SciFi.com to remove its fiction archive

I'm not a big fan of reading fiction online, but sometimes that's the only avenue available, especially for "niche" categories like sci-fi.

So, I'm sad that SciFi.com is nuking its fiction archive, as reported by Boing Boing. The reasons cited being rights issues, and low traffic.

Among the notable stories in the archive is "The Ugly Chickens" by Howard Waldrop, which is one of my favorite stories, and where the name of this blog comes from. Incidentally, the story won a Nebula award for best novelette in 1980, and also a World Fantasy Award for Short Fiction in 1981.

Scifi.com's archive is about the only website that is (was?) legally hosting a copy of the story. The story is still accessible as I write this (June 23), but may not be for long.

Most of Howard's stuff is out of print, and in fact, you can only get "The Ugly Chickens" in print if you buy Waldrop's short story collections, such as "Things Will Never Be the Same: A Howard Waldrop Reader" (2007) or "Howard Who?" which came out last year, and which itself is a reprint of a 1986 title. Try this Amazon search for Howard Waldrop books

Now I own a copy of "Howard Who?", plus I even have "The Ugly Chickens" in another short story collection. But I still snuck a peek at SciFi.com's page, so I must be one of the people they logged. In hindsight, maybe I should have visited a couple hundred times more ;-)

So, read it while it's still available online, "The Ugly Chickens" by Howard Waldrop.

You might also want to view the Howard Waldrop entry on Wikipedia.