Media Daily News is reporting that Bob Guccione, Jr., is in talks with his father, Bob Guccione, to acquire Omni and relaunch it. The younger Guccione currently owns Discover (which he purchased from Time, Inc. in 2005), and has plans to turn Discover, Inc., into a diversified media company. MDN reports that Guccione Jr. would like to bring Omni back as a “high-gloss science fiction quarterly” early in 2008. “It would be much more science fiction” than Discover, he said. He also expects that the new magazine will feature “some big-name columnists writing about real science.”
MDN also reports on the irony of the situation, since Discover was launched in 1980 to compete with Omni (which premiered in 1978). Guccione Sr., hired away Analog‘s editor Ben Bova for Omni, which published a mix of science and science fiction that quickly attracted a devoted readership base, selling more than 1 million copies a month. Omni‘s last fiction editor, Ellen Datlow, was with the magazine when it ceased monthly publication in 1996, and stayed with it through two more years as a web-only publication. Throughout its life, Omni published stories that won five Hugo Awards, seven Nebulas, one World Fantasy Award, and two Bram Stoker Awards.