INFINITE FRONTIERS - AN INTRODUCTION -------------------------------------- By Simon Plumbe ----------------- Following my "dismissal" from Power House, I decided to continue producing The Final Frontier under a new name. I had been working on the magazine for over 2 years and I wasn't willing to give up just for the sake of one stupid individual. What is the group about? ------------------------ Infinite Frontiers is a group dedicated to fan publishing, whether it will be in the form of disk magazines, paper fanzines or fan magazines on any other medium such as video or audio. The main publication of the group will be the Star Trek disk mag, "The Final Frontier". We will also produce a number of reference disks for Star Trek fans beginning with a comprehensive "Who's Who" that is in the early production stages. As well as TFF, there is also going to be a paper edition of The Final Frontier, tentatively called "The Final Frontier - Phase II". This will contain selected re-prints from it's parent magazine, along with a selection of smaller, one-off articles more suited to a printed medium, along with a slection of new artwork by our two artists Vince Hirst and Jason Brown. There is also the possibility of a THIRD edition of The Final Frontier in the form of a paper-based fiction zine. We will also be releasing a general sci-fi disk magazine (no title at the moment), which we hope to be launching in early '93 every 2-3 months on a single disk, covering all aspects of sci-fi and fantasy in books, films, televison etc. There will be Star Trek coverage in this new magazine, but it will consist of "re-prints" of selected material from The Final Frontier (but NOT material already re-printed in "The Final Frontier - Phase II"). All NEW Trek material will appear in TFF first, allowing us to create a better Trek zine. However, the Trek content of the new mag will only occupy a small percentage, so I don't think that re-printing a few articles will make much difference! As well as these titles, there are going to be many other exciting and innovative projects in the pipeline. We WILL NOT produce demos etc. as we don't aim to be a demo crew. The only demos that will come from the I.F. stable will be intros to our disk mags or advert demos publicising our future releases. Why should we try to release demos when we obviously won't be able to compete with crews such as Phenomena and Anarchy. With saying that, could THEY produce a disk mag like "The Final Frontier"? I think not! Each group should stick to their own specialities. However, no matter what we produce, we will guarantee that it will be of the highest quality possible. Who are we? ----------- Infinite Frontiers initially consists of the main production staff from The Final Frontier, headed by me, Simon Plumbe, and including a number of names that may be familiar to regular TFF readers:- Colin Gunn, Edwin Yau, John Kitts, Alex Kerr, Vince Hirst, Gary Moffat and Jason Brown. Our productions will also have a large amount of "freelance" work from people such as Tobias Richter, Bjørn Lynne, Echo/LSD and from many of our "freelance" writers. Regular contributors will be offered the opportunity to join our permanent team. Our main team will only consist of talented writers, artists, musicians and coders and we will also feature a number of non-Amiga owning members in the team. Unlike most Amiga demo crews, almost all of the members of Infinite Frontiers will only use their real names. There's no real need for any of us to hide behind an alias, and as we will be producing non-Amiga zines as well, why should we waste time and write under three or four names each? How to join Infinite Frontiers ------------------------------ Over the next year, we expect I.F. to grow by quite rapid proportions. When the group was just 10 days old, we had already grown from nothing to 8 members! We are looking for other members, but please don't write to us asking to join. We will INVITE people to join the group ourselves. However, if you want to join, start sending us some material for the mag, and if you seem to be contributing on a regular basis and we think you're good enough, we'll ask you to join. It's as simple as that! Where did the name come from? ----------------------------- If any of you remember the article from Issue 2 on the history of the mag, Infinite Frontiers was the second name of my old sci-fi fan club (after it's "re-birth") and I felt that the name was worth carrying on. Originally, when my club changed it's name, it also signified a change of image and quality and that's what has happened to The Final Frontier. Over the next few issues, you will see that our articles will be better, the presentation will improve and the release schedule will be accelerated. We are starting to settle down with the format of The Final Frontier, so we feel comfortable writing for tighter deadlines. Also, as we will shortly have two titles available called "The Final Frontier", I felt that INFINITE Frontiers was an appropriate name! The logo that you can see on the intro was designed over 2 years ago to co-incide with the re-launch of my fan club and I thought I may as well carry over the old logo. The version on the intro is a straight scan of an old black & white linedrawing. We will probably get the logo redesigned in colour at a later date and a new black and white version is being created for The Final Frontier - Phase II. Well, that's all I can think of, but if there is anything specific you want to know about us, if you want to join our team or if you have any suggestions for other I.F. releases, get in touch with me at: Infinite Frontiers c/o Simon Plumbe 14 Rousdon Grove Great Barr Birmingham B43 5HN ENGLAND