The Cybertronian Times - A Retrospective Look
by Simon Plumbe
In this feature, I'll be taking a look back at the past issues of our Transformers fanzine, The Cybertronian Times and wondering why we ever did what we did, and whether we'd do anything differently now.
Issue 1, January 1998
The idea for The Cybertronian Times came about at a time when Infinite Frontiers was expanding it's range of fanzines. As well as producing a few Star Trek zines, we were enhancing and adding new aspects to our web site and planning a range of other titles. Sven Harvey had wanted to create a Tranzine for some time, and the two ideas just fell together. The first issue took quite a while to produce with Sven being left in the unenviable position of having to write, design, and edit the whole zine on his own, but looking back I think he managed to do a pretty good job.
The fanzine was released in our then standard format of a black and white A5 fanzine printed on standard-grade paper with a card cover. It featured 28 pages and sold for the very affordable price of just £1.25.
One thing that was apparent back then was the lack of images. While there were a couple of photos and some illustrations from Sven (who did everything apart from a brief article I wrote for him), there was little other than the text to look at. At the time, we were experimenting with our early fanzines to get a style that we liked and we were having immense trouble getting artwork to print out of a high enough standard that would still look good once photocopied. In short, if it wasn't pure black and white, we were going to have problems!
In terms of the content, there was an extensive news section, reviews, some artwork, short pieces of fiction, and some back-story information for the Transformers universe. There was also a selection of tech-specs, character profiles and a rather extensive feature on different teams of characters in the alternative universe being featured in some of the fiction.
Overall, I would say that this was a mixed bag. To a casual reader, much of the first issue would read like a series of lists and didn't hold too much appeal. While there was fiction and other items, I think we got the balance a little wrong and maybe an extra 8 pages of articles might have helped. What articles and features the zine did have were well written and weren't too heavy going - it's just that I would have preferred more of them. However, at the time, I wasn't really interested in any aspect of Transformers so I wasn't able to help Sven as much as I wanted to.
Despite all of this, it proved to be a popular seller, going through several re-prints, and it did help us set the ball rolling to produce the type of zine that it evolved into, which eventually formed the basis for our Transformers events, Auto Assembly. It's taken us a little while, but I'm proud of what Sven has achieved.
Issue 2, April 1999
Well, it was our intention to release Issue two about 3-4 months after the first issue was unleashed onto the world, but as with most fanzines, our production deadlines slipped a little...!
As with the first issue, the bulk of the work was done by Sven, although this time he had a little help in terms of content with a couple of pieces from myself and some fiction from Chris Belton.
The first couple of things of note with this issue was that the size increased from 28 pages to 32 with a slight increase in cover price to £1.50. The big boost for ourselves was the method of printing that we used. We changed the software we used to control our printouts and as a result, we were able to produce photocopier friendly documents so we took full advantage and added more art and photos to the zine.
It has to be said that in terms of content, this issue seems a lot more balanced and varied in comparision to issue one. There is a good sprinkling of news and reviews, fiction, a short comic strip, as well as the start of the letters section.
As with the first issue, this sold extremely well and ensured that The Cybertronian Times had a strong future with Infinite Frontiers. More importantly though, wasn't just the sales but the overall quality of the fanzine - it wasn't something that sold purely because there was a demand for Transformers material, but because it was a good fanzine in its own right.
I have been so impressed with Sven's work with this fanzine that I ended up working on it as enthusiastically as I have with our other titles and for someone who doesn't consider themselves to be a Transformers fan, I can't think of praise higher than that.
