I was watching the horror movie The Black Phone a few days ago when a scene set in a small-town convenience store had me hitting pause, because a comics rack was clearly visible. And whenever I spot one of those, I always ask … do the comics match the time period?

Some movies and TV shows dress the set with comics from years past which would have long before been pulled by the distributor, others have comics which wouldn’t be published for several years. The Black Phone, set in 1978, presented me with multiple puzzles. (more…)

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…)

I’ve been thinking quite a bit about Chip Delany and his writing recently, as evidenced by this post from a few weeks back, and that resulted in me suddenly remembering an interview I conducted with him more than thirteen years ago in support of the release of his 1974 novel Dhalgren.

The nearly 6,000-word interview originally ran on June 18, 2001 in Science Fiction Weekly #217. The contents of that magazine vanished from anywhere online save the Wayback Machine when Science Fiction Weekly merged with SCI FI Wire—or maybe it was when SCI Wire transformed into Blastr—taking this interview with it, which seems a shame. So here it is once more, rescued from the black hole of the Internet, following my original introduction …

(This photo of us, however, is from May 2014.)

Samuel R. Delany launched his science-fiction career as a 20-year-old publishing prodigy with the novel The Jewels of Aptor in 1962. Other critically-acclaimed novels and short stories quickly followed, as did recognition from both fans and peers. He earned Nebula Awards for his novel Babel-17 (1966), as well as the short stories “Aye, and Gomorrah … ” (1967) and “Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones” (1969), the latter of which also won a Hugo Award. By 1969, the author, editor and critic Algis Budrys was already calling Delany “the best science-fiction writer in the world,” which, based on the evidence at the time, did not seem to be that controversial a call.

The true controversy waited just around the corner. For at the height of his success, Delany sequestered himself to spend half a decade on his next project, Dhalgren, which when eventually published in 1974 was like no science-fiction novel seen before. The 800-page novel used experimental literary techniques to tell an apocalyptic tale containing explicit explorations of sexuality, race and gender. The controversial novel was either loved or hated, proving to be the most hotly debated SF novel of the decade. Vintage Books has just begun a publishing program to reissue all of Delany’s classic novels, beginning with Dhalgren.

Science Fiction Weekly interviewed Delany over lunch at the Hotel George in Washington, D.C., while he toured the country to promote Dhalgren‘s new home. (more…)

Way back on August 15, 1995, my life changed, only I didn’t know it at the time. That’s because on that date, Craig Engler launched Science Fiction Weekly, which a few years later he would sell to the SCI FI Channel. And a few years after that, over the Labor Day weekend in 2000 at the Chicago World Science Fiction Convention, he gave me the chance to take over from then-editor Brooks Peck.

Here’s how I looked that fateful weekend as I considered the offer, having tried to contact my wife so any decision to leave my then-current job at Satellite Orbit and sign on for the gig would be a joint one. I was wondering … will this Internet thing last? (Hey, it was a very different online world back then.)

Well, it has lasted, and I’ve worked for what’s now called Syfy for more than 13 years, editing Science Fiction Weekly, then SCI FI Wire, and for the past few years, Blastr. (And a print magazine for a while there, too.) But though the Internet and Syfy and Blastr go on, I do not, for today those 13+ years come to an end.

Today marks my final day working for Syfy. It was an amicable parting, but it means I’ll begin 2014 looking for new worlds to explore, both as an editor and a writer.

In my first Science Fiction Weekly editorial back in October of 2000, I explained who I was and why I thought I deserved to be there. (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!