Club Jade

Most of us east coasters are breaking for lunch, but there’s plenty to read on the #SWFS hashtag!

I plan to be back in earnest in the late afternoon/evening, but there’s a whole crowd contributing, so jump in any time!

Interested in starting your own Star Wars fansite, or just want a peek behind the curtain? Join @clubjade and several other sites on the Twitter hashtag #SWFS for the Star Wars Fansite Seminar.

You can ask questions and share your thoughts all day Thursday, January 25th – assuming you have a Twitter acount, that is.

Spotlight. Essential Guide to Warfare co-author Paul Urquhart takes a look at ‘the best star-pilots in the galaxy’. But what we’re really talking about here is the art by Frank-Joseph “Mazzic” Frelier, which includes what I think is out first look at Syal Antilles.

In other Warfare-related matters, there have been three more installments of endnotes since we last checked in: 9, 10 and 11.

Awards. John Jackson Miller’s Knight Errant is a Scribe Award nominee for Best Original Novel in the Speculative Fiction category. The International Association of Media Tie-In Writers are also naming Expanded Universe alumni Kevin J. Anderson as the year’s Grandmaster. Other familiar names among the nominees include Mike Stackpole (for his Conan the Barbarian adaption) and A.C. Crispin for her Pirates of the Caribbean novel.

Interviews. Lots of them! In the world of podcasts, we have Aaron Allston over at Tosche Station Radio and Mike Stackpole at Star Wars Book Report. If you can stomach the ForceCast, they had Leland Chee on, plus there’s a new Jedi Journals. If it’s text you prefer, Tom Taylor talks Darth Maul at CBR.

Teases. A bounty hunter short story by a new-to-Star Wars author will be gracing the pages of Insider #136. Karen Miller’s Myri Antilles story will be in the next issue, #135.

Now hiring… NJOE, EUCantina and Knights Archive are looking for some dedicated fans to join their respective sites. (Rather limited) internet fame! Glamour! No money! But possibly drinks at CVI!

Hyperspace is going away next year.

Started right before Revenge of the Sith began principal photography as subscription section on StarWars.com, Hyperspace went through several incarnations. During the ROTS filming it offered fans extraordinary access to film’s set in Sydney with a live webcam, chats, and a set diary by Pablo Hidalgo. (It also had the nice side effect of effectively ending the cut-throat fansite spoiler-wars that marked the runup to The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones.)

However, once Revenge of the Sith was released, Hyperspace had much less to offer subscribers (even the ‘ad-free’ promise eventually expired.) Features were added, like the blogs, but the content over the past few years has been irregular and often only of interest only to those who enjoy fairly obscure parts of the GFFA.

It even merged with the fan club and became part of a package deal with Star Wars Insider for a time. The Insider is no longer included, but the Official Fan Club still uses the ‘Hyperspace’ name. (If Hyperspace is truly being discontinued, will the fan club be getting another makeover in the coming year…?)

I can’t say I’m surprised at this – the ‘exclusive’ content has been sparse for years and StarWarsShop probably brings in far more revenue – but Hyperspace has been around for quite a while in internet times, and it’s entwined with some particularly interesting times in the fandom for me. But it’s clearly been on the backburner for quite a while, so might as well give up the ghost and move on. And hey, what the hell – I renewed my subscription one last time this evening for old time’s sake.

Rebelscum will start accepting entries for their costume contest tomorrow through November 2nd.

Buffy is here to save the day! No, wait, it’s only Invasion #4, out in comic shops on Wednesday. Oh well!

But on that note, the TFN boards are celebrating ten years of the New Jedi Order. Grab your favorite womb spore and… uhh… err… Chewbacca! Damn it. Sorry, I’m just not up to this one.

TFN’s Forcecast (which now has a brand-new website of their very own) caught up with Steve Sansweet at Chicago Comic Con. He talks about Celebration V and the issues as to why we don’t have a definitive announcement yet. Key statements: He hopes to announce it before the end of the summer, and “It could very well be later in the summer” than the previous events.

They also address the whole ‘second animated series’ thing. “You don’t build two animation studios and just do one series. You have other things in mind,” and “not nessarily Star Wars,” Steve said.

For the budding anthropologists in the room… McSweeny’s has Yub Jub Means “Devour the Weak:” An Authoritative Study of the Ewoks From the Field. (Also noteworthy, though not Star Wars: Selections from H.P. Lovecraft’s Brief Tenure as a Whitman’s Sample Copywriter.)

• Awards: Joshua Budich’s Star Wars collection site, which I blogged about way back in 2007, has won a Webby Award and was the People’s Voice pick in the 13th Annual Webby Awards.

• Art? Poke around to find a private moment with Vader among Ian Pool’s ‘Super’ series.
• Fanmade: Ladies and gents, the Death Star grill.
• At random: “Fake Wedge” from A New Hope is IGN’s Obscure Character of the Day. (via)
• Lists: SciFiNow has five storylines for the live-action show and their ten best Star Wars moments, while Topless Robot counts down the nine greatest fan films ever made.

The fiction is coming from inside the house! The latest piece of Hyperspace original fiction, ‘Death in the Slave Pits of Lorrd,’ is by TFN’s Adrick “TalonCard” Tolliver.

• The blogside: Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff on sidekicks.

• Printed matter: Inside Star Wars Insider #110 is a Clone Wars episode guide and an interview with Fate of the Jedi author Christie Golden just as her first book, Omen, hits.
• Fansites: The EU Cantina is restarting their book club with Darth Bane: Path of Destruction.
• Free stuff: Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist giving away a copy of The Clone Wars: No Prisoners.

Yahoo will be closing down GeoCities later this year, and I’d like to ask for a moment of silence.

No, really.

It may be hard to fathom now, but back a decade or so ago, when this here internet was still shiny and new, the free web space that GeoCities was as important to fandom as… Well, blogs and forums and wikis and Livejournal are now. It was the place where people were driven by their passion for whatever random bit of… whatever… made sites dedicated to their foci. Sure, it looks goofy now. (To quote Heidi MacDonald: “If you want to see the Web as it existed ten years ago just find any webpage hosted on GeoCities.”) It’s certainly not where fandom – even internet fandom – began, but it’s an important touchstone. And soon it’ll be gone.

Here are a few sites where you can get a feel for the internets of fandom past:

• The Women of Star Wars Home Page

• Shack’s Fanfic Clearinghouse
• Imperial Women
• The Emperor’s Hand

At least we’ll always have the Wayback Archive – not that anyone can actually remember those giant 90′s URLs.

Scour your bookmarks (or take offerings to Google) and drop your old favorites in the comments. (Basic HTML works.)