The announcement from SciFi.com that it will close SciFiction at the end of the year has sparked a lot of discussion. One of the many points touched on that is worthy of expansion is mentioned by Locus Online‘s Mark Kelly. In a post entitled “Into the Aether“, Kelly pondered what happens to defunct websites? How do we access the material that was published after the website has been taken down? After all, paper magazines and books have a life long after their publication date. You can usually pick up old issues second hand, or in libraries, and I own any number of books published by now defunct publishers. What do you do if you want to access material from a defunct website?

The best answer is to go to The Internet Archive’s ‘Wayback Machine’ (www.archive.org). The IA is a non-profit that was founded to build an ‘Internet library,’ with the purpose of offering permanent access for researchers, historians, and scholars to historical collections that exist in digital format. It’s Wayback Machine spiders the web making full and partial copies of websites. It currently archives 40 billion web pages (according to its own site information).

Although it is a good thing, there are problems with the Wayback Machine. The first is that copies are often partial, or difficult to find. For example, following the announcement that SciFiction was to close, I decided to research what fiction Ellen Datlow had edited for publication online. Looking back at Omni Online I struggled to find a full copy of Omni’s short fiction from 1995 to 1998. Some of it was not there, and to get to other pieces I had to navigate through multiple iterations of the old Omni site, often stumbling down blind alleys to no longer extant pages. There was a more complete copy of Event Horizon (1998/1999), but the SciFiction copy was also incomplete, containing a full copy of Suzy McKee Charnas’s “Peregrines” (removed from the current SciFi.com site at the request of the author), but missing anything from this year (for example). Some of the omissions are because people have asked for material to be removed, or because web pages are set not to be archived, but in many cases it’s just not possible to archive everything.

The question that then follows is, to what extent are works published online ‘lost’ when the originating website goes offline. Well, while the record of the periodical becomes difficult to trace, and its own story may ultimately be lost, but many of the stories published do become widely accessible. For example, stories like Dan Simmons’ “Looking for Kelly Dahl” (Omni Online), Kelly Link’s “The Specialist’s Hat” (Event Horizon”, and Andy Duncan’s “The Pottawottamie Giant” (SciFiction) have all been fairly widely reprinted and access to them was or is unlikely to be affected by the closure of a website. The fate of stories like Michael Bishop’s “Cyril Berganske” (from Omni, and only reprinted once since) or A.R. Morlan’s “Ciné Rimettato” (from SciFiction, and never reprinted), is less sure, though.

Is there a solution? Well, supporting The Internet Archive is a good start. Encouraging the print publication of material is better, and even just ensure good bibliographical records is worthwhile. Otherwise, a goodly portion of the current range of short fiction being published will be lost, something the field could ill-afford.

The estimable Dave Schwartz (with worthy assistance from Niall Harrison and Chance) have set up The ED SF Project, a worthy tribute to Ellen Datlow’s SciFiction. They’ve asked a bunch of people to write appreciations for the 300+ stories published on SciFiction. I think it’s a wonderful project, and will definitely get involved. I also hope they’ll eventually consider expanding it to cover Ellen’s online editing at Omni Online and Event Horizon, which also included some amazing stories.

NB: This post was edited. That’s the way it goes.

In attempting to compile the Best of Ellen Online: 1995 – 2005, I was struck by how difficult it is to find solid information on the fiction published by Omni between 1995 and 1998. While Omni debuted online with the Chrysler Neon series of six novellas, I could only find information on maybe a dozen stories published over the three year period. This is almost certainly only a third of what was actually published. This compares with the 23 stories published by Event Horizon, and the 225 stories published by SciFiction.

Winnowing these 260 stories down to a ‘best’ list was nearly impossible, especially given Ellen’s taste for some of my favorite writers like Waldrop and Blaylock, who she published repeatedly. Still, here goes:

1. Greetings, Terry Bisson
2. Thirteen Phantasms, James P. Blaylock
3. The War of the Worlds, James P. Blaylock
4. The Pottawatomie Giant, Andy Duncan
5. The Empire of Ice Cream, Jeffrey Ford
6. Chip Crockett’s Christmas Carol, Elizabeth Hand
7. At the Mouth of the River of Bees, Kij Johnson
8. It’s All True, John Kessel
9. The Specialist’s Hat, Kelly Link
10. New Light on the Drake Equation, Ian R. MacLeod
11. Andy Warhol’s Dracula, Kim Newman
12. Get a Grip, Paul Park
13. The Dragons of Summer Gulch, Robert Reed
14. The Voluntary State, Christopher Rowe
15. Jailwise, Lucius Shepard
16. Looking for Kelly Dahl, Dan Simmons
17. Mr Goober’s Show, Howard Waldrop
18. The Tang Dynasty Underwater Pyramid, Walter Jon Williams

There were many, many other fine stories, but I think this handful make a persuasive case for the influence Ellen’s had online over the past decade. I can only hope we’ll see more of her editorial tastes on or off line soon.

Ellen Datlow has been the greatest editorial advocate of publishing fiction online that the science fiction, fantasy and horror fields have yet seen. Starting in 1995 with the launch of Omni Online through to its demise in 1998, continuing with Event Horizon from September 1998 to December 1999, and then with SciFi.com’s SciFiction from May 2000 through to December 2005.

During that time she published fiction of an extraordinarily high standard, including Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy and Locus Award winners by some of the biggest, and most exciting names of the modern science fiction era. And, while none of those online publications offered their fiction for sale to the public, two of them (Omni and SciFiction) were either the highest paying or amongst the highest paying markets in the field at the time.

One of the things that I think may be being overlooked, in the sad decision to disontinue SciFiction is the extraordinary nature of this achievement, something that continually put art ahead of commerce, and confounded the experts again and again. While I can only mourn the fiction that probably won’t now be written or published, I want to celebrate Ellen’s achievements and, in many ways, the faith of her employers in continuing with the site as long as they did. I hope, at some point, to assemble a personal ‘best of Ellen’s online fiction’ list, but in the meantime I’d like to exhort some small press to collect all of the SciFiction short fiction between hardcovers. It’s been such a marvelous asset to the field, it would be a pity to see it devoured by archive.org and become less freely available.

Memory is already turning it into a haze. Staying up till three in the morning drinking with Garth and Justin. Driving way to fast across the Wisconsin night with CHARLES and Liza. The panels, the parties, the cheese gifts! Madison was a wonderful time. Many thanks to all, especially Garth, who was a wonderful roomie, and to CHARLES, who turned all CAPS during the trip, and who helped make the trip a great success. More soon. And see, Biancotti? No BAMS.