Ficlets
Encyclopedia
Ficlets is a non-commercial
AOL
community website
dedicated to publishing and archiving ficlets, which are similar to flash fiction
. It was founded on October 31, 2006 by Kevin Lawver, though it did not become fully operational until early to mid-March 2007. On June 6, 2008, Lawver severed his employment from AOL and, in turn, departed as system administrator
for Ficlets. No new administrator was announced to replace Lawver, leaving the respective duties for the site unmaintained.
On December 2, 2008, it was announced on the People Connection Blog that Ficlets would permanently be closed as of January 15, 2009. On December 6, 2008, a banner was placed at the header of Ficlets pages that announced the closure of the site and a pop-up window was added to the main page that read “Ficlets is going away soon :(“. Lawver attempted to save the site to no avail, so he began a "Ficlets Graveyard" to archive all the ficlets written prior to the closing of the site.
Lawver announced on 10 January 2009 that, with the help of Ficlets.com programmer Jason Garber and design team Viget Labs, a replacement site entitled Ficly.com would be launched. At the time of the announcement, the Ficly front page consisted of a logo (subtitling the format "A better, shorter story"), a statement of not being active yet, and a form to sign-up an e-mail address for notification of the official launch. Lawver stated that the Ficly.com team is "slowly making progress" in constructing the site, referencing the possible launch date as "maybe by ficlets' 2nd birthday at the beginning of March".
All content on ficlets.com was licensed under the Creative Commons
Attribution-Share Alike
2.5 License and viewable to any patron of the site. Users who completed the free registration process could submit their own ficlets (either completely original, inspired by a Creative Commons-licensed Flickr
image, or as a prequel or sequel to another's ficlet), host a draft of a ficlet in progress which was not viewable by others, maintain a user profile, comment on and rate other's stories, contact other users via private messages, and maintain a list of favorite ficlet authors and stories. There was also a Ficlets Blog
wherein Lawver and science fiction
author John Scalzi
posted entries in an assortment of categories, including Book Tour Diaries, a Ficlets Spotlight, and Interviews with published authors. For registration, the site accepted OpenID
and AOL/AIM
screen names.
system architect and lead developer Kevin Lawver, who handled the back end
website
programming, as a repository for ficlets. The concept for the site originated with Lawver being a "frustrated writer", unable to find the time to complete a fictional work; as an alternative, he conceived ficlets — a format that allowed a work to be written in "five or ten minutes at work during lunch or [during] a break" and the site was to provide "inspiration" via "pictures, phrases or other stories" as well as circumventing, through the prequel or sequel option, having "to start from scratch when I had time to write". The name of the site and fiction form were derived from a unison of words: fiction
and chiclets
, specifically the "lets" part of the later meant to indicate "a small version of".
An additional four person AOL developer team provided time and effort in the creation of the website:
Science fiction
author John Scalzi
was a principal contributor to the site from its launch as a blog
ger, though he departed that position at the end of 2007.
between 64- and 1,024-byte
s in length. Ficlets are modular in that each is intended, but not required, to be a stand-alone story but once posted any registered user could continue the narrative thread by writing an indefinite number of prequels or sequels to the ficlet. All ficlets are licensed under the Creative Commons
Attribution-Share Alike
2.5 License.
Mature Content was allowed within ficlet stories, but explicit pornography, obscenity and "hate speech" were banned. Ficlet stories with mature content were required to be designated as such, thus allowing only registered users who opted to view mature content the ability to read the stories. The use of the intellectual property
of others, such as fan fiction
allow, was likewise banned from Ficlets. The use of real people was also forbidden in ficlet stories, unless they were public figures, although slanderous or libelous remarks directed at those public figures were prohibited.
As of January 4, 2009, the site hosted almost 49,000 ficlet stories, over 80,000 comments on those stories, and had in excess of 10,000 registered members.
contributor and science fiction
author John Scalzi
, participated on the site with original content. These included:
In March 2008, Ficlets won the CSS category and was nominated for the Community category of the SxSW
Web Awards.
posts regarding it, including a solicitation for new users from Boing Boing
. Mike Linksvayer of Creative Commons
was particularly "excited" with the creation and usage of the site. On February 6 and 9, 2008, the CBC radio
show Spark
ran a profile on Ficlets, including an interview with Kevin Lawver and the reading of two ficlets from the site.
Non-commercial
Non-commercial refers to an activity or entity that does not in some sense involve commerce, at least relative to similar activities that do have a commercial objective or emphasis...
AOL
AOL
AOL Inc. is an American global Internet services and media company. AOL is headquartered at 770 Broadway in New York. Founded in 1983 as Control Video Corporation, it has franchised its services to companies in several nations around the world or set up international versions of its services...
community website
Website
A website, also written as Web site, web site, or simply site, is a collection of related web pages containing images, videos or other digital assets. A website is hosted on at least one web server, accessible via a network such as the Internet or a private local area network through an Internet...
dedicated to publishing and archiving ficlets, which are similar to flash fiction
Flash fiction
Flash fiction is a style of fictional literature or fiction of extreme brevity. There is no widely accepted definition of the length of the category...
. It was founded on October 31, 2006 by Kevin Lawver, though it did not become fully operational until early to mid-March 2007. On June 6, 2008, Lawver severed his employment from AOL and, in turn, departed as system administrator
System administrator
A system administrator, IT systems administrator, systems administrator, or sysadmin is a person employed to maintain and operate a computer system and/or network...
for Ficlets. No new administrator was announced to replace Lawver, leaving the respective duties for the site unmaintained.
On December 2, 2008, it was announced on the People Connection Blog that Ficlets would permanently be closed as of January 15, 2009. On December 6, 2008, a banner was placed at the header of Ficlets pages that announced the closure of the site and a pop-up window was added to the main page that read “Ficlets is going away soon :(“. Lawver attempted to save the site to no avail, so he began a "Ficlets Graveyard" to archive all the ficlets written prior to the closing of the site.
Lawver announced on 10 January 2009 that, with the help of Ficlets.com programmer Jason Garber and design team Viget Labs, a replacement site entitled Ficly.com would be launched. At the time of the announcement, the Ficly front page consisted of a logo (subtitling the format "A better, shorter story"), a statement of not being active yet, and a form to sign-up an e-mail address for notification of the official launch. Lawver stated that the Ficly.com team is "slowly making progress" in constructing the site, referencing the possible launch date as "maybe by ficlets' 2nd birthday at the beginning of March".
All content on ficlets.com was licensed under the Creative Commons
Creative Commons
Creative Commons is a non-profit organization headquartered in Mountain View, California, United States devoted to expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has released several copyright-licenses known as Creative Commons...
Attribution-Share Alike
Share-alike
Share-Alike is a descriptive term used in the Creative Commons project for copyright licenses which include certain copyleft provisions. The Share-Alike license comes in two varieties, CC-BY-SA and CC-BY-NC-SA.-Share-alike license types:...
2.5 License and viewable to any patron of the site. Users who completed the free registration process could submit their own ficlets (either completely original, inspired by a Creative Commons-licensed Flickr
Flickr
Flickr is an image hosting and video hosting website, web services suite, and online community that was created by Ludicorp in 2004 and acquired by Yahoo! in 2005. In addition to being a popular website for users to share and embed personal photographs, the service is widely used by bloggers to...
image, or as a prequel or sequel to another's ficlet), host a draft of a ficlet in progress which was not viewable by others, maintain a user profile, comment on and rate other's stories, contact other users via private messages, and maintain a list of favorite ficlet authors and stories. There was also a Ficlets Blog
Blog
A blog is a type of website or part of a website supposed to be updated with new content from time to time. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in...
wherein Lawver and science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
author John Scalzi
John Scalzi
John Michael Scalzi II is an American author and online writer, and president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. He is best known for his Hugo Award-nominated science fiction novel Old Man's War, released by Tor Books in January 2005, and for his blog , at which he has written...
posted entries in an assortment of categories, including Book Tour Diaries, a Ficlets Spotlight, and Interviews with published authors. For registration, the site accepted OpenID
OpenID
OpenID is an open standard that describes how users can be authenticated in a decentralized manner, eliminating the need for services to provide their own ad hoc systems and allowing users to consolidate their digital identities...
and AOL/AIM
AOL Instant Messenger
AOL Instant Messenger is an instant messaging and presence computer program which uses the proprietary OSCAR instant messaging protocol and the TOC protocol to allow registered users to communicate in real time. It was released by AOL in May 1997...
screen names.
Creation
The site was created in late 2006 by AOLAOL
AOL Inc. is an American global Internet services and media company. AOL is headquartered at 770 Broadway in New York. Founded in 1983 as Control Video Corporation, it has franchised its services to companies in several nations around the world or set up international versions of its services...
system architect and lead developer Kevin Lawver, who handled the back end
Front-end and back-end
Front end and back end are generalized terms that refer to the initial and the end stages of a process. The front end is responsible for collecting input in various forms from the user and processing it to conform to a specification the back end can use...
website
Website
A website, also written as Web site, web site, or simply site, is a collection of related web pages containing images, videos or other digital assets. A website is hosted on at least one web server, accessible via a network such as the Internet or a private local area network through an Internet...
programming, as a repository for ficlets. The concept for the site originated with Lawver being a "frustrated writer", unable to find the time to complete a fictional work; as an alternative, he conceived ficlets — a format that allowed a work to be written in "five or ten minutes at work during lunch or [during] a break" and the site was to provide "inspiration" via "pictures, phrases or other stories" as well as circumventing, through the prequel or sequel option, having "to start from scratch when I had time to write". The name of the site and fiction form were derived from a unison of words: fiction
Fiction
Fiction is the form of any narrative or informative work that deals, in part or in whole, with information or events that are not factual, but rather, imaginary—that is, invented by the author. Although fiction describes a major branch of literary work, it may also refer to theatrical,...
and chiclets
Chiclets
Chiclets is a brand of candy coated chewing gum made by Cadbury Adams. The colors of chiclets are: yellow, green, orange, red, white, and pink. The product's name is derived from Nahuatl word tziktli, in English chicle, the substance from which chewing gum was traditionally made...
, specifically the "lets" part of the later meant to indicate "a small version of".
An additional four person AOL developer team provided time and effort in the creation of the website:
- Jason Garber, who handled the front endFront-end and back-endFront end and back end are generalized terms that refer to the initial and the end stages of a process. The front end is responsible for collecting input in various forms from the user and processing it to conform to a specification the back end can use...
website programming. - Ari Kushimoto, who assisted with the user interfaceUser interfaceThe user interface, in the industrial design field of human–machine interaction, is the space where interaction between humans and machines occurs. The goal of interaction between a human and a machine at the user interface is effective operation and control of the machine, and feedback from the...
design and programming. - Cindy Li, who assisted with the user interface design and programming as well as aiding in the promotion of the site.
- Jenna Marino, who handled the website and logo design.
Science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
author John Scalzi
John Scalzi
John Michael Scalzi II is an American author and online writer, and president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. He is best known for his Hugo Award-nominated science fiction novel Old Man's War, released by Tor Books in January 2005, and for his blog , at which he has written...
was a principal contributor to the site from its launch as a blog
Blog
A blog is a type of website or part of a website supposed to be updated with new content from time to time. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in...
ger, though he departed that position at the end of 2007.
Content
The site hosted "ficlets", not strictly linear very short storiesFlash fiction
Flash fiction is a style of fictional literature or fiction of extreme brevity. There is no widely accepted definition of the length of the category...
between 64- and 1,024-byte
Byte
The byte is a unit of digital information in computing and telecommunications that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, a byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the basic addressable element in many computer...
s in length. Ficlets are modular in that each is intended, but not required, to be a stand-alone story but once posted any registered user could continue the narrative thread by writing an indefinite number of prequels or sequels to the ficlet. All ficlets are licensed under the Creative Commons
Creative Commons
Creative Commons is a non-profit organization headquartered in Mountain View, California, United States devoted to expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has released several copyright-licenses known as Creative Commons...
Attribution-Share Alike
Share-alike
Share-Alike is a descriptive term used in the Creative Commons project for copyright licenses which include certain copyleft provisions. The Share-Alike license comes in two varieties, CC-BY-SA and CC-BY-NC-SA.-Share-alike license types:...
2.5 License.
Mature Content was allowed within ficlet stories, but explicit pornography, obscenity and "hate speech" were banned. Ficlet stories with mature content were required to be designated as such, thus allowing only registered users who opted to view mature content the ability to read the stories. The use of the intellectual property
Intellectual property
Intellectual property is a term referring to a number of distinct types of creations of the mind for which a set of exclusive rights are recognized—and the corresponding fields of law...
of others, such as fan fiction
Fan fiction
Fan fiction is a broadly-defined term for fan labor regarding stories about characters or settings written by fans of the original work, rather than by the original creator...
allow, was likewise banned from Ficlets. The use of real people was also forbidden in ficlet stories, unless they were public figures, although slanderous or libelous remarks directed at those public figures were prohibited.
As of January 4, 2009, the site hosted almost 49,000 ficlet stories, over 80,000 comments on those stories, and had in excess of 10,000 registered members.
Notable contributors
Several published authors, aside from blogBlog
A blog is a type of website or part of a website supposed to be updated with new content from time to time. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in...
contributor and science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
author John Scalzi
John Scalzi
John Michael Scalzi II is an American author and online writer, and president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. He is best known for his Hugo Award-nominated science fiction novel Old Man's War, released by Tor Books in January 2005, and for his blog , at which he has written...
, participated on the site with original content. These included:
- Science fiction and fantasy author Rachel Swirsky, who contributed four pieces (entitled: "Whistbone's Chase", "DNA Designs", "My Way Out", and "Falling Further In").
- Science fiction author Brian Francis SlatteryBrian Francis SlatteryBrian Francis Slattery is an American writer and an editor at The New Haven Review. He has published two novels, Spaceman Blues: A Love Song and Liberation: Being the Adventures of the Slick Six After the Collapse of the United States of America .Spaceman Blues was nominated for best novel by both...
, who contributed three pieces (entitled: "Asbestos", "Invisible Wars", and "Telescope") - Star TrekStar Trek: The Next GenerationStar Trek: The Next Generation is an American science fiction television series created by Gene Roddenberry as part of the Star Trek franchise. Roddenberry, Rick Berman, and Michael Piller served as executive producers at different times throughout the production...
acting alumni Wil WheatonWil WheatonRichard William "Wil" Wheaton III is an American actor and writer. As an actor, he is best known for his portrayals of Wesley Crusher on the television series Star Trek: The Next Generation, Gordie Lachance in the film Stand by Me and Joey Trotta in Toy Soldiers...
, who contributed nine pieces (entitled: "The Fifteenth", "They Don't Come Out at Night", "Nevermore", "Snowfall", "A Godawful Small Affair", "Wallace", "Real Life", "An Unremarkable Factory", and "Hunter and Hunted").
Awards
In 2008, Ficlets was a Gold Award Winner in the category of Social/Networking from W3 Awards.In March 2008, Ficlets won the CSS category and was nominated for the Community category of the SxSW
South by Southwest
South by Southwest is an Austin, Texas based company dedicated to planning conferences, trade shows, festivals and other events. Their current roster of annual events include: SXSW Music, SXSW Film, SXSW Interactive, SXSWedu, and SXSWeco and take place every spring in Austin, Texas, United States...
Web Awards.
Critical reception
Within the site's first week of operation it had received nearly 400 blogBlog
A blog is a type of website or part of a website supposed to be updated with new content from time to time. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in...
posts regarding it, including a solicitation for new users from Boing Boing
Boing Boing
Boing Boing is a publishing entity, first established as a magazine, later becoming a group blog.-History:...
. Mike Linksvayer of Creative Commons
Creative Commons
Creative Commons is a non-profit organization headquartered in Mountain View, California, United States devoted to expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has released several copyright-licenses known as Creative Commons...
was particularly "excited" with the creation and usage of the site. On February 6 and 9, 2008, the CBC radio
CBC Radio
CBC Radio generally refers to the English-language radio operations of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. The CBC operates a number of radio networks serving different audiences and programming niches, all of which are outlined below.-English:CBC Radio operates three English language...
show Spark
Spark (radio show)
Spark is a Canadian radio talk show about technology and Internet-related topics. Hosted by Nora Young, the program made its CBC Radio One début on September 5, 2007. The show is also broadcast on Sirius Satellite Radio 159 and, since January 9, 2010, on Vermont Public Radio's network of stations...
ran a profile on Ficlets, including an interview with Kevin Lawver and the reading of two ficlets from the site.
External links
- Official site
- Official site's blog
- Ficlets Memorial
- Ficly.com - "replacement" site by Lawver