Seventeen years ago this month, the first issue of Science Fiction Age magazine made its debut at MagiCon, the 1992 World Science Fiction convention held in Orlando. On page 20, in the middle of Jim Steranko’s “Movies” column, we printed a sidebar announcing the launch of something called … the Sci-Fi Channel, which went on the air exactly 17 years ago today.

I could already tell that Science Fiction Age had changed my life, even with only that single issue, let alone the many more to follow. I was to edit it until 2000, the same year (after a brief break editing Satellite Orbit for a company called CommTek) I started editing Science Fiction Weekly nine years ago this month for … the Sci-Fi Channel.

Reading the sidebar now, I can see that in addition to spreading the news about this new venture, we apparently also printed a typo or two. Maybe if I’d realized how important the Channel would come to be to me, I’d have made sure the page was better proofread!

The Sci-Fi Channel also had the prime advertising space in the issue—the inside front cover. Check it out below.

Well, Science Fiction Age is no more, Sci-Fi has become Syfy, and it seems eerie to hold a copy of that first issue in my hands and realize that the blueprint for most of the next two decades of my life had already been written out.

Happy birthday, Syfy! And happy anniversary me!