From 1979: STARLOG PHOTO GUIDEBOOK: ROBOTS.
Top marks to Messrs O'Quinn and Jacobs for very swiftly realising their little unlicensed STAR TREK magazine (with enough other genre stuff to keep the Paramount lawyers at bay) could be upscaled to a whole publishing empire at the height of the Star Age. Not only did they spin off FUTURE LIFE, FANGORIA, CINEMAGIC and COMICS SCENE in quick succession but they also launched the PHOTO GUIDEBOOKS, essentially a series of colour scrapbooks dedicated to all things SF.
These seem a little crude by today's standards but hark from the pre-internet age where even colour printing was a relative luxury. They were A4 softcover books of varying page counts and price points.
They covered all the obvious bases including heroes, villains, robots, toys, tech, vehicles etc. The various volumes dedicated to special effects are amongst the most coveted by collectors today.
Two of the most useful reprinted, with a good range of stills, the TV episode guides which were a fixture of the early issues of the magazine. Behind-the-scenes information was all but absent but that didn't matter when these were the only source available.
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