[This short essay marks the beginning of my adventures in online publishing. Posted on February 4, 2000, it was the very first bit of content for my online science fiction magazine SciFiDimensions.com (it was variously and awkwardly branded as scifidimensions, scifidimensions, etc., before finally settling as SciFiDimensions). Over the course of ten years, SciFiDimensions.com provided thousands of interviews, reviews, essays, short fiction, and eventually even a podcast. The quality was uneven, especially at the start, but I like to think it got better as time went on. Unfortunately, I let the rights to the URL slip some years ago, so almost none of the content is readily available on the interwebs (although some of it can be mined through the Wayback Machine. Don’t bother visiting the original URL unless you like disappointment.) I’ll be re-posting highlights from SciFiDimensions here at SnideShow.com. Anyway, here’s the modest essay that started it all. -JCS 2/4/2022]
I’ve always loved science fiction. And fantasy (some of it, anyway). As a kid in the 1970s, I cut my teeth on Lord of the Rings, Edgar Rice Burroughs’ John Carter of Mars series, Frank Herbert’s Dune, Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land, and Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy (yeah, it was just a trilogy back then).
On TV there was Star Trek (in syndication, Sundays at 11AM!), Speed Racer (the original gangsta of anime—in America anyway), and Ultraman.
Star Wars blew me away. It looks pretty hokey now, but back then it seemed like special effects couldn’t go any further.
(I won’t even mention comic books. That could fill a whole new commentary.)
Over the years, through college and various jobs, I took up running, reading history, playing canasta, and studying Japanese. Some of these interests I kept; some I dropped. But I always came back to science fiction.
The early 1980s was my dry period for science fiction. Then William Gibson wrote Neuromancer and Orson Scott Card had Ender’s Game. The Star Trek movies were getting better (they had to!) and the franchise was born anew when The Next Generation hit the airwaves. So I got back into it, and never looked back. The last 15 years has been a virtual explosion of new science fiction in every medium imaginable. Some good, some bad, and some you don’t know quite what to make of.
Anyway, what this all boils down to is that science fiction has been a life-long fascination for me, but until recently I was only a spectator. I decided to get involved, to generate some of the content and context I wanted to see.
Thus…scifidimensions.
We’re starting out raw. Even as I write this, there are whole pages of this website unfinished. Yes, there are other websites, other e-zines, other newsfeeds. But this one is mine. I hope that you will make it yours. So, please keep coming back, add it to your Favorites, and let me hear from you.
John C. Snider, Editor
scifidimensions