Slice of SciFi
| Slice of SciFi | |
|---|---|
| Presentation | |
| Hosted by |
Summer Brooks Noah Richman Daren Gulsvig Tim Callender Gini Koch |
| Genre |
SciFi Newscast |
| Updates | Weekly |
| Publication | |
| Debut | February 2005 |
| Website | Slice of SciFi |
Slice of SciFi is a podcast, internet television program and website and was a part of the defunct FarPoint Media Network that looks into the world of science fiction, fantasy and horror. It was the winner of the "Top Rated Podcast Award" at the Podcast Awards in 2005.[1] The year 2012 saw Slice of SciFi move into the newly growing field of internet television with the introduction of Slice of SciFi TV.[2] In 2013 its European sister site Slice of SciFi UK[3] went online with entertainment genre news for those living in the United Kingdom and throughout the European Union.
The show was also honored with the prestigious Parsec Award for Best News Podcast in 2008.[4]
Started in early 2005 as a response to the reaction of Star Trek fans over the cancellation of Star Trek: Enterprise, the Slice of Sci-Fi Podcast has grown to encompass a broader range of topics. The show hosts try to make the podcast both fun and informative, two characteristics they feel have not been brought together in other efforts.
The hosts of the show have interviewed such people as Samuel L. Jackson, Nathan Fillion, Manny Coto, Claudia Black, Walter Koenig, Wil Wheaton, Bruce Campbell, Ted V. Mikels, Dean Haglund, Chase Masterson, Dave Dorman, Peter Mayhew, Lake Bell, Peter S. Beagle, Jim Butcher, Amanda Tapping, Michael Stackpole, George R.R. Martin and more.
For several years Slice of Sci-Fi was heard each week on XM Satellite Radio, Sirius Satellite Radio, as well as several cell phone networks across the globe. The show is currently heard at the Slice of SciFi website, via RSS feed and on Krypton Radio.[5]
Slice of Sci-Fi has been announced Site of the week by SCI FI Weekly on November 22, 2006 and the AMC Site of the Week[6] in March 2008.
In 2013 the show went on a year-long sabbatical to move its studio location, revamp its on air lineup and upgrade the website. The show returned in 2014 with new hosts and programming centering mostly on interviews with those making news in the world of science fiction, horror and fantasy as well as film and TV reviews. The latest in sci-fi and genre-related news continues as the focus of the website.
Producers
Jeffrey Willerth
Jeffrey, owner Erthbound Entertainment, joined the Warner Bros. sci-fi hit “Babylon 5″ for all five seasons of the show’s prime-time production. His versatile talents expanded into acting while playing the recurring role of Ambassador Kosh. Jeffrey was also the Producer’s Associate through the fourth and fifth seasons, four TNT movies and three episodes of the spin-off series “Babylon 5: Crusade”.
Since B5, Jeffrey furthered his digital filmmaking experience as a Visual Effects Coordinator for the Twentieth Century Fox feature film “X-Men 2″ as well as two Miramax’s films, “I Still Know What You Did Last Summer” and “The Faculty”.
Other recent non-fiction programming credits include DIY, SPEED, BBN, BBC/Discovery Channel, Discovery’s Military Channel, History Channel, Court TV, PBS, HGTV, A&E, CBS and VH1, Animal Planet, and FOX. Commercial credits include Verizon and Wal-Mart.
Jeffrey Willerth is a member of the (PGA) Producers Guild of America, (IFP/W) Independent Feature Project/West (SAG) Screen Actors Guild and the (ATAS) Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, Association of Downloadable Media (ADM).
Summer Brooks
Summer enjoys putting her scifi media geek skills to good use in booking guests for Slice of SciFi, as well as using her extensive tech skills to make sure all of the geek entertainment found on the Slice of SciFi family of websites keeps humming along.
She is an avid reader and writer of scifi, fantasy and thrillers, with a handful of publishing and voiceover credits to her name. Her dream is to someday write and produce a TV series or miniseries adaptation of her favorite yet highly underrated story series.
Summer spent many years as a Unix sysadmin and competing in amateur full contact kickboxing tournaments before moving into entertainment media production and WordPress website design. These days, she maintains the Slice of SciFi websites, and co-hosts and produces several other shows, including The Babylon Podcast and Kick-Ass Mystic Ninjas, and does voiceover and narrations for StarShipSofa and Crime City Central among others.
Manny Hebron
Manny is a producer, photographer, filmmaker and founder/blogger for Picksysticks,[7] a music site that spotlights the best indie bands in Los Angeles.
News Office
Laith Preston: Reviewer
Laith is a software engineer with a degree in Computer Science from Drake University. He is a lover of scifi, comics and graphic novels with a special place in his heart for the novels and writings of Isaac Asimov. Laith is very active with the website "It's Comic Book Day!"
Field Reporters, Interviewers and Contributors
Zoe Hewitt
Zoe is the official Slice of SciFi live Red Carpet interviewer for all the special events taking place in Hollywood.
Kurt in St. George
Kurt took over the Slice of Trivia segment of the show from its creator Doug Kress a few years ago. Since that time Kurt's innovations and creativity in amassing genre film trivia has become one of the main highlights and fan favorite segments of the show.
Mark Edlitz
Mark has written for The Huffington Post, Empire Magazine Online, Geeks are Sexy and Superhero Cinema. Mark is writing a book about actors who have played superheroes called HOW TO BE A SUPERHERO.
As a filmmaker, Mark produced and directed JEDI JUNKIES[8] an affectionate and funny documentary film about extreme Star Wars fans. The film is available on Amazon.com, iTunes, Playstation and Hulu.
With Jerry Kolber, Mark Edlitz runs FanBoys Films, a company that acquires and provides distribution opportunities for high quality films that appeal to comic-con crowd.
Emilio D’alise
Emilio’s interests are as eclectic as they are numerous. Racquetball, photography, reading, shooting, traveling, eating, and writing are activities Emilio enjoys, all the while stressing his lack of expertise in any particular one. His first SciFi exposure came in 1983, at the age of thirty, when a friend loaned Emilio the book I, Robot by Isaac Asimov. That started a streak of nothing but Science Fiction reading that remains unbroken to this day.
A refugee of the auto industry, Emilio now lives in sunny Colorado. Currently making little use of his engineering degree, he often wonders what might have been had he listened to the English professor who, in 1976, strongly suggested Emilio switch his major from Engineering to English. Showing a remarkable lack of foresight, Emilio opted to continue on the path to becoming a pretty good, but uninspired, Mechanical Engineer. But for that one decision, he could today be a little known journalist, working for no money, and struggling to get some recognition.
Michael Lohr
Michael is a professional journalist, outdoorsman, poet, whiskey connoisseur, music critic, treasure hunter and adventurer. His writing has appeared in such diverse magazines as Rolling Stone, Esquire, The Economist, Southern Living, Sporting News and Men’s Journal, to name a few.
Michael McCafferty
Mike McCafferty is an actor, writer, director and producer who has starred in such movie and television features as “The Invisible Man,” “National Treasure: Book of Secrets,” HBO’s “True Blood,” “The Shield,” “ER,” “Six Feet Under,” “Changeling” and on the internet with several episodes of “Acceptable TV” and “Chad Vader.” Mike appeared as a guest on Slice of SciFi and was an instant hit with fans. Soon he began writing editorial pieces and offering up special on-site and on-location reports becoming one of Slice of SciFi‘s most read contributors.
The Slice of Sci-Fi News Team
Like all successful news and entertainment venues there are a whole team of people behind the scenes responsible for that success. Slice of Sci-Fi has a news team scattered all over the globe from the UK to Canada and the U.S. to Germany. Several staff field reporters and journalists contribute stories each week to the show and the website. Fans also participate and are encouraged to do so by sending in stories and updates to the news director.
Former Cast and Crew
Michael R. Mennenga
Michael R. Mennenga was a co-creator and host of the show, its Engineering Chief at the DracoVista Studios in Arizona and a published author of fantasy novels who began writing in the late 1980s. In 1996 he turned his attention to writing for the Internet. In 1998 he joined a developing writing community and was soon asked to become part of the staff. He has received recognition from Writer's Digest and Forbes Publishing for his first book, Zac and the Valley of the Dragons. His next book, Mistress of the Dragon, was released in 2001. Mennenga followed that in 2002 with The Valley of the Dragons: Dragon's Fire and Wizard's Flame, which was re-released as Dragon's Fire, Wizard's Flame in 2003.
He is a member of The Arizona Authors Association and Toastmasters International.
Evo Terra
Evo Terra was a co-creator and an original co-host of the show. He is co-writer of the Podcasting For Dummies manual, co-creator of Podiobooks.com and co-creator of The Dragon Page Cover to Cover and Wingin' It podcasts. Evo served as co-host of Slice of SciFi up through show 111.
Samuel K. Sloan
A veteran of radio broadcasting, Samuel K. Sloan was a co-creator and co-producer for Slice of SciFi and the Executive News Director for the show's parent company, Farpoint Media.
An alum of George Washington University, Sam has spent the last four decades writing spiritual self-help articles, entertainment journalism and political blogs. He also has over twenty years experience in writing news and radio script and hosted his own talk, music and teaching terrestrial radio program in Pennsylvania between 1995 through 1998 on WAVL-AM Radio.
Sam was responsible for managing, editing and producing the news for the Slice of SciFi Website and the FarPoint Media company webpage and writing the show's scripts for each week's Sirius/XM Satellite radio and internet podcasting program.
Sam went into retirement on November 11, 2011 after serving as news director from the inception of Slice of SciFi. In late 2013 Sam returned to Slice of SciFi as a writer with the news team during the site and show's revamping and new direction. Once the foundation for change was fully laid he returned to the joys of full retirement.
Joe Murphy
Joe Murphy was a reviewer on the show. He studied computer science and education for the hearing impaired and had his MA in Audiology from Western Illinois University. Murphy first reviewed Lisa Lee and Tee Morris's Morevi on the Dragonpage's forum and soon became the "official" book reviewer for the Dragon Page podcast. Later he co-hosted the Kick-Ass Mystic Ninjas show with Summer Brooks. He also frequently appeared on the Wingin' It podcast.
Joe was diagnosed with leiomyosarcoma, a rare form of cancer. in late 2006; he died on April 1, 2007.
Brian Brown
Brian Brown began with the Farpoint Media family of podcasters as a recurring co-host and reviewer for The Dragon Page Cover 2 Cover podcast. He started becoming a regular on Michael and Evo's Wingin' It! starting on episode #86. He also was guest and then became co-host for The Kick-Ass Mystic Ninja podcast after Joe Murphy became ill. Brian had been a regular voice on Slice of SciFi since show #90 and the Slice voice mail show from show #87. He took over co-hosting duties after Evo Terra left the show. Brian helped every week lending his insights, ideas and vast array of voice impressions to the news stories and interviews done on the show. In addition to his Slice of SciFi duties Brian had expanded voice acting skills to a wide variety of projects including audio dramas, other podcasts and many voice projects needing his talents. After being put on indefinite hiatus he decided to leave the show and continue pursuing his own voice acting projects.
Nina Hofmann
Nina Hofmann was the Webmaster of the Slice of SciFi, and several other Farpoint Media website. She is a civil engineer and software developer from Bavaria, Germany. She spends her workdays designing and specifying software applications.
Hofmann had joined the team upon request and was responsible for the entire look of the Slice of Sci-Fi Website and was lovingly referred to as the "Web-Queen" during her tenure with the company.
"Krazy Joe" Fiore
"Krazy Joe" Fiore joined the cast of Slice of Sci-Fi in October 2007 after moving to Phoenix from the Philadelphia area. Prior to that, he had been a regular caller to the voicemail show. Krazy Joe was known for his love of bad movies, and his catchphrase, "I'm gonna punch him in the junk!". He also frequently appeared on the Wingin' It podcast, and is currently the host of the MegaPodzilla podcast.
In September 2008, Krazy Joe moved back to his hometown of Springfield, PA. He still continues to call the voicemail show.
Despite no longer being in-studio, Krazy Joe continues to make his presence felt on the show through his periodic "Punched in the Junk" segment.
Mur Lafferty
Mur is a writer of essays. magazine articles and role-playing-games. She’s been podcasting her essays since December, 2004.
Doug Kress
Slice of SciFi's original creator of Slice of Trivia.
Michael Hickerson
Michael Hickerson first discovered sci-fi on a UHF station’s Friday night Sci-Fi theater and has been hooked ever since. He grew up on Star Wars, Buck Rogers and the original Battlestar Galactica, before finding the two great sci-fi loves of his life, Star Trek and Doctor Who. Michael is an avid reader, not just of sci-fi and fantasy but all genres. In his spare time, Michael blogs and spoils his niece and nephew.
Michael is a graduate of the University of Tennessee with a degree in journalism. He’s had a wide and varied career that has included stops as a sports writer/editor, tech supporting, running a software distribution company and delivering live scores and data. He currently works for the state of Tennessee.
After working as a journalist for Slice of SciFi for a year, Michael was promoted to Assistant News Editor.
Upon retirement of Samuel K. Sloan as executive news director for Slice of SciFi in November 2008, Michael Hickerson was promoted to that role.
In 2013 the position of news director was discontinued at the company.
Linda Craddock
Linda served as a field reporter and traveling interviewer.
Jay Hinkelman
Jay was Slice of SciFi's original Doctor Who reporter when the series returned to television in 2005.
Paul Puri
Paul served as Slice of SciFi's first game reviewer.
Kyle Ninn
Was one of the show's earliest contributors.
Kade Hutchinson
Kade was the very first field reporter for Slice of SciFi when the franchise began.
Show Elements
While the exact structure will vary from episode to episode, each show generally contains the following elements:
- News - a sample of science fiction and fantasy related news stories not posted on the Slice of Scifi website.
- TV Talk - Discussion science fiction shows currently running on television.
- Voicemail Feedback - Hosts respond to calls and emails from fans.
- Movie Talk - Discussion of recent and soon to be released theatrical sci-fi and fantasy movies.
- Interview - The hosts will conduct an interview with a personality from the world of science fiction/fantasy movies and television.
- Red Carpet Interviews - Interviews of the rich and famous at Hollywood and International Red Carpet Events.
- Slice of Trivia - a sampling of snippets from scifi and other related genre flicks designed to stump the show's hosts as they try to guess the name or source of the trivia clip.
- Multiverse News - Nigel Blackwood brings news from around the multiverse throughout space/time.
- The Adventures of Sweetleaf - Dillo, Sweetleaf, Klemperbell and Trouble always try to stay out of mischief but never succeed.
- Podcast Endorsements - Break segments for advertisements, PSA's and where other Farpoint Media podcasts are promoted.
- Future Talk - Tidbits of information on what's coming down the road in the Sci-Fi and Fantasy universe.
- Website News Teasers - short headlines from news stories on the Slice of SciFi Website not covered on the radio/podcast show, designed to increase traffic to the show's webpage.
Testimonials
- "I dig their podcast, and I especially dig how they’ve built their website for Slice of SciFi" — Wil Wheaton[9]
- "You one of those people responsible for this? I think it is very cool… without you guys no matter how much hell I raised… it wouldn’t have happened unless you got on the wagon and helped me do that." — Samuel L. Jackson[10]
- "Slice of SciFi Rules!" — Scott Sigler[11]
- "It was your support that I think might have had something to do with Charlie Jade coming to the United States. It had a grassroots support in cyberspace and that’s what you guys are about." - Robert Wertheimer[12]
- "Slice of SciFi has always been there for me and a great program." - Shane Felux[13]
- "You guys know a lot more of this genre than I ever will. On behalf of the cast and crew of Journeyman (TV Series), thank you for carrying the torch for the show." - Kevin Falls[14]
- "Chatty, hip and entertaining, Slice of Sci-Fi is definitely worth a listen." — SciFi Weekly[15]