With Chicon 7, the 70th World Science Fiction Convention, beginning in Chicago just a few days from now, here’s a flashback to the 54th World Science Fiction Convention, L.A.con III, which took place in Anaheim, California. Life sure was a lot different back in 1996.

I’d been editing Science Fiction Age for four years by then, and was about to take over as editor of Sci-Fi Entertainment as well.

Sovereign Media was flying high, with a booth promoting those two magazines plus Realms of Fantasy, and as you can tell from my smile, I was having a blast. Because in addition to the pure joy I was having editing SFA, that was also the year I’d gotten my first Hugo Award nomination for Best Editor.

There’d be three more nominations to come, but the first was somehow the sweetest.

Here’s hoping you get to make some sweet memories of your own next weekend!

One thing Science Fiction Age could do during its run that no other science fiction magazines could—since it was a large, full-color publication—was include a six-page gallery each issue, usually focused on the work of a single artist. It was inevitable that the visionary Jean Giraud, better known (well, to some) by his pseudonym Moebius, would be one of those artists.

Giraud, who passed away earlier today of cancer, was a part of the magazine from the first issue. Though we never commissioned original artwork—he was out of our league in terms of paying for anything new out of our budget, so I’d go through his vast portfolio of existing work in attempts to match up pieces with stories that suited his spirit—I enjoyed working with him.

Check out the gallery below from our September 1996 issue as you—as we all—mourn the great artist today.

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I’d have shared a Science Fiction Age rejection slip with you long ago as part of this series if not for the fact that even though thousands of them passed through my hands during the eight years I edited the magazine (I was seeing 8,000-10,000 stories per year), I apparently didn’t save any for my records. So I had to wait for one of you to dig up a copy.

As you can see, it was certainly one of the wordier rejection slips out there.

Thanks to Brad Torgersen for taking the trouble to find this.

I’m going to write this post without digging into my old journals, notes, and memos, so I may end up being off on some of the dates, a point I want to get out of the way first thing. But the spirit of what I’m about to share with you is true, and I want you to hear it today even though I don’t have the time for that. I may someday write something longer and more detailed on the subject with all the i’s dotted, t’s crossed, and details revealed, but for now, this will have to do.

I edited Science Fiction Age magazine from 1992 through 2000, but what very few people know is that I almost quit before the first issue ever appeared. (Or perhaps it was during the space between the first and second issue. I can no longer be sure without doing that research I mentioned.) And the reason for my possible resignation is a short story that’s just gotten published in the September/October issue of Fantasy & Science Fiction, a story which you’re only finally getting a chance to read nearly two decades later than you should have.

Sometime during 1992, before the first issue of Science Fiction Age was published, I read a submission titled “Anise” from writer Chris DeVito. I loved it, and sent out a contract immediately. If the name doesn’t mean anything to you, or if the name does mean something to you, but you only know Chris as the editor and publisher of the magazines such as Fuck Science Fiction or Proud Flesh, well … I still feel guilty about that.

Because “Anise” was NOT published in the second or third issue of SFA. Instead, the publishers overruled my decision due to the story’s explicit sexual content. I was told that maybe we could publish it a couple of years down the road, but not during the first year or two of our existence, when the chain stores were still paying close attention to the magazine’s content.

I was furious. (more…)

I’ve been thinking about exploding cows for the past couple of days, and of how I should finally share in some permanent way that long shaggy dog (shaggy cow?) story of mine. I’ve shared it several times to crowded rooms at conventions, but that’s as far as it’s gone.

What has me recalling those unfortunate bovines right now is The Collected Stores of Jack Williamson Volume Eight, which showed up in the mail this week.

When I began flipping through the book, what first caught my eye were the two Science Fiction Age covers printed on the inside front and back covers, which made me smile. Then, looking to see what was written about the stories reprinted from those issues, I got a little choked up, because I discovered that Jack had spoken to me from beyond the grave.

Since Jack died several years ago, I’d assumed that any story notes would have to be written by someone else, but no—Jack had known the contents of this volume so far in advance that he’d been able to write about them in 2005. And this is the final sentence of his passage about having “The Firefly Tree” published in Science Fiction Age:

It was the first of mine that Scott Edelman bought for Science Fiction Age, a great magazine while it lived.

Thank, Jack. That means a lot.

After reading that, I set the book aside for a bit, pleased by Jack’s kudos. When I picked it up again, it was to read Connie Willis’ introduction. I expected to see her love for Jack shining through, but what I didn’t expect to find were exploding cows.

Yes. Exploding cows. My exploding cows.

First Connie mentioned in passing that some of the difficulties those of us who visited Portales faced in getting there were “floods, blizzards, and exploding cows.” But in the next paragraph, discussing those of us who’d made multiple visits to the Jack Williamson Lectureship series, she got more explicit, saying that I personally had returned:

” … in spite of the fact that one time, he not only witnessed a wreck between a train and a truck full of cattle, but ended up on a smoke-filled plane which had to make an emergency landing.”

Which got me to thinking—I’ve told the tale of this adventure before crowds many times at cons, once with Connie on my lap as if she were a little girl being told a bedtime story. So isn’t it time I told it to you?

I think i should. But how? I can’t decide whether to simply write it out as a blog entry here, record a podcast, or create a YouTube video so you can see me as I recount that crazy day. I’m not sure when I’ll get the time to do any of those things, but when I finally do, which do you think it should be?

Let me know.

[BTW --this is my first attempt to post here from my iPad as opposed to my laptop, so if you're reading this -- it worked!]

Last night, looking to rest my brain after a heavily wired day, I pulled out my bound volume of the July-October 1898 issues of Frank Leslie’s Popular Monthly. About as far as you could get from science fiction, right? You’d think so. But mixed in with articles on “The Irish People at Home” and “The Jews of the United States” was an advertisement in which Jules Verne tells us that “Vin Mariani prolongs life, it is wonderful.”

And the father of science fiction isn’t the only notable to urge us to take a sip of “the popular tonic” that is proclaimed to be “nourishing, strengthening, refreshing.” Also recommending the drink are the man who exonerated Dreyfuss (Emile Zola), the author of The Three Musketeers (Alexandre Dumas), the composer of “Ave Maria” (Charles Gounod), and the designer of the Statue of Liberty (Bartholdi)!

Why, so amazing is this beverage that it’s recommended “For Overworked Men, Delicate Women, Sickly Children.”

Since I’d never heard of this miracle elixir before, I decided to learn a bit about Vin Mariani, which turned out to have been created in 1863 and (as I should have expected) was “made from Bordeaux wine treated with coca leaves.”

In fact, at first it contained 6 milligrams of cocaine per fluid ounce of wine, but when exported to the U.S., that was raised to 7.2 milligrams per ounce.

No wonder it is “recommended by all who try it”!

Back in 1993, long before I started working for the Syfy Channel, I was on the SCI FI Channel.

SCI FI Buzz, which was then the Channel’s equivalent of 60 Minutes, did a short feature highlighting me on the occasion of the first anniversary of <em>Science Fiction Age magazine. It was taped at ConFrancisco, the 1993 World Science Fiction Convention in San Francisco, and ran in December of that year.

I don’t know how you’ll feel about watching this, but I wince a little, not just because there’s a little bit more of me, but also because there’s a little bit less.

More, because I was heavier then. Less, because I was trying so hard to present myself as a calm talking head and not bounce around in my chair or talk with my hands that I seem more subdued than my usual bouncy self. I was trying to be too cool about it all. I appear too coy and sedate, and with the quiet manner of speech on display here, I remind myself of Jason Alexander playing George Costanza.

You might feel differently. In fact, I hope you feel differently. But however you feel, the clip is too good a piece of history not to share.