In the thread where I posted the original USENET post introducing Undocumented Features, I said:

>Man. If UF was a person it'd be old enough to drink pretty soon.

It's kind of funny to me that the "hey, look at this old thing" post is, itself, now getting kind of old.

So yeah! Tonight--technically, a couple of hours ago, at this point--makes a round thirty years since I posted the original Undocumented Features to USENET, from my account on the good ol' Encore at WPI. What a bizarre thing to contemplate. I wasn't great at envisioning the actual, as opposed to fictional, future in 1991, but if I had ever thought about it at all, I doubt I would have imagined that 48-year-old me would even remember doing this without prompting, let alone still be doing it!

Unfortunately, this little observance is all I've got for you on the actual day. I had a couple of ideas for more... concrete ways to mark the milestone, but between one thing and another, they just didn't come together. Sorry about that. I hope normal service will be resumed soon, but, as always, I'm not really the one who gets to determine that.

In the meantime, let us reflect that when Undocumented Features began, the world population was estimated at just a hair under 5.5 billion people (it's now closing in on 8 billion). The Soviet Union was still a thing (barely--it dissolved about six weeks later). Airbags were not yet required in automobiles in the United States (although some form of passive restraint had been since 1989). The WorldWideWeb was still one word and had no servers outside the European scientific community. DVDs wouldn't be invented for another four years. The Super Nintendo had only been out in the United States for a couple of months. There was no such company as Google. There was only one Terminator movie. The largest corporation in the world was General Motors. And the number-one song on the Billboard Hot 100 was "Cream" by Prince and the New Power Generation.

Yeah. Strange days.

(NOTE: Strange Days came out in 1995.)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Woo! Undocumented Features!

Look how much we've grown.

Thirty years. Damn. Grats, Gryphon.

I first discovered Eyrie through Hopelessly Lost, of all things. I enjoyed it while I was in college but I had no idea what the heck other universe it was referring to!

So I checked out UF. Not gonna lie, the original four stories didn't grab me as much, but all the other Golden Age/Exile stories did.

Long story short, checking the Eyrie new releases page was a part of my daily routine for many, meany years. Especially after SotS came out. That series destroyed almost anything else I'd been reading, fanfic or novel.

I'm older and (theoretically) wiser and, uh, have a job, so I can't check in as often as I used to. But make no mistake: The stories all across this site hold a lot of great memories for me, and I'm extremely grateful. I'd be ecstatic to see more stories in the future, but I understand the demands of daily life. Whether we see more stories for another thirty years or you hang up the keyboard tomorrow, I'll always be grateful.

Thank you, all of you at Eyrie, for thirty years of great times.

------
Authors of our fates
Orchestrate our fall from grace
Poorest players on the stage
Our defiance drives us straight to the edge

LAST EDITED ON Nov-15-21 AT 02:57 AM (EST)
 
And the big round number is here at last.

Congratulations again, to you and everyone else who's ever worked on this amazing, all-consuming epic saga/setting/universe/thing. (I'm still proud, years later, of my own tiny contributions to it.) It's made me laugh and cry and feel many other emotions, and brought me much enjoyment. A particular pleasure has been seeing characters lifted out of their original contexts and slotted into the greater whole in a way that feels completely natural - and usually receiving a better fate or happier ending in the bargain.

As I noted in my earlier post, it's startling to think of how many works that are now part of UF simply didn't exist in 1991. From those humble and/or absurd beginnings, steeped in the primordial days of anime fandom here in the US (based on the few things that made it across the Pacific, usually in the form of untranslated videotapes of uncertain provenance and/or quality) as well as the subculture and in-jokes of a small group of students at a tech school... and now it contains too many references and ingredients and inclusions for anyone to create a truly comprehensive list (though several have tried). In a few cases, it has actually outlived its authors. And it's still going, though always on its own largely unknowable, unpredictable schedule.

Here's to the first thirty years of a fantastic, ground-breaking collaborative work, and to the community it acquired and inspired along the way.

Thank you.

Thank you to the entire Eyrie team, active and inactive, for thirty years of entertainment. For thirty years of villain redemption arcs, for countless baddies taken down, whether by assimilation or by force, for amazing stories that may have changed characters we love in ways we couldn't predict, but somehow still kept the essentials of who they were.

And thank you especially to Gryphon, for keeping the madness going and wrangling the stories that just didn't go where he wanted them to go. It's been a wild ride, and I'm glad it's not over yet.

I've only been here on the forums for a little over a decade, but I was first introduced to EPU by a friend during my Sophomore year of High School, in 2001.

Congrats on 30 years! No worries on not having a release or anything to mark it, it's obviously been a crazy past couple years.

>I first discovered Eyrie through Hopelessly Lost, of all things. I
>enjoyed it while I was in college but I had no idea what the heck
>other universe it was referring to!

Heh. I got here through the Universal Science Fiction Parody, of all things. And the only anime I'm interested in the the Robotech RPG, as done by Palladium Books. Nothing against most of the source material, it's just not my fandom.

But I've read everything on the site for years, because it's entertaining.

So, Thank You for everything Eyrie, Gryphon. And may the next 30 years be even more fun for you.

I remember reading the Core, or parts of it, followed by The Quagmire Project, some time during the late 1990s -- I only got into fanfiction around '95 or '96. And I went, "Okay, that was a thing." A couple-three years later I found my way here to the forums just in time to experience the birth of the Symphony... and I haven't looked back since.

Thanks for all the really great storytelling, Gryphon, and thanks to everyone else who has been a part of EPU these thirty years.

-- Bob
-------------------
My race is pacifist and does not believe in war. We kill only out of personal spite.

I missed the anniversary, but congratulations!

UF would have a pride of place place on my bookshelf if it were in print.

I had gotten into a mood about 20-ish years ago and printed everything out. Double side prints, in 3-ring binders, took up a shelf and a half. Hell, each of the four core stories took a 3" binder each.

TechMav
Tygr Labs/Tygr Motors

>I had gotten into a mood about 20-ish years ago and printed everything
>out. Double side prints, in 3-ring binders, took up a shelf and a
>half. Hell, each of the four core stories took a 3" binder each.

Before I became part of the writing staff, I would print out the currently exant UF/EPU stories double-columned landscaped pages. Took up most of a xerox paper box before I stopped doing so. I even took it to a convention that Zoner was at to get him to sign it!

--- Philip

	Philip J. Moyer Contributing Writer, Editor and Artist (and Moderator) -- Eyrie Productions, Unlimited CEO of MTS, High Poobah Of Artwork, and High Priest Of the Church Of Aerianne -- Magnetic Terrapin Studios "Insert Pithy Comment Here" Fandoms -- Fanart -- Fan Meta Discussions