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.

Learning to Live a Science Fictional Life

I cannot remember a time when I was not being bathed in the life-changing glow of science fiction. When I was a child, the SF bug infected me in many different forms. I learned to read with the adventures of Marvel Comics’ radioactive superheroes, fell asleep listening to Rod Serling’s fantastic bedtime stories on The Twilight Zone, woke screaming from nightmares given to me by dog-eared copies of Famous Monsters of Filmland, and devoured paperback novels and short story collections by Robert Heinlein, A.E. van Vogt and Isaac Asimov. With such an upbringing, surrounded by SF since birth, it was inevitable that my life would be irreparably altered by it. SF is more than just what I read and watch and listen to and play—it has become a part of my flesh and blood.

It gave me the life I currently lead, setting me on the path to becoming a writer of short stories, an editor at Marvel Comics, and the founding editor of Science Fiction Age magazine. It led me to eventually edit SCI FI, the official print magazine of the SCI FI Channel, as well as Sci-Fi Universe, Sci-Fi Flix and others. So on the one hand there is a natural progression to my being able to introduce myself to you here now. But in one very distinctive way this new rung on my editorial ladder is far different from anything that has gone before. Taking over as editor of Science Fiction Weekly, I am doing more than just the consuming, producing and reporting on SF that I have done for so long. Today I am actually living SF, for I am editing a magazine in an electronic medium that once could have existed only in the dreams of SF’s most inventive writers.

The world, which has been getting smaller for years, has suddenly become infinitesimal. I am writing these words in Maryland. My boss lives in New Jersey. The unparalleled webmasters who help keep the words and pictures coming to you are headquartered in New York. And yet it is as if there is no distance between us at all, for we are all in constant communication, thanks to the science fictional invention of the Internet.

An Unconventional SF Convention

Unlike the other magazines I’ve edited over the years, Science Fiction Weekly doesn’t exist on your local newsstand or at the bookstore. It is far more widespread than that, and yet at the same time far more personal. It exists in two places–both out there, everywhere, as part of the interconnected group universe of the Web–but more importantly, wherever you are. Just as I sit typing these words in my living room with a laptop balanced on my knees, you are likely in your own home, in your own space, having the latest issue delivered to you as if constraints of time and space did not exist. These recent years have seen a revolution strike publishing, and it has finally swept me along in its tide, bypassing printing presses and ink, bringing me directly into your home.

I almost feel as if we’re attending a convention together, you and I. I’ve been going to such events for 30 years. I attended my first comic book convention back in 1970 at age 15, my first SF con back in 1972, and my first Worldcon in 1974. I grew up in the hallways of strange hotels surrounded by fellow fans, never watching the clock and chattering endlessly about short stories, books, comics, movies—and life itself. Now, thanks to Science Fiction Weekly, I am attending a con every day, here with you, which makes me feel as if I’m 15 again. Thanks for dropping by, wherever you are! If you’re as infected by the SF bug as I was, you’ve come to the right place.

These words are as true now as they were then.

I’m still as in love with this thing of ours as I was in 2000, as I was in 1970, as I was when I still moved my lips while struggling to make out words in comics books. I love the fantastic, whether science fiction, fantasy, horror or any other flavor, in all of its forms, whether books, movies, television, paintings … or any new art form still to be invented.

Thirteen years was a good run. Thanks, Craig. Thanks, Syfy. I look forward to seeing what comes next. I hope you’ll consider joining me.