The Final Frontier 8

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TF01 3,Letters 4,Edited by Simon Plumbe Following the complete lack of a letters section last time, we're back with a vast selection of letters from a few of you, many of which have more than a few things to say about the new menu system... Baerbel Schmidt Ashford, Kent England Dear Simon, I just got your latest Final Frontier. Although the new look is nice it is not a system that is user friendly to people like me who don't know much about computers. For example, I tried to find your letters page and I still don't know if there wasn't one this time or if I just couldn't find it. The "handbook" really put me off and confused me completely. After the first page I got tired of it and when my fiance comes back I will ask him to have a look. This will probably be more helpful to me. This time all articles were nearly all about technical stuff or physics. I found this very one-sided, but I already learned that most of your members and readers are male and by experience I can say that they are more interested in these kinds of things than females in general. For me the characters and the story are what makes me a Trekker and not so much the technical background. Letters and comparing views about stories and characters is what gives life to a magazine! Strangely enough, the German clubs I am a member in are usually in front concerning news but I enjoy my membership in English clubs mainly because of the opportunity to take part in discussions, find new pen pals and compare opinions. If there really wasn't a letter page this time, please bring it back and encourage your readers in active discussions! All the best, Baerbel Hi Baerbel, Thanks for your comments. First, your point about the menu system. With any menu system, it is really a matter of personal taste, but for non-computer buffs like yourself it can take a little time to familiarise themselves. With saying that, once you have used the new TFF system for a short while it will soon become second nature. Also, if you ever want to know what articles are on each issue, just go to the Editorial Menu and select Credits. Okay, I must agree with you on the level of technical articles found in the last issue, but in all honesty we used almost all of the material that was submitted to us. I'll generally use anything sent in as long as it's good or at least readable! Also, as Issue 7 was a Borg special, technical bias was unavoidable because of the very nature of the subject. As far as character-based articles are concerned, yes I'd love to see more of them myself, but sadly I don't really have enough time to write many like this because of my other writing and work commitments, but if any readers want to write them, I'll use them! With regards to your comments on readers letters, there was no letters section last time as there simply were not enough letters to warrant having a section! For some strange reason, TFF readers seem to be very passive - I've tried to encourage more interaction, but it doesn't seem to work. I like that sort of thing in fanzines too, but with TFF, as with any other fan publication, we can only use what is sent in! Compared to UK fan clubs, there is a far smaller percentage of our readers who bother to contact us and out of those who do, the majority write in just to order future or back issues or to enquire about our releases, but we tend to have very few "real" letters. In order to try and prompt a few more letters from readers, we're trying out a new "vouchers" scheme starting with this issue. Every reader who has a letter published, has something used for the trivia section or has any questions answered in the Q&A section will receive Infinite Frontiers vouchers which can be exchanged for discounts on releases or free gifts. For more details on this, read the "Free Gifts" article in the Editorial Menu. To try and encourage more articles and general submissions from readers, you'll notice that this issue sees the start of what might become a regular competition with great prizes on offer for some of the best submissions we receive for future issues of The Final Frontier. Anyway, thanks for your comments, Simon William Sienkiewicz Southgate, London England Dear Final Frontier Editorial Crew, INCREDIBLE! ... is the word I will use to describe the new look of the mag - much kudos to programmer Luke Elliott! I can't tell you how atmospheric the whole thing is, especially the sound of the warp-engine in the background, you should send a copy to Michael Okuda and tell him to use it on the Star Trek: Voyager VDU displays! In actual fact the first issue of FF I saw was issue 6 and, after seeing other disk-magazines such as Grapevine, that issue of FF looked very drab... but the content was very interesting (I'm now thinking of going to Star Trek conventions after reading the exploits of some of your crew!) - it's great to know there are fellow Trekkies on the Amiga scene. Right, praise over with - I have some comments to get off my chest... I whole heartedly agree with your comments about many Star Trek novels. Being new to Trek fiction I bought a few books recommended in FF6. "The Siege" (DS9 Book 2) was very violent and the way the story is structured would suit a comic-book - no doubt due to Peter David's experience in that format (and would Quark really say "...you poor bastard..." to someone? There were too many curse words in my opinion - to simply say "...Quark cursed..." is more than enough - anyone agree with me?). The other novel I read was "The Devils Heart" which, despite several critisisms, I liked. I am now more wary of Trek novels as a result of books like "The Siege" and "Fallen Heroes" (DS9 Book 5) - I recommend new readers to start with "The Emissary" (DS9 Book 1) - which I cannot (almost) fault. On another literary note I strongly recommend the three Star Wars books by Timothy Zahn - easily the best sci-fi books I have read - and the classic "Dune" by Frank Herbert (you won't believe that it was published in 1966). It's a shame that The Next Generation has ended - I felt that in Season 7 everything came to fruition for the crew (my favorite episode is "Lower Decks" - I hope we see more of those characters) and the final episode was excellent - a very intellectual story! Deep Space Nine has gone from strength to strength in the second season - it'll be interesting to finally see what the Dominion is in the final episode - there were enough references to them throughout the season and they look set to pose a major "threat" to the Federation and other three galaxy quadrants - I think you named your coming convention wisely, especially if the Dominion become really popular! I have the Star Trek Encyclopedia too and it is very interesting reading - especially in finding the numerous errors. In addition to the many faults you listed I have discovered: i) no mention of Ensign Kellogg (Who? - everyone else) ii) errors in the warp-speed chart and also iii) I'm sure that the Romulan unit of temperature is "octvaars" not "onkian" as stated in the book - plus more errors. I advise Mark Platts to get hold of a copy to help his starship reference list (e.g. there IS a USS Galaxy - and apparantly Gene Roddenberry said that there are only six Galaxy-class ships in existence). Erm... well I think that's all I can write at the moment but no doubt I will write back again to bore you even more (although I'll probably be busy at university by then) - I've included a couple of files on the disc that you may find useful for a future issue of FF (sorry about the paragraph symbols but I don't think my word-processor (PowerText 2) can turn them off (anyone know how?). Until next time - and remember: "Keep your ears open." - 7th Rule of Acquisition. Sincerely, William Sienkiewicz P.S. Has anyone else been watching season 7 of The Next Generation on German satellite channel SAT 1 (11295 GigaHertz - or 1295 on Amstrad SRD400)? Oddly enough I prefer the German version of "Lower Decks" - and I've picked up the language: "Das is correct", "Das iz absolute logish!", "Dor Habar", "Nein! Canadia sir, Canadia!" ... No? Oh well... P.P.S. Does anyone know how I can obtain a quality DS9 jumpsuit (Commander Siskos' uniform) and the price? P.P.P.S. Someone mentioned in FF7 that O'Brien playing the cello was a deviation to his character on DS9 - however, it is now known that his father wanted him to become an accomplished cellist but O'Brien opted for a career in Starfleet. Capeesh? Well, thanks for your letter and all your coments. I'm glad you like the new look TFF but as we've always maintained, it's the contents that count and NOT the presentation. To prove my point, in a recent issue of Amiga User International, they reviewed Grapevine Issue 19 and while they praised the presentation, they commented on the poor standard of articles and awarded it 80%. In contrast, Issue 6 of TFF received a rating of 86% with very basic, and even crude presentation. Need I say more?! I won't comment on anything else in your letter - I'll leave that to our other readers next time! Simon Alan Aylott Newbury, Berkshire England Dear Simon, Thankyou for the latest issue of The Final Frontier (7), which I have just received. The new look I can only describe as awesome. As with previous issues I have greatly enjoyed reading articles and looking at artwork/photos contained in the magazine. My one problem is that the text tends to go too far to the right hand side of my television screen and in cases of a full line of text the last character is lost or unreadable. I am not aware of any way in which I can adjust this as I do not posess much knowhow on this sort of thing. Please consider trimming your text lines by one or two characters. Yours sincerely, Alan Aylott Thanks for you comments Alan. As far as your point about the text is concerned, most modern TVs (and all monitors) can be adjusted horizontally and this should solve the problem in the short term, however I take note of what you're saying and I'll look into it. I couldn't do anything in time for this issue as a large amount of material was finished shortly after Issue 7 was released and it would have entailed a lot of work re-editing the mag! One thing that could be causing the problem is your Amiga itself. The output from most Amigas differs slightly (which is why Workbench allows you to alter the screen positions) and yours could be slighly offset to the right and unfortunately there is no way to avoid this. If anyone else experienced this problem please let us know and we'll see what we can do for Issue 9. Simon Steve Roffey Ashford, Kent England Dear Simon, I would just like to add that I positively *love* what you're doing. TFF is the best Star Trek related thingy I've seen. The Marina Sirtis pix [Issue 6] were mighty fine! Keep it up, Yours, Steve Roffey Gavin Jones Royston, Barnsley England Dear Infinite Frontiers, Just a short note to congratulate you on the new look Final Frontier Disk Magazine. Cannot wait for Isue 8. Keep up the good work, Gavin Jones Imran Ali Bradford England Dear TFF, On 11/9/94, at a computer show in Bradford, I picked a copy of TFF #7 from the Telescan stand. I'd been meaning to buy one for months, but never got round to it. Upon booting, the startup sequence does not work on my A1200, so it required some editing of the assigns. Also a hard drive install routine would be useful for you to include. Even without LCARS working I explored the text and graphics files and I must say the quality of the material outstrips "official" SF mags and fanzines. Once running, the LCARS environment was a dream to use; are the LCARS libraries freely useable by readers, or must it be licenced from the author? It would make writing multimedia applications very easy to produce. Speaking of multimedia, how about compiling all Infinite Frontiers material onto a single CD for CDROM users. I realise you may not have the resources for this but how about licencing your stuff to CDPD or 17bit to produce a CD, say every 6 issues of TFF. Keep up the good work! Yours Sincerely, Imran Ali Thanks for your letter, Imran. To start off with your comments about TFF running on your A1200, every issue of TFF is tested extensively on a wide range of machines prior to release and I would like to stress that it passed our rigourous tests with flying colours so I can't really understand what problems you experiences, but if you can let me know your system configuration, I'll look into it. TFF 7 has been tested and works perfectly on the ENTIRE range of Amigas and was tested on an A500 (1.3), A500+, A1200, A2000, A3000, and an A4000 so you can see that your problem may be down to your specific hardware configuration. Also, all future issues will also be tested on a CD32 with an SX-1 expansion unit. In fact, LCARS itself was developed on an A1200 so if anything it should be most suited to that machine. We definitely WON'T be licencing LCARS out for use by other people and, to be honest, I get quite upset when I learn that readers are pulling the system apart for their own use. If you read the "Distribution" file it does state that TFF should be distributed in its entirety and that ALL files are copyrighted and should not be used without permission. A vast amount of development time has gone into TFF and LCARS and we don't want to see it disected! Also, if we licenced LCARS out, there would be nothing we could do to stop other disk mags from using it, which is why it has been copyrighted to Infinite Frontiers. As far as CD, we're one step ahead of you. Back in September '94, we set up an exclusive deal with Almathera to include the ENTIRE Infinite Frontiers range on CDPD V which is due for release later this year. The CD will contain, amongst other titles, TFF 1-8, Holodeck 1-6, Illusions and anything else we have released by that time. I spoke to Jolyon Ralph at Almathera who was excited by the idea of featuring our range of software and I recently sent the first batch of 50 disks to him for inclusion. If this idea goes down well, then I can't see why we won't arrange to include future releases on other discs in the CDPD series at irregular intervals. Simon Warren Mason Royal Air Force Morayshire Scotland Dear Simon and Colin, Just thought I'd drop you a line with regards to vol 7 of The Final Frontier. What can I say, excellent! The new menu sets the magazine off perfectly and the features continue to improve with each volume. Keep up the good work and good luck with future issues. Warren Mason John Bilton Doncaster England I have been very impressed with the last 3 issues of The Final Frontier that I have read (5-7), especially the new LCARS system, which makes reading the magazine so much easier and a lot more fun. John Bilton More letters next time...