In 1996, two unknown writers – Jeof Vita and Jeff Somers – got together to pitch a story idea for a comic book in the Sliders franchise. Sliders, a science fiction series that had debuted the year before, dealt with a group of people trapped ‘sliding’ between alternate earths, with each episode being an adventure in an Earth that was simultaneously familiar and dramatically different.

The “Lost Episodes” were comic book stories ostensibly made from TV scripts too expensive or “out there” to be produced. But “Blood & Splendor,” the story Somers and Vita ultimately wrote, was an original creation – and in some alternate Earth, no doubt it was an epochal moment in pop culture that still reverberates today. Not in *this* world, of course, but in some version of history.

This is the story of that alternate world, a world where “Sliders: Blood & Splendor” was the biggest pop culture moment of 1997 – and how it was created.

It is meant to be at least mildly amusing.

Featuring interviews with the two creators and co-authors of the comic story, Vita and Somers, as well as commentary from some of the leading lights of the modern literary world (Sean Ferrell, Dan Krokos, Bill Cameron, et al), this documentary reminds us all that the late 1990s were awful, awful times.

Jeff Somers went on to get over his shame at being involved and has published nine novels and dozens of short stories while winning exactly zero awards. He hopes someone watches this documentary if only so he can convince himself that he is awesome.