Unfortunately, my reason for posting now is the passing of Tom Veitch. I never met Tom in person, and the last time we communicated was almost 30 years ago. Looking back, I think he was the first Star Wars Extended Universe creator I met or had a discussion with outside of West End Games staff and freelancers. It was definitely a unique time for Star Wars discussion via computer networks.
In the summer of 1992, I was active on the FidoNet Star Wars Echo. The internet wasn’t mainstream and browsers weren’t a thing yet. It was DOS, dial up, and the realm of the BBS. An echo was basically a BBS message board (an early forum) that had its posts copied and periodically transmitted by dial up to another BBS that participated in the network. The discussions were wildly out of order at times as multiple people might respond to a post on their local BBS and then those would get combined as the echo was updated at a later time or date.
Ad-hoc networks like FidoNet were early (semi-)centralized online discussion systems, carrying a wide variety of topics. The Star Wars Echo was the first time that I know of where you could discuss Star Wars with people across the country. What was particularly cool was that early EU creators became involved and discussed aspects of Star Wars that pertained to their current and sometimes future work. Tom Veitch was one of those creators. The Dark Empire comic series was a huge deal when it released, and everyone was still getting used to the EU.
I wasn’t a published freelancer yet. My first Star Wars RPG adventure Milk Run would be the official Star Wars adventure for the RPGA at Gen Con a few months later. I had some contact with WEG, often via GEnie, which was a completely different computer system.
So, getting a chance to see comments from Tom and others was great. It was exciting to become part of the discussion and field questions directly. Keeping text files of the conversation was challenging in the DOS days, but I managed to keep ASCII text files of some of them. What I have is very incomplete, but looking back at them confirmed a couple of things, and reminded me of others.
The first one I found, and had quite forgotten about, was a brief discussion about the concept of the issue of droid rights, which I somehow remembered at the time was mentioned in the original Star Wars novel. Tom was interested in coming up with a future droid liberation story, though not right at that moment. I wonder what he thought of Solo, so many years later.
There was an interesting discussion about cyborgs and the Force. Specifically, can a cyborg use the Force to directly control a computer it was hooked up to. I was providing info from the RPG and several people were part of the discussion.
Finally, the one I remembered, was a detailed discussion about how long distance communication works in Star Wars, and how much of that might be through hyperspace to get around the speed of light issues. Again, I was referencing the RPG and in particular the Imperial Sourcebook. Tom didn’t always agree with approach taken by the RPG, but the merits were discussed.
Just how early was this discussion for the EU? In 1992, we were using the first edition of the d6 system. Second edition had been announced, because it was noted in the messages, but not close to release.
The last messages I found were in July ‘92. After that would have been a trip to Gen Con. From there, I flew directly to Denmark to start my study abroad year, and didn’t have much computer access (or at least that kind of access) overseas. I think by the time I got back, Tom likely had moved on, and keeping up with the Echo was much harder due to its popularity. I also had my own freelance work to worry about by then.
Tom’s daughter has set up a GoFundMe to help with expenses, for anyone who might bet interested in contributing.
