The Wayback Machine
A 1960s cartoon is now a way to preserve my publishing credits.
When I was a little girl in the 1960s, Saturday morning cartoons were a thing. The best that cartoons had to offer ran from sunup to almost noon, an entire morning spent in my pajamas yukking it up with my siblings in front of the television. One of my favorites was The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle and Friends, and one my favorite of the “friends” was Mr. Peabody, the star of a segment called “Peabody’s Improbable History.” Mr. Peabody was a dog. He was a Harvard graduate and a great scientist. He had a boy named Sherman. He enjoyed puns. And he had a time machine. It was called the Wayback Machine. Mr. Peabody and his boy Sherman traveled in the Wayback Machine to different time periods and helped historical figures get out of trouble.
I had to use the Wayback Machine this week to get myself out of trouble.
I was updating my website when I noticed that links to a dozen of the book reviews I’ve published were broken. I wrote them when I was the Books Editor at GXRL, but sadly, the magazine recently closed, the website is no longer active, and my book reviews were gone. I knew this was coming, so it wasn’t a surprise, and it was my bad—I’d delayed dealing with it.
Book reviews are a big part of my writing portfolio—they are part of my literary citizenship, they are one of the ways I join in conversation with my fellow readers, and they are a part of building my “brand” as a writer—it gives readers a glimpse into the kinds of books I like to read and to write about, so we can connect with one another as readers. To have more than half of the book reviews I’ve written disappear into the ether and to have to delete them from my list of publishing credits would have been a bummer.
Thanks to the Wayback Machine, I didn’t have to do that. After I learned the magazine had closed, I was able to hop into the Wayback Machine, go back in time, and retrieve my book reviews.
Today, the Wayback Machine is an internet archive named after the 1960s cartoon I watched as a child. Here’s a description from the Wayback Machine’s About page:
“The Internet Archive, a 501(c)(3) non-profit, is building a digital library of Internet sites and other cultural artifacts in digital form. Like a paper library, we provide free access to researchers, historians, scholars, people with print disabilities, and the general public. Our mission is to provide Universal Access to All Knowledge.
“We began in 1996 by archiving the Internet itself, a medium that was just beginning to grow in use. Like newspapers, the content published on the web was ephemeral - but unlike newspapers, no one was saving it. Today we have 28+ years of web history accessible through the Wayback Machine and we work with 1,200+ library and other partners through our Archive-It program to identify important web pages.”
You can find pretty much anything that’s ever been published on the worldwide web by searching the Wayback Machine, including a fan website I created for a comedian many years ago, long before he became a right wing anti-vaxxer lunatic. So it’s not always a good thing—some things should disappear forever. But it’s mostly a good thing, especially when it comes to archived writing credits. I was able to fix my missing links by linking to the archived pages. For example, here’s the archived link to my GXRL review of Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God:
I wanted to share this information with you because nothing ever stays. If you’re a writer or have a website for another reason, it’s important to check the links on your website routinely and to make sure they’re still active. If they’re not, no need to worry! Nothing ever stays. But when it comes to the internet, fortunately or not, nothing ever really disappears either.
“We all have our time machines, don’t we? Those that take us back are memories …. And those that carry us forward are dreams.”
—H.G. Wells, The Time Machine
NEWS & ANNOUNCEMENTS
GOLDEN QUILL WRITING CONTEST
The Golden Quill Writing Contest is now open for entries in the categories of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. This year’s judges are Juliet McDaniel, whose debut novel Mr. and Mrs. American Pie is the book upon which the hit Apple TV+ series Palm Royale is based; Deanne Stillman, author of many nonfiction books, including Blood Brothers: The Story of the Strange Friendship Between Sitting Bull and Buffalo Bill, and SLO County Poet Laureate Caleb Nichols, author of Teems///\\Recedes.
CENTRAL COAST WRITERS’ CONFERENCE
Please join me at the Central Coast Writers’ Conference, September 26th & 27th, in sunny San Luis Obispo, California! I’ll be speaking on a panel about finding your writing tribe on Friday and presenting two sessions on Saturday, one on publishing short pieces and one on funding your writing career with grants, fellowships, and residencies.
BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS
TEN SLEEP COVER REVEAL AND PRE-ORDER INFO!
Cover reveal for Ten Sleep, the second novel by my friend Nicholas Belardes, author of The Deading. Ten Sleep comes out June 24, 2025, and is now available for pre-order in all the best places! Here’s a little blurb from bestselling author Stephen Graham Jones: “Open these pages and fall into a cattle drive up in the high lonesome country, where it’s not just the cattle and the work that are challenging—here there be monsters, too.”
Retreat (out now!)
My friend Lindsay Jamieson collaborated with Krysten Ritter on her New York Times bestselling novel Retreat! A beautiful con artist insinuates herself into a wealthy socialite’s life … with deadly consequences, in this serpentine thriller about identity and obsession, from actress, director and bestselling author Krysten Ritter.
Absolute Pleasure: Queer Perspectives on Rocky Horror (coming 9/16/2025)
This anthology includes my friend Trey Burnette’s piece “A Rather Tender Subject.” The essays in Absolute Pleasure … explore … [the] complicated legacy of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, along with queer and trans joy, sexuality, family, generational understandings of queerness, and what we do with our problematic faves.
Vicious Cycle: A Thriller (Corey in Los Angeles) (coming 10/21/2025)
The debut novel by my friend Jaime Parker Stickle. A former reporter gets a new spin on life in this gripping debut from author Jaime Parker Stickle, whose psychological roller-coaster ride set in sunny Los Angeles tackles motherhood and murder.
“The beautiful thing is, music can be like a time machine. One song—the lyrics, the melody, the mood—can take you back to a moment in time like nothing else can.”
—Lisa Schroeder, Chasing Brooklyn
SOME THINGS FOR READERS
A Kosavar Guide to Darts
(Hope Edelman for the Missouri Review)
Good Riddance: In a World of Katy Perrys, Be a Seth Rogan
(Amber Tamblyn for Listening in the Dark with Amber Tamblyn)
One Conversation, One Moment of Change
(Stacy Kim for Amid Life with Catherine Palmer)
“Sometimes we have ‘time machine moments’ where we wish we could go back in time and fix our biggest mistakes. But sometimes we wish we could go back in time and fix the tiny ones, too.”
—Kunal Nayyar
SOME THINGS FOR WRITERS
Hometowns: Some thoughts on teaching setting, The Great Gatsby, and writing about where we are from
(Alexander Chee for The Querent)
Agents, Who They Are and What They Want
(Barbara DeMarco-Barrett for Pen on Fire)
How Did You Decide Which Contests to Submit To?
(Alle C. Hall for An Alle Alert!)
“No one is calling me. I can’t check the answering machine because I have been here all this time. If I go out, someone may call while I’m out. Then I can check the answering machine when I come back in.”
—Lydia Davis, Varieties of Disturbance
SOME THINGS TO MAKE YOU SMILE
“I love sleep. It’s like a time machine to breakfast.”
—Unknown
Leanne Phillips
Writer | Book Coach | Editor
leannephillips.com
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Love your reference to Rocky and Bullwinkle. It started being my favorite cartoon when I was 8 in 1959. The thinking kids cartoon.