The Long View

On May 30, 2012, my friend John J. Reilly passed from this vale of tears after a sudden illness. John and I never met in person, but we exchanged emails and forum posts for nearly ten years, so I feel that I knew him in a way. John was one of the 3 contemporary writers who have influenced me the most, along with Steve Sailer and Jerry Pournelle. Much of what you see here is due to John.

John was one of the most reasonable people I have ever known. He had a remarkable tendency to see things in the best possible light, but in a way that was firmly grounded in truth. I suspect this was due to an unshakable belief in providence. He managed to collect an usual grouping of regular forum posters at his site. I have never met such a disparate group in my life, and perhaps never will again. After John suddenly stopped posting on his site in April 2012, the group continued apace for a bit, but gradually we came the realization that it was John, and his remarkable character, that had brought us together. Without him, the forum regulars didn't have any reason to go on, and we slowly drifted away.

The last thing that I posted on John's forum was that I had run a backup of everything on John's website using wget [a shout-out to my friend Sacha for helping me get that running right]. I knew it was only a matter of time before whatever hosting service John used would close his account, and everything he had written would waft into the ether.

Of course, this isn't completely true. The Internet Wayback Machine keeps everything in a fancy database so that you can access any version of John's site at any date, but that isn't a well-known service. There are other, similar internet archiving sites, but I decided to simply host a mirror here, as a tribute to John.

I have kept everything John wrote as it was. I have removed his site trackers and Amazon widgets, since he is no longer here to use them. I have updated any characters that don't display well in modern browsers. My intent is to publish John's blog, The Long View, on a schedule delayed approximately 12 years.  His book reviews and essays will appear on the same schedule. I have uploaded all his writings published prior to January 21, 2002 already. I have enjoyed browsing through his writings again, and I hope others have the same experience. Those who are impatient can simply download the whole .zip file.

Archive of John Reilly's The Long View

I have added a link to the top bar of my site, and I intend to post here, as well as on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ when I upload each installment of John's work.

Here is a copy of John's copyright notice, from his webpage.

John J. Reilly retains all rights in the material set out on the pages defined by the URL sequences:

http://www.johnreilly.info/etc.
http://pages.prodigy.net/aesir/etc.
http://pages.prodigy.com/VBDS39A/etc.

The individual articles on these pages appear with their publishing histories and copyright notices. The copyright notices refer to the time of their appearance on these pages.

Readers are invited to download this material for their own use.

Persons wishing to repost it on the Internet may do so if they include my copyright notice.

Persons wishing to republish it in any other medium must seek my permission.