Internet Archaeology and the Search for "Silmarillion Weekend"

Looking for help to track down a serial fiction story from 18 years ago

If there's something on your mind that just doesn't seem to fall into any of the other categories, well, it quite likely belongs inside Joe Finneman's marketplace. Think of it as a general store for general discussions!
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VortexHunter
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Internet Archaeology and the Search for "Silmarillion Weekend"

Post by VortexHunter »

Do you like a mystery? :-$
Do you like science fiction and time travel? :shock:
Do you like CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien and their philosophy? 8-)
Do you like stories that teach a lesson? :-k
Do you like Focus on the Family publications? :D
(This is starting to sound like an Imagination Station Story. It isn't, but it's not far off.)
And finally, do you like collaborative projects? :-s

If so, I am looking for volunteers just like you, to help track down and recover a lost story, entitled "Silmarillion Weekend" by Brad Zockoll. It originally appeared as serial fiction on the Boundless website from December 2003 to April or May of 2004. In it, the combination of a proto-smartwatch (years before the iPhone!), term papers about Tolkien and Lewis, and a rogue lightning strike, ends up summoning those authors into the presence of two tech-obsessed teenage boys, and beginning the start of a time-space journey that also brings them to Rasputin in Russia, Father Damien with the lepers on Molokai, and even into the science fiction of one of Lewis & Tolkien's peers. And of course it is both a race against time and a learning journey. Sound interesting?

This brings me to the current progress I have made so far, and where I am asking for help from the ToO community, because I recognize you are a fairly active community that appreciates good fiction you can learn from and that should have overlap with other FOTF publications. The Internet Archive Wayback Machine has provided the only fragments I have been able to find, consisting of chapters 1-4 and chapters 17 and 18.
Chapters 1-4: https://web.archive.org/web/20040227024 ... /index.cfm
Chapters 17 and 18: https://web.archive.org/web/20040413083 ... /index.cfm
(The link to the main Breakaway site is here: https://web.archive.org/web/20040402181 ... /breakmag/)

In 2019, I emailed FOTF, and they no longer had the chapters that were published, and suggested that I ask the author through his website or Twitter. I also asked the author, and he said he did not have the full novel and suggested I ask FOTF. So I can't get it from either original source. And that is why I, newcomer that I am, am asking for the help of your community in tracking down the missing chapters. It was geared towards teenage boys, so the original target audience would be in their 30s. If you know someone by any chance who had copied and saved the story, and still has the save file, I would appreciate it, and I'd be glad to share the story with the ToO community.

Let me be clear, I do not want to violate any copyright, only find a story that was once freely distributed, and share it with those who helped. I would definitely attribute it to the original author (Brad Zockoll) and original source (Breakaway magazine). I would also be open to having this post moved to a better place in the forum, but Finneman's seemed like a good place to start.

So there it is. Any help in finding the rest of the text of the e-novel "Silmarillion Weekend" by Brad Zockoll, originally on the Breakaway website in early 2004, would be greatly appreciated!

Does this sound like a good collaborative adventure, tracking diwn this lost story?
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Catspaw
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Post by Catspaw »

Wow, that is quite the story! I hope you manage to track down all the missing pieces. The author would probably like to have the full version too if the search is successful. I won't be part of the search myself but there might be some folks here that are able to help. Good luck!
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