Once upon a time two friends and I started a website called “Republibot.” There is a tendency among people on the far right, be it religious or political or both, to view Science Fiction as liberal, bad, and maybe even sinful. Our mandate was to show them that there was nothing to be afraid of, and that, just like most other good things in art, it’s open to everyone.

I don’t know how well that worked. Most of our readership ended up being Libertarian, with a lot of liberals, too. They liked us, though. A lot of our regular readers seemed to show up intending to make fun of us, then be rather shocked to discover that we weren’t name-calling or picking fights or plugging those dopey “Left Behind” books. Instead we were writing insightful, respectful articles, explaining complex concepts to people who probably hadn’t been exposed to them before, writing serious reviews, publishing original fiction, interviewing interesting people, and stuff like that.

I should mention that I’m not now, nor have I ever been, a Republican. I did pretend to be one on there, though I felt increasingly icky about it over time, and eventually dropped the pretense. The goal was a public service, though, not an agenda. We were just trying to show people “You don’t need to be afraid of this. Some of it might actually be good for you.”

So: Five years as head writer/editor, literally MILLIONS of words written, hours a day on it, and of course we never made a dime. We never got as much readership as then-small sites like Topless Robot and some others, which is weird because we were honestly doing better work. We lacked a budget and the media connections, I guess. I dunno.  Pretty much sums up my whole life right there: I beat my brains out trying to make something good, and end up with nothing to show for it, except maybe carpal tunnel and some depression.

I don’t know if I should go into the things that happened, but about three years ago I quit the site, and it was handed over to a new interim editor. Readership and content plummeted, which isn’t too surprising as the new editor was only keeping it running until a permanent replacement could be found. Time ground on, and not only was a replacement not found, but I don’t think the site owner was even looking. (As was repeatedly pointed out to me, I was only a hired gun. An unpaid hired gun at that). A year after I left I came back as a favor to the beleaguered new editor to contribute one guest column a week. I left at the end of that year.

They decided to ‘put the site in amber,’ so to speak. That is: they kept the content online – oh so much content – but didn’t allow new content, nor comments, nor anything else. I was, of course, disappointed. I’d spent so much of my life on that damn site, you know? I was one of the founders. I quit, but that didn’t mean I wanted it to fail. I wanted it to go on and be successful and have a life of its own, just without me having to do 90% of all the work. So: Disappointing, but at least all that stuff was still available, including the fun comments conversations.

A couple months ago, I noticed that the site was down. The site owner and I haven’t really spoken in two years, so I didn’t contact that person, but going through a third party I was told the owner was looking for a cheaper server and that the site would return.  I doubted it, but it was possible.

Yesterday I noticed that the URL was up for sale.

It’s gone, it’s not coming back, and everything I did was for nothing.

Sigh.

http://www.republibot.com