In less than a week, Airlock Alpha celebrates its 10th anniversary. And while our history is long enough that I could start all of it in this column, I'll spare you.

But it is strange thinking that it's been 10 years since I first started the site as Syfyman's World. I really had no idea what I was doing in terms of creating a Web site. I mean, I already had the journalism thing down pretty good, already having been doing it for like seven years, but the Internet was still pretty new to me.

I'll be doing a special column when we get to the actual anniversary, and then on Wednesday night, our SyFy Radio show will celebrate our anniversary. But many of you have already heard this story before. My good friend at the time (and he's still a good friend now, even though he's in Ohio and I'm in Florida) Matt Bianco started a site on GeoCities (before the Yahoo!) dedicated to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. I was still pretty new on the Internet, and until he created his own page, I didn't even think the average Joe could create their own page.

Always, trying to one-up everyone around me, I decided I wanted to do a site dedicated to television news and such. But I didn't want it to be just for a few friends, I wanted it to become popular, like Star Trek Central was at the time. So I created a science-fiction site as a way to test out ways to make the site popular without having to spend money to do it, because to be honest, I didn't really have any money to spend.

The rest ... well, the rest is history.

One sad thing is that we don't really have any of our early SyFy World pages. We've found random archived pages here and there, but pretty much anything we had on GeoCities and later the TrekNation network that we shared with TrekToday are lost to the wind. But we do have our YahooGroup, which we've run since December 1998 (way back when it was known simply as eGroups). And there is some real fun stuff there.

If you're a member of our YahooGroup (which you should be! If not, send a blank e-mail right now to syfyportal-subscribe@yahoogroups.com so that you can become a member), then you know that at least twice a week (when there is a lot of news coming in), our news editor Wayne Hall sends out our latest headlines in e-mail. Now, we weren't sending out headlines to a mailing list from our first day, but we did start pretty early. In fact, I found our first headlines e-mail to the group dated Feb. 21, 1999.

Curious to what the news was? Here were some of the top stories: Fire strikes Episode 1 set ... again. Jake Lloyd's Star Wars performance questioned by studio. Star Wars Trailer B synopsis online now. Deep Space Nine director dies. Season 5 will not be a homecoming year for Voyager. Deep Space Nine movie confirmed; characters' lives saved because of it. Last chapter of Deep Space Nine promo now online.AOL Earth: Final Conflict chat to return. Voyager helps UPN post best overnight ratings ever. Syfyman reviews Dark Fronter. Brannon Braga talks about new Trek series. Mulgrew talks about how acting has affected her family.

Amazing the things we were talking about almost a decade ago, eh? And it seems SyFy has certainly come a long way since then.

At the time, there was only me working on the site, although Ian Cullen (who now runs Sci-Fi Pulse) and Brian Meskimen (who at the time ran the Star Trek Galactic Newsletter) would pitch in and help here and there. But it was pretty much me until we merged with Star Trek Portal in 2000.

Now we have a staff of more than 10 people, and daily unique visitors in the thousands. Where I spent years paying for the site out of my own pocket, the site is now self-supporting, and that's good.

But the best part of all this? I have had the chance to spend the last 10 years with great people like you. Whether you were with us from the early days, or you just discovered us today, you are the reason I wake up every morning, excited about what we're going to share on Airlock Alpha today. Your passion, your love of science-fiction, and how you're part of the smartest audience I think anyone has ever had ... it means a lot.

So while I continue to get a lot of anniversary messages thanking me and the staff for 10 years of Airlock Alpha, the real thanks must go to you. I can't e-mail every single one of you, although I wish I could. So I'll do the next best thing. I will thank you from my little weekly soapbox here.

So ... thank you!

SyFy Radio

If you missed last week's show, we had Jane Badler, who played Diana in the "V" miniseries from the 1980s on live from Australia. She was a great guest, and you can hear the show in its entirety right now at or by visiting the iTunes store and subscribing to us for free. Simply search for "SyFy."

Next week, we celebrate the 10th anniversary of Airlock Alpha with staff members and different guests. And on Aug. 20 we'll welcome Chuck Williams of "Bubba Ho-Tep" fame.

Listen for SyFy Radio every Wednesday at 10 p.m. ET/7 p.m. PT.

SyBits

Send your letters to mhinman@airlockalpha.com, and maybe you'll hear them on SyFy Radio, complete with my arcane responses.

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Don't forget to listen to me host SyFy Radio, every Wednesday at 10 p.m. ET (and available to download for free at your leisure after the fact) by visiting www.blogtalkradio.com/syfyradio. You also can subscribe to us for free at the iTunes Store. Simply log in to iTunes, type in "syfy" in the search engine, and ou'll be connected directly to the show's archive.

If you're not yet a member of our free breaking news/headlines mailing list, then it's not too late to sign up. Simply send a blank e-mail to syfyportal-subscribe@yahoogroups.com and enjoy the latest in science-fiction and fantasy entertainment straight to your e-mail box with breaking news and headlines. I promise you you won't regret it!

Rabid Doll is now online! Visit it at www.RabidDoll.com. We also have a mailing list going for that, which you can join by simply sending a blank e-mail to rabiddoll-subscribe@yahoogroups.com.

Have a great week, and don't be a stranger!

Michael Hinman, a cult leader twice awarded "Best Kool-Aid Drinker," is the founder and site coordinator for Airlock Alpha, writing out of Tampa, Fla. He can be reached at mhinman@airlockalpha.com