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

The next deadline is this Sunday (06.04.)
Will that do?
Do you want to wait for Rich, or would it be OK if I started the IID (in case you want to start right away)?

Hang on, I'll read this properly later on!

Thta's fine B'el, pick me out five entries and I can get thinking at the very least. If you or Rich have any thoughts about upper word limit or rules and regs we can sort that out as we go along.

Hmmm, speaking of the

What now?

There you go then, benjamin:

A2757873 The d'Hondt voting system for European Parliament

A2390122 Newport, Shropshire, UK

A476787 Buckeye

A442900 Squarepusher

A770988 Taraxacum Officinale - the Common Dandelion

Enjoy!

How the hell did you come up with such a ridiculously obscure list? Did you reject a series of fecund and interesting alternatives?

Your call.

Get writing, boy.

B

Buckeyes? Most excellent. Can't wait to see how you connect that to... dandelions and a jazz musician.

Well I may as well take this opportunity to say that the writer each episode must read all five entries, rather than just the title. Fortunately, mine were quite short. is the deadline the beginning or the end of sunday?

Midnight Sunday/Monday.

I had a look at the first one, and was lost after the first paragraph. Just as well that I didn't sign up here - I knew why.

So, which entry I'm I suppose to start think about?
I read all entries, I think we could do something really good about that...

Oh no, I'm stuck with these ones. The next writer gets a whole fresh set to work on, to continue the story.

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I might find the time to add something in the middle as long as you don't expect me to start or finish it...

Catching up with post 20 at last - sory, I did a lot of work in the garden yesterday, and couldn't think straight

'Not so sure about making it a never-ending story...'

Sorry, I phrased that rather badly. What I meant was that it can be as long or short as you like, really - five is probably the minimum, but beyond that it really is up to you. What I mean was that it's as open-ended as you want it to be. Having said that, 20 episodes would take almost a year to complete, so maybe ten would be better if you want to see how it goes. Entirely up to you, though - it's your baby.

I think it would be best to have a paragraph at the bottom of each episode explaining the rules, but that you should make them as simple as you can. I think the challenge is more to see how creative people can be given particular subjects rather than anything else, and I think people will be guided by the first couple of episodes in terms of length. So I don't think you necessarily need to specify a maximum - if your first one is 800 words or so long, others are unlikely to go way above that and will take that as an approximation. Does that make sense?

Are you planning to queue people up for writing, or write an episode and ask who wants to take the story on from there?

I'll make one final suggestion, and leave the rest to your thoughts. Should we draw the next Entries for you each time? All I'm thinking is that any given writer might decide they don't like one or two of the Entries drawn at random, or decide to give the next person on the list a tricky task by slipping in the odd ringer. We could avoid any accusations of impropriety by one of the Post Team making the draw each issue and adding the Entries to the bottom of the story.

Good idea about having the Post team pressing the IID button, Rich. I think you should have the honour of doing it, or anyone lese of the team who's not involved and volunteers.
I'm out, as I've already done it.

I'm not really fussy. It would be best if Lil or I did it, as we'll be the ones editing it and we can drop the Entries in when we do our bits. We can work that bit out as we go along.

Right, okay. As I speak, the e-mail is composed and ready to go with the first entry, which I composed while lying on a table having a vascetomy. I hope this is not reflected in the text, but I thought you ought to know. In the opening entry I have linked to the previous entry you published and I suspect that outlines all the rules that are really essential. It might be one of those scenarios where rulings have to be made as we go along. 20 episodes will take a year? Let's say ten to start, shall we?

Oh yes, and definitely go along with the idea of you guys pulling the entries, good thought.

'As I speak, the e-mail is composed and ready to go with the first entry, which I composed while lying on a table having a vasectomy. I hope this is not reflected in the text, but I thought you ought to know.'



You've just made my day!

We publish once a fortnight, so 20 would take 40 weeks. Add in the odd skipped issue for holidays and it's virtually a year. Ten episodes would take us into August, which sounds much better

Oo-er. Is it deadline day today, Rich?

B