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

A very nice entry indeed! A cleverly disguised article on the archetypal story elements of western story telling tradition! I love fairy tales, my favorites are "Iron John" and "Star Wars".

The symbol sets are fantastic windows into the human condition. If eyes ae the windows to the soul, then fairy tales must be the doorway to the subconcious.

Thanks for the response, ZenMondo. Iron John and Star Wars are two very good examples. I always thought it funny that Star Wars has been mostly classified as science fiction. It's really very soft on the science, and very erudite regarding mythology.

And this also explains why adding midi-chlorians to the Phantom Menace was such a bad idea.

Are fairy tales the doorway to the subconscious? Perhaps. If so, they are different from dreams in that they display group subconscious instead of individual subconscious. All good fairy tales must survive numerous retellings.

Indeed! If often argued that Star WARS and Star TREK are two seperate genres and shouldn't have to 'compete' as to which is better. Ah well fanboys will be fanboys I guess. I was actually just yesterday harping on this fact. Its my major gripe with the Star Wars novels that have been coming out the past few years (I've stopped buying ... mostly) is that they should hire more fantasy writers and less sci-fi writers. The sci-fi writers have a tendancy to want to explain the technology. In the Star Wars films, the technology is never explained, its just there.

So many people have bitched about the midi-chlorians. I admit on first telling, this element kind of skewed me. But on further reflection I'm cool with it. The midi-chlorains don't make the Force, they are simply the biological interface between people and the mystical life energy known as the Force. It was also a good way to quantify just how powerful Anakin is with the Force instead of the subjective 'vibe' Jedi can get off one another.

Anywho back to Fairy Tails in general. The subconcious I refer to would be the same Collective Conciousness that Jung describe. I once wrote an article for a web-zine that described how Star Wars was a source of a new symbol set that made this Collective Conciousness more accessable to my generation. (Though that last sentance makes the point better than the whole darn article did ... damn.)

Like this entry so cleverly illustrates, fairy tails are pretty much a finite set of symbols arranged in a story. The story is like the delivery mechanism for the truths that reside in the symbology. I think the midevil trappings of many fairy tales seperates us from them. Contemporary symbol sets for the same underlying truths must constantly be created.

Jung was actually very keen on fairy tales. He know he studied many of the German ones.

It would be interesting to see an attempt at using the Fairy Tale kit in a science fiction setting.

You're ON! Give me a week or three!

Very cool. Please send me the story when you're done.

Well I should be getting ready to try out this device soon. Ofcourse, I had to write a computer program to pick the story elements for me. It's a cute little tool that picks one random number between 1 and 20, (The Storyline) and three random numbers between 1 and 50 (the story elements) with buttons to change the story line, and to pick 3 more story elements.

Perhaps later I could add in the descriptions and actually have the DIY Fairy Tale generator as a standalone application for people to play with (with your permission ofcourse). I just think this thing is so darn clever. I'm in love with it. It could be a tool for writers of any genre I think to help get through writer's block. I'm glad you invented it.

Wow. I'm flattered.

You certainly have my permission to add the descriptions to your DIY Fairy Tale generator. (A credit of some sort in the program notes would be nice.)

Ideally, it would be great if you could post your program on the internet. People reading the entry could then download the generator and get started.

Nah, it ain't *my* anything. Even the code that runs it is unimaginative. Its your invention completly and without question, I'm just a code monkey when it comes to realizing this as a stand alone computer program.

So, how do you want to be credited? Real name, psuedonym, or some other?

Basicly the credit will go something like
"The Do It Yourself Fairy Tale Kit was concieved by (invented by?) YOU
Code for the DIYFTG cobbled together by ME"

Why not use both real name and pseudonym? ...invented by Stacey Capps, aka Fragilis the Melodical. That's my preference. And don't forget the copyright 2000, free for unlimited personal use. Or something like that.

Oh yeah, I forgot about compensation (or the lack thereof) We could get something for this. My favorite concept I've come across is "beerware" where for a bottle of suds, you get the registered version, but since you don't drink I doubt this will fly. I'd like to make it free, but still encourage a way for peeps to thank us for it. Maybe postcards? hmmmm

Postcards would be super.

Of course, I'd also take my 'payment' in chocolate.