Fantha Tracks may turn nine years old in October, but it can trace its roots back to a site that launched 27 years ago today – Lightsabre.co.uk. Known throughout 1998 and into ’99 as Wirezone, Lightsabre arrived on 28th June 1999 in the time between the US and UK releases of The Phantom Menace, when the internet was absolutely packed with Star Wars sites of infinite types.
From small beginnings, Lightsabre grew from a site that began with 1200 page views per month to a decade later regularly hitting almost 150,000 per month. During that time myself and my co-owner Louis Turfrey developed the site from what was home for our fan fiction and RPG campaign material into a news and interviews site, where we caught up with over 140 guests (all of which can be found here on Fantha Tracks), speaking to Star Wars superstars such as Irvin Kershner, Rick McCallum, Peter Mayhew and Anthony Daniels as well as launching our podcast Setnin Radio in 2005 and exhibiting at Celebration Europe in 2007.
Lightsabre ended its run in 2009, but the work that the team (myself, Louis Turfrey, Jonathan Hicks, Paul Squire and Jason Brown) created survives (and shall resurface at some point in the future). Until then, let’s raise a glass of duarga in honour of Lightsabre.co.uk.
