Even better than Starlog itself would be their more specialized publication Cinemagic, which was all about special-effects techniques -- not just overviews of professional techniques, but how-to guides for amateur filmmakers to create their own low-budget effects. It was a really cool magazine and I learned a lot from it. It inspired me to write and plan out an amateur SF film of my own that I hoped to produce in college, but I was never able to get enough other people interested enough to get it made. Which is probably just as well, since I doubt I would've enjoyed making the film anywhere near as much as I enjoyed planning it out in elaborate detail, and it was probably way too ambitious to pull off well with my total lack of actual experience. (Seriously -- I had a script and a detailed shooting schedule worked out, I had storyboards and figured out how I'd do all the effects shots, and I even wrote a musical score for full orchestra, though I can't for the life of me remember where I thought I was going to get an orchestra.)
