Ed Edwards and Mike Mikesh started HIWG in 1987 when MegaTraveller came out. It was originally to develop Imperial history through the Rebellion. It did a lot of this, and many ideas went into Rebellion Sourcebook and other products. It outgrew this focus, though, as people exchanged programs, wrote up sectors, and developed races.
A good portion of MEMBERS' work has seen print. HIWG itself has several newsletters (AAB Proceedings is the general newsletter, STARBURST is the Australian newsletter, and WHITE NOISE is the latest United Kingdom newsletter), but it does not and will not publish any supplements itself. No collection of 40+ scattered people can imitate a company successfully.

SUCCESSES

Instead, there is a list of people who joined HIWG, wrote some documents, and developed their ideas enough that GDW (or DGP) chose to publish them. Note that HIWG was credited in general in several DGP products. In the New Era rulebook, Hubworlds was created by HIWGers (GDW liked the draft, and included the finished product in the rulebook) and all the "Helpful Comments" credits but two belong to HIWG.
We see our function as a meeting place for fans, and we expect good things to happen from people interacting. It's hard to predict what will develop in advance, as we've discovered. While HIWG is no longer credited _in general_, HIWGers still influence and write
Traveller's future. (Remember that the publisher always has the final say; I don't want to leave the impression that anything a HIWGer writes is necessarily respected by the publisher.)

LAND GRANTS

To encourage ownership and friendly competition, we allocated sectors and areas to "analysts." (This paralleled a GDW practice with licensees, a practice they have moved away from.) Some of this material has seen print as library data, some published sectors have had their worlds named by HIWGers, and others are very sketchy. HIWG got credits, but Fugate did end MTJ4 with a note that HIWG material was too much "why" and not enough start-adventure-here. Nevertheless, much of HIWG's library material is organized around detailing sectors and their inhabitants.
With the abandonment of DGP and the death of GDW and than IG, HIWG was left without a focus. Interest in a change has occurred here and there over the years, but nothing in specific was ever worked out.

HIWG LIBRARY

HIWG has copies of the various files that DGP and GDW released into the GEnie library for comment. Most of these are sector files; the HIWG versions have most of the worlds named due to member input. Besides these, there are many draft documents written by HIWGers ranging from comments of ship design to ship designs to Contact! alien articles.
Also collected have been works by many non-HIWG members. Including Software, Spreadsheets, Deckplans and anything else a fan might generate. HIWG documents are available on CD-ROM. Currently there is about 380 megabytes of material available.
HIWG faces the same problem as every other dispersed organization: not
everyone uses the same kind of computer. Then, those who use the same type of computer use different word processing programs, design for different printers,and so on.
All text files are available as ASCII; some WordPerfect versions are available, as are some WORD, PDF and RTF files. Graphics files are in various formats (GIF, JPG, EPS, TIF, and others).

HIWG LIBRARY: Bryan Borich, 3890 50th Street; San Diego, CA 92105-3005.
Internet address: kagehira@aol.com

THE FUTURE OF HIWG

HIWG has been in search of a new direction to head in.
With DGP, GDW and now IG gone. The rise of electronic mail, and the World Wide Web, it is time that HIWG heads into a new future and with new goals. It has always been HIWG's intent to promote Traveller, and now we have more forms of Traveller to support than ever (Classic Traveller, MegaTraveller, The New Era, Melieu Zero, and now GURPs Traveller). Over the last year HIWG has started in a new direction. We've made available some new mailing lists and admittedly co-opted some others. We've been in discussion about joining together with BITs members in the UK. It's hoped that HIWG can provide support to Traveller in all it's forms.

FINAL NOTE

If you send a SASE (self-addressed, stamped envelope), please send the regular letter size envelopes. If you send the small, cheaper envelopes then I can't stuff much in to send back to you.