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…)