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

Submit your space-themed stories here.

The media, learning of Doctor Beeching's new controversial experiment on investigating the universe's origins, with only a 12% chance of leading to the Earth's complete destruction, insisted that he should conduct it.

He switched on the machine, but sadly the world ended.

<BB<

Oh, lovely, Bluebottle. A beginning, a middle and a definite end. I like the way it stops cold.

I reckon you should lose the 'on' in 'on investigating' though. Does that leave you with another word to play with?

"You're childless and unmarried, Luke," the social worker said.
"What about old age?"

"It's covered."

The time machine deposited him in a bedroom. An old man had
fallen. He helped the man back into bed. "I'll return later,
Luke," young Luke said.

Oooh, keep these coming. Some of them are really good!

Towelcast42

I wish I could think of more science fiction ideas that would lend themselves to treatment in 42 words. Outer space seems barren to me, and space ships would be claustrophobic, no matter how big and well-appointed. Plus, there's always Hal.

Starship Flytrek
Destination: The Garbage Planet
Duration: 40,000 years.

“As your Captain, I announce that we have landed! 437,000 generations of flies have made this journey a success. Go forth with pride. Enjoy the banquet, but be careful: Starship Frogtrek arrives tomorrow.”

My family’s shuttle was en route to the glass-domed colony on the Moon.

“Tomatoes? In space?” Scott exclaimed. “Dad, look!”

I saw a large bubble-shaped greenhouse full of red tomatoes floating by.

“Fancy one?” I said.

“We can make pizzas!”

That Luke story has been bothering me. How awful to know your lonely end at such a young age. Time travel stories are always depressing. But how well conveyed in just the 42 words.

As for tomatoes, come back in a few years and they'll be walking and talking about the great gardener in the sky...

Thanks, Solnushka. I'm known for bittersweet endings. The story about Luke was inspired by "The Time Traveller's Wife," which I found very moving. There's a scene at the end where the wife, who is by now very elderly, sees her husband for the last time. it's not clear whether she's really seeing him, or whether she is now in the afterlife with him.

The world’s televisions are blaring out the news of our impending doom.
“Only 42 days to go.”
In the depths of space messages are flying around intercepted by beings we only dreamt about meeting.
And we won’t be here when they arrive.


It's been a while since I've written creatively and then I read the previous post. Isn't it odd how our world ends up in pieces, Douglas has a lot to answer for!!

According to the clock he had arrived after three hundred years.

As he placed the flag he spotted the letter.

"Dear me, after returning you discovered hyperspace travel and came back to invite yourself to a great welcome party over the hill"

OK so the other thing a good space/time story should do is make everybodies eyes cross. there pebblederook!

And that's a beautifully big but neatly done story too, dibs66. And yes, he does.

The wormhole had closed. The island was gone, replaced by a kitchen
where a man was eating a sandwich.

"I'm Ariel," said The Fairy, "and this is Caliban."

"I'm Otis."

The air quivered. Lancelot appeared. "Where's Guenevere?"

"The living room," Otis replied.

There was a lush garden on the roof of the Gothatropolis State
Building. Few people knew of it, but aliens from the Planet Pfanffglw picnicked there on Tuesdays. They enjoyed roasted fleffurns and pickled glomsproozes. Dessert was Pfanffglwian coffee with chocolate cake.

[When you read Post 17, you may substitute tea for coffee if you wish. ]

Chocolate, of course, being essential to all lifeforms as is... *grins*

There's a Diana Wynne Jones short story where she is having fun with the space opera genre and has her space captain continually sucking down mugfuls of something that sounds suspiciously like coffee but with a lot more consonants. It always amuses me.

Anyway, January is now over, and so everyone thus far is now entitled to put a January Create badge on their PS:



I'm going to start a new thread for this month's theme: A87739780 but feel free to continue adding Space stories too!

[Let everyone know what the new theme will be. I hope it will be easier than 42-word space-themed stories. I had a hard time creating settings for the ones I wrote. Maybe a story set in The Void would work, or in a doomed spaceship orbiting a black hole. All that the reader needs to know about a black hole is that it's black, and it's sort of hole-like. ]