In 2000, I was hired by the SCI FI Channel to edit the online magazine Science Fiction Weekly. Thirteen years later, I was editing Blastr for the Syfy Channel. How’d we get from one to other?
On Labor Day 2000, at the 58th World Science Fiction Convention in Chicago, I was hired to take over as editor of the SCI FI (now Syfy) Channel’s Science Fiction Weekly from Brooks Peck. Science Fiction Weekly was one of the earliest sci-fi sites, launched as an independent site by Craig Engler on August 1, 1995. By the time I took over the Internet magazine of sci-fi news, reviews, and interviews, it was being published by Syfy.
I continued editing Science Fiction Weekly until January 2009, when it merged with SCI FI Wire, where I continued on in the role of Features Editor alongside Patrick Lee, who was News Editor. On July 15, 2010, SCI FI Wire relaunched as Blastr, expressing what we’d long realized—that it had evolved beyond its news origins to become a smorgasbord of news, features, images, popular science, videos and guest bloggers. I was the sole editor until December 31, 2013.
Here are a few of my favorite features from over the years:
Print our Lost bingo cards and play along with the premiere
5 inappropriate Walking Dead product placements we avoided (PICS)
Four labels from the Bruce Campbell’s Soup Company
The Periodic Table of The Empire Strikes Back (CHART)
Infographic: The tortured 73-year history of The Hobbit film
If you liked those, keep checking Blastr daily for more!