While merging photos I’d inherited from my mother after her passing with my own, I came across this one of mine, which was taken nearly nineteen years ago to the day, back when I was representing Sci-Fi Entertainment magazine at a Television Critics Association press tour.

That’s me hanging out at a party with Mystery Science Theater 3000 writers and stars Bridget Jones and Mike Nelson. We were at the Ritz-Carlton in Pasadena, probably on the night of January 19, 1997.

We’d all been brought there by the Sci-Fi Channel. Jones, Nelson, and a few more members of the MST3K cast were promoting their show’s move over from Comedy Central, while I was present because Sci-Fi Entertainment was the official magazine of the Sci-Fi Channel. (Note that I was not yet an employee of theirs, but still worked at the time for Sovereign Media, the company behind Science Fiction Age, which was publishing the magazine under license.)

Earlier that day, we—along with Glen Morgan and James Wong of X-Files fame—appeared on-stage before a packed room of journalists answering questions about all things science fiction—including the then-upcoming 20th anniversary release of the Special Edition of Star Wars.

What I found surprising (once I dug out my complete transcript of the event, which of course I still owned, and which runs 24 pages) was that one of the questions directed toward me expressed skepticism that anyone would actually bother heading to a theater to see Star Wars! (more…)

If you want to find out everything there is to know about Syfy these days, it’s simple—just open up a browser, go to http://www.syfy.com/, and you’ll discover all the info you could possibly want.

But eighteen years ago, getting online for the scoop about what was then the Sci-Fi Channel was a wee bit more complicated, as this column from the June 1994 issue of Sci-Fi Entertainment proves. (It would have gone on sale around April 30.)

I don’t know about you, but except for the great times I had back when it seemed as if the entire SF community centered around GEnie, I’m not at all nostalgic for the good old days of the Internet!

I read the Roger Ebert interview in the new Esquire and was moved. I watched Oprah today and was moved even more. Seeing him speechless, but with eyes still bright, was heartbreaking and uplifting at the same time. When asked how he was doing, he said he was terrific, and I believed him. Life, for him, even with all he’s been through, is still worth living.

I’ve always felt a connection with Ebert. The rest of the world may only know him as a Pulitzer Prize-winning critic, the movie reviewer with the biggest thumb in the business, but you and I know that deep inside, he’s one of us—a hardcore science-fiction fan.

He founded the science-fiction club in his high school. He read Astounding. He published a mimeographed fanzine. And he loved fandom. So when I interviewed him for Sci-Fi Entertainment back in 1997, I wasn’t speaking to some bigshot, but to just another fan, Rog Ebert.

Since Ebert’s condition has become more public the past few weeks, and everybody’s been showing their love for him, I thought I’d do the same. Here’s that interview from the July 1997 issue of Sci-Fi Entertainment. We only got to meet in the flesh once, two years later, at a NY screening for The Phantom Menace. I sat in the row behind him, and as I watched it, I couldn’t help but occasionally watch him watching it.

He loved it. More than me, because I certainly wouldn’t have given it 3 1/2 stars the way he did. But that was the science-fiction fanboy in him talking. It was there then. I’m sure it’s there still.

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