequels are almost surely doomed to failure--financially if not artistically") to say "Return of the Jedi."
"Empire of Dreams," the documentary now ten years old included in the DVD box set of the "Imperial Trilogy," had at least mentioned how George Lucas had put "Return of the Jedi" on his very first draft only to be told he needed something a bit punchier, whereupon he changed it to the "Revenge of the Jedi" everyone seemed to know about in 1981 and 1982; that title was mentioned in "Once Upon A Galaxy," the period "making of The Empire Strikes Back" book presumably wrapped up in time for the movie's opening. I suppose that while I can dwell on implications overheard of "Revenge of the Jedi" representing something unspecified yet appealing to to those who've schooled themselves through long practice to be dissatisfied with, or to altogether miss the point of, Star Wars as it is, this hint at last of the actual title being mentioned in public much sooner than everyone supposes these days was both interesting and intriguing.
Beyond the obvious novelty of a "first issue," I could also take definite interest in its cover story, "Apple Helps The Empire Strikes Back." I'd already seen the Apple II system the article talked about (which not only catalogued the pieces of special-effects film being produced by ILM but also calculated "start frames" to speed putting them together) pictured in "The Making of The Empire Strikes Back"; the picture in the magazine was just as recognizable with its fairly small monitor and the single disk drive right on top of that monitor. What I hadn't expected was for the references to the second sequel to follow the success of the first (and there was a sense of "things aren't what they used to be" when the article led off by talking about how "the conventional wisdom in Hollywood" was that "sequels are almost surely doomed to failure--financially if not artistically") to say "Return of the Jedi."
"Empire of Dreams," the documentary now ten years old included in the DVD box set of the "Imperial Trilogy," had at least mentioned how George Lucas had put "Return of the Jedi" on his very first draft only to be told he needed something a bit punchier, whereupon he changed it to the "Revenge of the Jedi" everyone seemed to know about in 1981 and 1982; that title was mentioned in "Once Upon A Galaxy," the period "making of The Empire Strikes Back" book presumably wrapped up in time for the movie's opening. I suppose that while I can dwell on implications overheard of "Revenge of the Jedi" representing something unspecified yet appealing to to those who've schooled themselves through long practice to be dissatisfied with, or to altogether miss the point of, Star Wars as it is, this hint at last of the actual title being mentioned in public much sooner than everyone supposes these days was both interesting and intriguing.