Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Found a broken link?

Sometimes, you might find an external link here that no longer works. Publisher might have changed URL without replicating content at new address (e.g., scifi.com to syfy.com), publisher might withdraw content after a while (Asimov's, Analog, & F&SF, e.g., do it fairly often), even online publishers like Strange Horizons sometimes remove content, ...

Here are three options you might want to try when you see a broken link at Variety SF:

  1. Sometimes I post additional links in new posts but am too lazy to update main post. Search the story from search box at top, or via Google (add " site:variety-sf.blogspot.com " without quotes to your Google query), & you just might find an alternate link.
  2. Go to Wayback Machine of Internet Archive, & type the URL that no longer works in the box provided there. It will sometimes find the page you're looking for from its cache.

    Note that even pages found by Wayback Machine might eventually vanish, as I just found with its scifi.com archive.
  3. Just search the appropriate story in Google. Sometimes, story might have been cached or republished at an alternate location.
If you are a regular here, it probably is wise to just save the stories locally when you see the link rather than wait when you will need it. Web content is flimsy & ephemeral!

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

The anthology Earthmen and Strangers is still available. Dear Devil is included in this book.