h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Impressive! I particularly liked the cyclic nature of the story; leaving through one of the doors only to return at a later point in the story - I hope you go on to embellish that. If you are looking for suggestions - I don't know, I've never written a short story outside of the classroom...erm..one thing, maybe try giving some description of what the room with the four doors looks like. The forest and the alpine lake are all described but the room isn't - was this deliberate? I imagined the room to be plain painted walls, (white or maybe cream), the floor is tiled with black and white slates. I thought, compared with the lushness of the forest outside - it should be be quite barren and harsh - so maybe a single electric light, humming high above the charcters head?

As it stands, a fantastic job, I wish you the best in developing it further.

Clive

It was a dream. You are right about the room. It is white, but old, yellowed white. I didn't see the light, because I never looked up. I think it was probably flourescent. I am definitly going to come back and put in the details more fully. I know what color the rocks were and such, but anyone reading won't know unless I tell them.
Thanks for the glance
Buff

I just re-read the story and I noticed something that I simply had not seen before. The Title.

Clive

Were you overtired?

No, not really. It just struck me afterwards want an odd question it must have appeared to say " was it a dream?" When the thing is called "DREAMING" for crying out loud! I suppose that could have meant that the story is about someone dreaming - it was not necessarily your dream. I was just kicking myself for just completly missing it.

Clive

As far as I can tell, everyone misses the obvious on a regular basis.

Just yesterday I spent 1/2 an hour looking for my cordless telephone, only to discover that I had been sitting on it when I started looking. (it was in the couch) Actually, there was quite a lot of stuff in there. I found two lighters, a pen, about $1.50 in change, a sock, a cigarette pack with one very stale cigarette in, and also the remote control for the TV. And that was just what was under the cushions. I don't even want to think about what might be down inside the frame. Ick.

Years ago I had a pet ferret. She used to hang out in the couch frame. Made looking for stuff in the couch outright dangerous. Stick your hand in, and you might or might not get bitten. Actually, it was fun to watch people who didn't know about her react when she emerged from between the cushions while they were sitting there.
Bye now

Do you remember in HHGTTG: Life the Universe and Everything, Fenny and Arthur in the park and Fenny recounting how she had for years agonized over the ferret pulling the raft down the river with all of it's friends crowded onto it. It was only later she realized that the raft had sails and the ferret was not pulling the the liner but was instead just sailing hapily along-side it. How many times have you fallen foul of that little trick of of reading a sentence with one word re-printed twice and simply not noticed?


Clive

About twice, then I learned to recognise the shifty smile and the flashcard.
I thought it was an otter...

Ferrets, Otters, Squirells - they are all just rats with good P.R.


Actually, I quite like Squirells, I have an Oak tree just outside my garden at home. I have a sneaking suspicion that you might be correct about the Otter.

About what time do our respective time-zones intersect? Usualy I notice my message board follow a typical pattern of:
last message, Yesterday...reply 6 hours ago etc. I know we are 6 hours apart, but if it is 11.00am right now, That would probably mean it is early morning over there, right?

Clive

I'm not sure...
Using x and y interupts to get ordered pairs then using those to tell what the graph of a parabola is on an xy axis seems to have destroyed any ability I might have had to do regular math. (2+2=?) If you've got access to one of those maps with the time zones and a calculator, you could probably figure it out.

I'm in New York State, USA, and we run on eastern standard time.(and for now on daylight savings time, which is 1 hour later than it really is) That's all I know for sure.

If you have the gumption to try and figure it out, here is what I know about when I'm online.

On my local time I'm usally online sometime between 5 and 12pm, except for on weekends, when it could be anytime, or days when I'm at school, which would be around 3 to 5 pm. I try to check in daily, but my life is fairly complicated, and I seem to have aquired an awful lot of people who want me to hang out with them all the time. I also share the computer at my house with other people, including one who likes to compress sound files into MP3 format. (that takes a really long time, and slows down the computer)

Are you confused yet? I know I am. I had to think for ten minutes to get that, and I'm not quite sure it's right. Close though.
Bye now