GateWorld’s History

Darren and David (2018)

GateWorld founder Darren Sumner and former co-editor David Read in 2018

GateWorld has been bringing you Stargate news and features as an independent fan site for more than 20 years. (Learn more about our hard-working staff!)

On October 22, 1999, Showtime aired the fantastic third-season episode of Stargate SG-1, “Jolinar’s Memories.” In Chicago, sci-fi geek and Web hobbyist Darren Sumner was already a big fan of the show, making it a Friday night routine with his newlywed wife. When Apophis stepped forward from the shadows and revealed himself, an idea was born: A science fiction show that is so entertaining, so well written and produced, with such an attention to its own previous continuity, needs a Web site that maps all of those points of continuity and character development. GateWorld was born.

Actually, it wasn’t even GateWorld back then. The site was launched as “STARGUIDE” using Darren’s personal Web space, and included a complete episode guide (with inspiration from The Lurker’s Guide to Babylon 5) and character profiles. Within a few months the site was covering breaking news from the growing Stargate universe (with inspiration from TrekToday and TrekWeb. This helped to set it apart from the rest of the growing online fan world (and gave Darren an outlet for his college education in journalism). Within the next year STARGUIDE moved to SciFiGuide.net as part of a larger Web project. New episode guides for other series joined the site, including other 90s favorites like Farscape, Babylon 5, Andromeda, and Star Trek.

It quickly became apparent that such a site was too big for one fan. The other sites were eventually spun off as SciFiStream.com, and the Stargate-centric site was relaunched with a new name and a new home: GateWorld.net!

In the years since, we’ve added more staff members to create content for the site, write articles and reviews, and moderate GateWorld Forum as it grew to more than 50,000 members (in the era before social media). We expanded to include cast and crew interviews, an encyclopedia of the Stargate universe, licensed products like books and comics, episode transcripts, photo galleries and an extensive screencap library, and much more. We partnered with Titan Magazines to produce the News section for The Official Stargate Magazine.

In 2008 our efforts expanded into new media, launching the GateWorld Podcast as a weekly talk show. And most recently we’ve stretched our efforts off GateWorld.net to create original video content for our YouTube channel.

“GateWorld 2.0,” a site-wide redesign and expansion, was launched on August 18, 2006, with a new look and new features. “GateWorld 3.0,” the current iteration of the site, launched on September 10, 2017.

From its humble beginnings GateWorld has grown into the Web’s largest and most popular Stargate site, with hundreds of thousands of visits every month. We’ve outlived multiple iterations of the studio’s official Stargate sites. Even the cast and producers of Stargate visit GateWorld, and some have contributed to the fan community through interviews, live chat events, and original articles. In 2004, MGM invited Darren to Vancouver, B.C. to tour the sets and interview members of the Stargate Atlantis cast! It was the first of six years of an annual pilgrimage, allowing a fan site unprecedented access to the inner workings of a television production.

Today GateWorld remains independently owned and operated, thanks to generous support from our fellow fans. We believe that Stargate has proved itself to be a great, enduring science fiction franchise, and this site is our way of supporting it and enjoying it even more. As the Stargate universe continues to grow into new series and new mediums, GateWorld will be along for the ride as your complete guide to Stargate!

MEDIA COVERAGE

GateWorld has been featured in such publications as:

Entertainment Weekly (June 9, 2006)

The Province: “amazingly-detailed”

Chicago Tribune’s The Watcher: “the best site for Stargate-related news”

Multichannel News

Amazon Screening Room: “one of the most impressive fan sites you’ll ever see”

Slashdot.org

digg

Netscape.com

The Official Stargate SG-1 / Stargate Atlantis Magazine

“Stargate SG-1: The Official Companion”