Short story collection about extinct alien civilizations

Question

About a year ago, I remember finding a website featuring a large number of fictional accounts of extinct alien civilizations (it might have been around 300). In universe, these were only a sample of a collection originating from a mysterious extraterrestrial source (I believe reading the term Encyclopedia Galactica), which allegedly held a significantly larger amount of accounts.

I read a few of these (which always seemed to contain a single individual's perspective of sometimes trivial pre or post apocalyptic events), and decided to postpone reading the rest.

One such story was about a postapocalyptic raider offering another member of its species a position due to his ability to read and write. This was set to the background of a world, in which the sun's radiation was apparently overheating the planet.

Attempting to find it via Google was entirely unsuccessful so far. Terms such as "Encyclopedia Galactica", "alien", "civilization" and "extinction/apocalypse" unfortunately combine very badly, and I am afraid there is a possibility the website has gone offline in the short time since initially finding it.

I believe remembering that I found this site over a link from the SCP foundation or it's sister project, the Wanderers' Library, which I was also reading through at the time.

Does anyone know of the website and/or the author?

Answer 1

Through brute force and pure luck I finally found it. It is called 500 apocalypses by Phantom Williams. This was certainly the toughest Google search in my life.

The Website is currently hosted on http://www.phantomwilliams.com/500Apocalypses.html

Please note, that one of the reasons it was so hard to find, is that the author apparently often relocates the page. This link might also not be valid forever.

Here are some details for the interested:

The Encyclopedia Apocalyptica is a vast and ever-expanding digital document of extraterrestrial origins, discovered in deep space by astronomers on Earth.

[...]

Translating the narratives posed no challenge to early Encyclopedologists; it was immediately clear from their contents that the Encyclopedia, as a whole, is an index of death and destruction on global scales.

[...]

the narrative contained in each entry, we now believe, represents an apocalypse that occurred on the planet located at the corresponding coordinate point.

I even found my example, even though I apparently mixed it up with another slightly:

They brought me to his tent in the middle of the dust storm and said to kneel before him.

I was told you know how to write, he said. I kept my head bowed.

Is it true? He said.

Helplessly, I nodded and waited for my throat to be cut.

He rose from the chair.

You are, he said, something of a commodity. I’m happy to find you here. I wish to learn myself. I’ve been secreting these tablets…