Echo Station
From Wookieepedia, the Star Wars wiki.
Echo Station is a Star Wars fan site with the tagline "Exploring Star Wars Beyond The Daily News". The website describes itself as "The premiere Electronic Magazine for Star Wars Fans with the latest news, reviews, previews and interviews from the Star Wars universe, including the prequels, games, books, website hosting and more."
[edit] History
Echo Station began in 1995 as the online electronic magazine for Compuserve's Science Fiction Forum. Created by forum members Matt Hart, Jim Fisher, and R. Lee Brown, the eMag was CompuServe's answer to AOL's popular "HoloCron" newsletter. Originally created and published using Windows Write, the eMag didn't receive its name until the second issue, using the winner of a forum-wide name competition (although the actual contest winner was "Sarlacc Digest," a title the creators didn't feel was quite dignified enough).
By the third issue, Echo Station debuted a new "Emag Viewer" format programmed by Hart as a Write/HTML hybrid. After five issues plus supplements, Echo Station graduated to full HTML formatting and moved to an online web site, expanding its audience to the entire internet fanbase.
By 1999, the founders of Echo Station moved on to create or manage other online Star Wars ventures, including the popular NewsDroid and Jedinet Star Wars news sites and the satirical TheFarce.net.
Echo Station remained online after the departure of the founders, but no longer featured art contributions from Star Wars pros and began to slow in producing new material and reviews, despite the advent of the new Star Wars prequel movies. The site has been dormant since approximately 2005.
[edit] Content
Echo Station's editorial staff took a different route than the average fanzine of the day, which usually consisted simply of fan reviews and commentary of up new and upcoming Star Wars products. Echo Station actually secured interviews with professional Star Wars authors and artists, like Ann C. Crispin, Kevin J. Anderson, Tom Veitch and poster artist Drew Struzan.
Further, the eMag not only presented new artwork from fan contributors, but also featured professional Star Wars artists as regular contributors, including Jordi Ensign, Mike Vilardi, and Chris Allen.
