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. (more…)

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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