Email as well as one or two posts in h2g2.com have made me realize something. This Big Bang Burger Bar thing is confusing many. [Heck it's confusing me. -Z] Some are trying to participate. Others are completely uninterested. A predominant reason why is because Arthur, Ford, Trillian and Zaphod are for all intents and purposes, off limits.

First and foremost it's because of this: Everyone would want to write about Arthur and Ford and Trillian and Zaphod simultaneously. This would cause a major problem because no one is going to agree on what they do and whatnot. However, if each participant took a lesser character and wrote about that, and NO ONE messed with the major characters, then there'd simply be less arguing going on.

That is admittedly, the real reason. I'm trying to nip potential arguments in the bud before they happen. Unfortunately, too many want to write about Arthur or Zaphod. This reminds me of my childhood when everyone in the playground wanted to play Superman. I always ended up being Green Arrow or someone stupid, but in the end I had more fun because Superman is not a challenge. He can do ANYTHING which makes him really boring.

Anyway...

If anyone wants to write about Arthur or Ford or Zaphod or Trillian, fine, but they're the incarnations of those characters on THIS side of the Big Bang (as I'll explain in a minute) and YOU do not have universal control over those characters. EVERYONE gets to use the big characters. You can't say "WELL no one else can write about Trillian because she's in my story" and then stick your tongue out at people.

And if Douglas Adams ever speaks up and insists that no one can write about any of these characters and sticks his tongue out at us, well we'll all put our tails between our legs and go play Parcheesi.

I've attempted to explain why it's difficult to involve the major characters in the story also via the present storyline. I mean, Douglas Adams has admittedly made it rather difficult for there to be a sixth book AT ALL, much less one that involves Arthur.

I mean, he's dead. He's very dead.

At the end of Mostly Harmless Douglas Adams quite expertly destroys all the Earths anywhere on THAT side of the Big Bang (which I'll explain in a moment). The Hitch Hiker's Guide Mach Two causes the multiverses to destroy all possible Earths. I've extrapolated that this would cause a chain reaction regarding all of Plural Zed space, which would cause a ripple effect, eventually causing the entire universe to break down and collapse into itself, initiating what one might call The Big Crunch, and the end of all life anywhere as we know it.

I refer to the old adage that states when someone discovers how the universe works, it ceases to exist and is replaced by something even more complex. That's what happens.

The Guide Mach Two initiates a Big Crunch, and the universe collapses into itself. It's like the center of the universe becomes a very powerful gigantic black hole. The very end of the book talks about the Guide Mach Two "crumpled out of all possibility" and the Vogon ship survived. It also talked about the Grebulon Leader and the others in Pluto surviving. However, I theorize the Big Crunch wouldn't be able to swallow everything immediately. The last Big Bang, the one we are familiar with, has instigated an expanding universe that has been expanding for some time. Perhaps the Big Crunch took a long time too. Nothing of any consequence occurred however, because for all intents and purposes the Universe was at an end, even if it took it a few millenia yet to get there.

For the bird though, it WAS the beginning of the end in a bit more immediate way, as it was caught up in the maelstrom it created when it made the already unstable plural zed space incomprehensibly unstable.

The Guide Mach Two is able to save itself. It stores itself in the computer databanks of Marvin, and the two are able to withstand the Big Crunch by surviving just outside of it, until the Big Crunch gets done crunching and once again explodes into yet another Big Bang.

The Big Bang in which the Tales of the Big Bang Burger Bar take place.

Theoretically some scientists believe that this happens all the time. We're presently in an expanding universe only because once several hundred thousand millenia ago, the universe stopped collapsing. It is possible that the universe does this all the time, but that we're so small and insignificant and exist so fleetingly in the big scheme of things, we'll never know a universe that doesn't expand.

Really. Space is after all.. big. Very big. Hugely, mind-boggingly big and all that blah blah blah.

Anyway, the apocryphal book six would take place after this second (that we know of) big bang, in which a new, entirely different but strangely similar universe exists. And in an attempt to be vaguely original, I thought this time more focus could be placed on the characters that in the original series were only supporting characters for Arthur, Ford, Trillian and Zaphod. Or entirely new characters altogether.

So far, very few have taken the bait. And understandably so. Without the Big Four, it really isn't Hitch Hiker's Guide.

Well perhaps this new universe has its own Arthur and Zaphod and Trillian and Ford. perhaps in this universe Random never existed because Trillian was too busy giving birth to Zaphara. Or perhaps Arthur and Ford had Random due to an accident involving a time machine, prophylactics and a very large flamingo.

I was hoping to avoid involving the major characters in the story, but perhaps one reason why so few are taking the bait regarding this idea of writing a sixth book is because they insist on having Arthur in it and I've conveniently written him out of the book.

I figured we're already pushing the envelope of taste and legal safety by purposefully writing an apocryphal sixth book practically under Douglas Adams proverbial nose. I feared including all the previous major characters in the book would just add insult to injury, and some morning a very wet, naked and soapy Douglas Adams might storm out of his bath, grab the nearest laptop and post very nasty messages to me for being a rat b*****d and how dare I even concieve of such a thing as to write HIS SIXTH BOOK FOR HIM!

How dare I? Well, I just didn't want to interrupt his baths.

I really would like to see a sixth book. However I would understand if Douglas Adams would never want to see a sixth book. Every few years people throw money at him again and he's stuck writing yet another one. What about Dirk Gently? perhaps he thinks. What about this other stuff I do? No, everyone wants yet another sickening, horrible, mind-numbing episodic exploitation of Arthur and the smoking remains of the Earth.

He shouldn't be asked to write a sixth one. He's performed above and beyond the call of duty and the man should be knighted by the Queen of England herself to be quite blunt. However, just because he shouldn't be asked to write yet another Hitch book doesn't mean there shouldn't actually BE a sixth book.

He's been so kind up until now writing the first five. He deserves a break. So we, the fans of Douglas Adams' works, should offer him a vacation from writing anymore books by writing the sixth one for him, and thereby giving him more time for Bovril sandwiches and warm baths.

If he'd like, he could pick up where we leave off and write the seventh one. No problem. In fact, most probably in a few years someone will throw MORE money at him, and he'll write a sixth book on his own, completely ignoring any efforts made here to write the sixth book for him, and as always he's fully in his rights to do so.

In fact I'm counting on that, because this sixth book would take place in another universe entirely, after a big crunch and another big bang, so he wouldn't even have to mention THIS sixth book when he decided to write the seventh one. We're writing in a Douglas Adams universe but it's not Douglas Adams' Douglas Adams universe.

See, honestly this whole thing makes perfect sense.

However, he MAY be offended not by the fact that his fans want to write his sixth book for him, but by the fact one of his fans tried to write a sixth book WITHOUT including Arthur in it. Anywhere. What blasphemy.

So I may have to compromise and allow other participants to write Arthur, Trillian, Ford, and Zaphod into the book, just to please the drooling masses. I will try to avoid the main characters so the rest of you can fight over them.

I call dibs on Marvin. I have special plans in store for Marvin. When I'm done with him you can have what's left. All the other characters are up for grabs.

Please keep in mind any characters that were in the original five books which you bring into the storyline are exact replicas of the ones that existed on the other side of the last big bang. DNA's Arthur, Trillian, Ford, et.al., all ceased existing at the end of the fifth book. I mean they're still THERE, for those of you into time and dimensional teleportation. However, it should be a Really Big Thing that takes up several chapters and involves bruised arms and what not if someone attempts to travel through the Big Bang itself to get to what happened prior to the final events of the last book.

We've solved the continuity dilemma once and for all. On THIS side of the Big Bang, Zaphod Beeblebrox may have as many arms and heads as you'd like, and we'll have no trouble with continuity.