theLogBook.com is a chronicle of how we used to imagine the future – an ever-expanding
logbook of what our entertainment, our culture, and even our brightest minds thought would happen.
It’s nostalgia – and some real history – that gives factual context to the fiction, cultural
context to the factual, and always looks to the future.

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Published On: August 17, 2010

Soundtrack specialty label Intrada issues a new limited edition release of John Williams’ soundtrack from the 1986 movie SpaceCamp. Available for many years only as an incredibly expensive import from a Japanese label, this is the first official US CD pressing, and quickly sells out. Read more

Published On: August 17, 1998

Welcome To ParadoxThe first episode of the Sci-Fi Channel original series Welcome To Paradox airs, a loosely-connected anthology of science fiction stories set in Betaville, a utopian future city whose incredible technology has frequently unintended side-effects. Steven Bauer (Scarface) stars in a story co-written by SF novelist Alan Dean Foster.

This series is not yet chronicled in the LogBook. You could join theLogBook team and write this guide or support the webmaster’s efforts to expand the site.

Published On: August 17, 1996

Soyuz TM-24Soyuz TM-24 is launched from Russia, on a mission to dock with the Mir space station. Aboard are cosmonauts Valery Korzun and Aleksandr Kaleri, who stay aboard Mir for 196 days, and visiting French spationaut Claudie André-Deshays, the first French woman in space, who stays aboard Mir for 16 days before returning to Earth with the station’s previous crew aboard Soyuz TM-23. Korzun and Kaleri will return to Earth in March 1997.

Published On: August 17, 1987

Bourgeois TaggIsland Records issues Yoyo, the second album by rock group Bourgeois Tagg, fronted jointly by Brent Bourgeois and Larry Tagg. This album is produced by Todd Rundgren, who also recruits most of the band members to play on his next album. The biggest hit turns out to be the ballad “I Don’t Mind At All”, written by Bourgeois and guitarist Lyle Workman; the band breaks up at a later date. Read more

Published On: August 17, 1977

Tales Of The UnexpectedNBC airs the seventh episode of Quinn Martin’s horror/sci-fi anthology Tales Of The Unexpected. (This series is not to be confused with the longer-lived British series of the same name, created by acclaimed author Roald Dahl.) Joanna Pettet and Gary Collins (The Sixth Sense) guest star. (The series has already been cancelled at this point; NBC is burning off the remaining episodes into off-season time slots.)

This series is not yet chronicled in the LogBook. You could join theLogBook team and write this guide or support the webmaster’s efforts to expand the site.

Published On: August 17, 1958

Pioneer 2Also referred to as “Pioneer 0”, the Pioneer space probe is launched by the US Air Force, with the intention of sending it to the moon. Just over a minute after Pioneer’s Thor-Able booster lifts off, the first stage explodes, and Pioneer’s short flight ends in the Atlantic Ocean. The next Pioneer space probe will be handled by the newly formed National Aeronautics and Space Administration later in 1958.

Published On: August 17, 1951

Tales Of TomorrowThe third episode of ABC’s science fiction anthology series, Tales Of Tomorrow, air on ABC, with each episode’s opening titles proclaiming that the series is produced “in cooperation with the Science-Fiction League of America”, a collective of sci-fi writers including Isaac Asimov and Theodore Sturgeon among its members. This episode stars Bert Lytell and Robin Morgan.

This series is not yet chronicled in the LogBook. You could join theLogBook team and write this guide or support the webmaster’s efforts to expand the site.

Absolutely no generative AI was used in the creation of the content on this website.
It’s mostly just some guy named Earl.

EG