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A Brief History of The Website at the End of the Universe

Welcome to the Website at the End of the Universe. My name is Capt. Xerox, your humble sysop (more on that later). I’ve been a science fiction fan for as long as I can remember. This website is a continuation of my online efforts to share my love of sci-fi with other fans that goes back at least 30 years.

The Website at the End of the Universe, or TEOTU as it’s known around here, first began as a dialup BBS in Montreal in the late 1980s where I was the sysop. That’s old-timey geek talk for system operator. Through the BBS, a local collection of fans found each other online and a community was born. Several of us would meet-up in real life GTs (that means Get Togethers, is that still an acceptable abbreviation?) We’d watch schlocky science fiction movies together, swap paperbacks we’d already read and attend local SF cons.

I eventually hooked the BBS up to FidoNet and we were able to connect with science fiction fans on other BBSes all over the world. As the internet started to become a thing in the early 90s, I was able to start importing Usenet newsgroups into the BBS and our universe got even bigger.

A few years later, this thing called the World Wide Web came along and I eventually figured out a way to have people access the TEOTU message forums via their Netscape browsers. The Web wasn’t kind to BBSes and the writing was one the wall that their day was nearly over. That’s when I started looking at how I could transition TBATEOTU to a website. I registered scifimontreal.com domain name in 2002 and early in 2003, this website was born. The earliest version of it that can be found on Archive.org’s Wayback Machine can be found here.

The site used that domain until 2006, when it switched over to theendoftheuniverse.ca domain and started morphing into a blog, but still with a message forums for fans to talk SF with each other. Some time in 2007, I switched the site to Drupal and it chugged along for a few more years, slowly evolving, until it switched to WordPress in 2012.  I’ve been dutifully updating the site since then, but the community spirit of the early BBS has dispersed, mostly as people migrated to social media.

That’s why you’ll also find your TEOTU fix on Twitter and the Facebook Page at the End of the Universe. If you like old pulp covers like I do, I also share cool art on Instagram as RobotsAndRayguns and collect links to cheesy science fiction movies on the TEOTU companion website, SciFinds.com.

Enjoy your time on TEOTU and thanks for dropping by!

Background image for TEOTU by Patrick Hoesly, licensed under Creative Commons.