Frederic S. Clarke, others David E. Wiiliams, Jeff Bond (as CFQ)
Cinefantastique was a magazine devoted to television and movie productions in the horror, fantasy and science fiction genres. It started out as a fanzine in 1967, under the stewardship of Frederic S. Clarke. Under his auspices, it soon developed into a high-quality critical review magazine, relaunched and with a re-started numbering from 1970 onward, with in-depth articles about the genre. The high quality was reflected in the way the magazine was published, being printed on high gloss paper and featuring full color interior work, with advertising kept to a minimum and those limited to related products. Over time, a more journalistic approach was introduced as a new element in the formula. Reporters were sent out to get firsthand information of the people involved in the genre productions.
Another element was introduced in 1977, with the publication of the first double issue covering Star Wars, heralding the advent of theme numbers where editors were able to go in-depth into specific productions in the genre. Double issues became regular occurrences of Cinefantastique. Up until then the formula was comparable with the contemporary Starlog magazine.
In 1990, Star Trek: The Next Generation became the first television show to be covered in an episode guide issue. The set-up differed in that the guide was beefed out with behind-the-scenes articles. The formula was very well received by readers and was later expanded to double issue theme numbers and applied to other popular genre television series of the time, like The X-Files and Babylon 5. Mark A. Altman, Dale Kutzera and Anna Kaplan became the premier reporters on Star Trek. While not as specialized as its contemporaries , American Cinematographer and Cinefex, Cinefantastique covered a wider range of behind-the-scenes aspects of productions. At the time of publication, Cinefantastique was the premier source of contemporary background information on the production of the Star Trek spin-off television series, its two contemporaries concentrating on the movie features.
Stine's cover art for the unrealized The Motion Picture double-issue
Noteworthy is that – unlike the other Star Trek productions, up to 2002 – coverage of Star Trek: The Motion Picture and Star Trek V: The Final Frontier was either very limited (in the first case) or altogether non-existent (in the latter case). Especially the first case was remarkable since The Motion Picture received extensive coverage, at the time, in contemporary magazines like Starlog, American Cinematographer, and Cinefex. Cinefantastique had planned a theme double-issue for the occasion, and articles were written for the issue. However, editorial problems, probably due to scheduling problems with the likewise conceived The Black Hole double-issue, caused that issue never to be published. The completed cover art by Roger Stine for that issue was later acquired by Daren Dochterman, [1] having bought it as Lot 257 in the Profiles in HistoryHollywood Auction #24 of 31 March, 2006.
Years later, in regard to the Motion Picture, the main free-lance writer for the would-be special, Preston Neal Jones, shed more light on the issue of its non-publication, as he searched for a publisher to have his work, done for the special, yet published as a book, entitled "Return to Tomorrow":
"This work began in the summer of 1979 as a commission from Frederick S. Clarke, the editor of Cinefantastique magazine, to create a double-issue honoring the imminent Star Trek movie, similar to previous special issues covering Star Wars and Close Encounters. Given to understand by my Trek fan friends that they would wish to read as detailed an account as possible, I interviewed sixty participants in the creation of this film, from Roddenberry and his original cast to director Robert Wise, science advisor Isaac Asimov, composer Jerry Goldsmith, screenwriters, set designers, special effects technicians and on and on, up to and including the young Executive in Charge of Production, one Jeffrey Katzenberg. I edited this material like a montage of memories, as if all sixty people were holding a round-robin seminar about the making of the movie. Wherever possible, I let them tell the story in their own words. (...)
"Even given that it was impossible to complete this magnum opus in time for the film's opening in December of 1979 – as I'm sure your readers are well aware, the special effects teams were working on ST-TMP until literally a few days before its premiere – my editor still had cause to regret the great amount of time I took on this assignment. By the time I was finished, the picture was long gone from theaters, and the completed manuscript totaled some 1,800 pages – more than enough for three books, let alone one.
"Cinefantastique kept promising its readers [among others in Vol. 10, issue 1, in a in a full page ad, featuring in black and white, the unused cover art, mentioned above] that it would print Return to Tomorrow, but this never happened, for reasons known only to Fred, now sadly gone from the planet.
"My book was never designed to be a muck-raker, but it was an honest, straightforward account of the amazing series of crises and difficulties encountered by this particular big-studio production. One reason why I believe the book should finally be published is that it examines a major motion picture in more detail than any previous book of its kind. Now that a few relatively honest books on the Trek universe have been published in recent years, with no resulting collapse of Gulf and Western or its assets, my hope is that Return to Tomorrow can finally take its place among them." [2]
In 2000, founder and chief editor Clarke committed suicide. After his death, perceived quality of the magazine (both in content and product, and including those with Star Trek contents) started to wane and readership began to decline rapidly, before the magazine ceased publication in 2002. Mark A. Altman, who had previously left the magazine, acquired publishing rights with Mark Gottwald and relaunched it under the new title CFQ in 2003. Returning the publication to its original formula of being a critical review magazine, they were unable to regain the popularity it originally had in its heydays and publication ceased in 2006 after 25 issues.
Cinefantastique relaunched in 2007 as a webzine called Cinefantastique Online.
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