Life Itself, a documentary about film critic Roger Ebert, will be released July 4th. I have no idea how much time will be spent on his period as a member of science fiction fandom—something you can learn more about in an interview I did with him for Sci-Fi Entertainment in 1997—but his SF life did make a brief cameo in the documentary’s trailer.

Visible on screen at the 29-second mark as one of the interviewees says, “he wrote a novel,” is something that isn’t a novel—the opening spread of Ebert’s short story “After the Last Mass” from the February 1972 issue of Fantastic. As far as I know, Ebert only published two SF short stories, the other being “In Dying Venice,” which appeared in the May 1972 of Amazing Science Fiction, so I was glad to see one of them making an appearance.

I’ve always liked Ebert, who very much seemed one of us, and I look forward to seeing Life Itself. Check out the trailer below.