Omni was a slick, heavily illustrated popular science magazine that included science fiction stories, debuting in 1978 with fiction editors Ben Bova (who gave up his editorship at Analog) for the first year and Robert Sheckley for another two years. Early issues typically published four stories each; the number dwindled to two per issue after a couple years, and only one per issue in its last decade. But its relatively high circulation and budget, compared to genre SF magazines, continued to attract top work from new and seasoned writers.

Bova and co-editor Don Myrus published six perfect-bound "best of" anthologies the same size as the magazine (the photo shows a hardcover book club edition of the first), heavily mining the magazine's first four years and occasionally including older pre-Omni classics by Bester, del Rey, Wolfe, and others. Beginning with the second book original stories were included.

Ellen Datlow became fiction editor in 1981 and remained through 1995. She published seven "Omni Books of Science Fiction" in mass market paperback, reprinting stories from 1978 to 1985, including nearly 30 stories already reprinted by Bova and Myrus, and including the occasional original story.

Datlow published five further books, in trade paperback, with stories from the last half of the 1980s but dominated by original stories, with the "Omni Best Science Fiction" volumes. In contrast, the two "Omni Visions" books included just one original story between them, and despite being published in 1993 and 1994 reprinted magazine stories only up to 1989.

(The magazine published issues through 1995 that included some classic stories, e.g. Ted Chiang's debut story "Tower of Babylon" in November 1990, but no anthologies were ever published drawing from these last years of the magazine.)

After the print magazine suspended Datlow stayed on to edit Omni Online for two years and then online sites Event Horizon for another year and Sci Fiction until the end of 2005 (the latter was was discontinued months after winning a Hugo Award). Her 2010 volume reprints stories from these three venues, first published from 1996 to 2005.

Most reprinted authors: Orson Scott Card and Robert Silverberg (12 each), Harlan Ellison (7), then George R.R. Martin, Spider Robinson, and Howard Waldrop (6 each).