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

A good question, and one I'm still hammering out. I'd be happy to have assistance in that area.

In an attempt to keep it simple. Here's about what I have in mind.

You invent a character. Preferably just use the name you use for all of h2g2 in order to keep it simple. Tell what your character does at the Big Bang Burger Bar, and post it as a user page from your own page. Then you come to this place and post in a conversation that you did that, and eventually I'll manually start linking everyone's participation together.

Once character's are established, we'll try to figure out how to get them to work together in some vaguely cohesive way.

Sounds good. So, we can write a character that wouldn't appear till later (I have an idea for a guy that works at the BBBB)?

This sounds like it'll be an interesting endeavour. I hope to contribute.

Hmm.... After looking around a bit.... I feel mild confusion setting in...

What are ya confused about, Slider? I'd be happy to try to help alleviate the confusion, but I'd need to know what was confusin' ya before I could help.

If you want to start writing about a guy who is already at the BBBB, you can go ahead and start in on that. It would go somewhere in the middle of what's already there. I'm just trying to formulate the point A and point B. Anyone else can fill in the gaps between them if they want.

Do you think there's room for a Wonder Llama in there? I'm not sure he'd make stimulating conversation, but he can sure as hell make a nice coat!

Sure! One can never have too many llamas! Go ahead and write a chapter. Then let me know what the link is and I'll look it over.

I'm purposefully avoiding going into detail about the actual Burger Bar itself, so others can introduce whatever creativity they'd like. My whole Jake storyline is just a sort of preface to the actual BBBB part of the story.

This is a cracking idea, but I think you probably guessed I think that by the suject heading.

How do you see the character choice happening? You have dibs on Marvin I guess you have him down as a particularly bright but depressed parking attendant(?). What about the others? You suggest elsewhere either picking a character that is incidental to the earlier text or developing your own? How do you intend to sort out disputes over 'ownership' if two people want to use the same character? First come first served or on popular acclaim? or by another method?

I'd be interested to know because if this gets off the ground then I think alot of folk could have a lot of fun.

Also Star Wars as a religious option(a comment of yours that I passed over somewhat in one of the other fora). I've heard this before, develping the moral side of things into a 'lifepath'. Can you expand on this a bit, or was it just an off-the-cuff remark.

The star wars thing was an off the cuff remark. Actually it was a bit of an exaggeration. I'm a long fan of Star Wars and have "worshipped" it in one way or another since I was nine years old. However, I see correlations between Star Wars and many religions. I find it amusing that many Christian organizations and individuals have capitalized on the force concept in an attempt to win converts over to Christ. In actuality the concept is a generalization of most religions on this planet, largely due to how Lucas initially studied mythology in great detail as he wrote the Journal of the Whills many years ago.

Though out of convenience I am a Christian SubGenius by practice, I also believe that were one to study EVERY religion in the world, sort out the differences and focus on the similarities between them all, somehow they'd be a little bit closer to the truth about the Universe than any of the rest of us. Since no one person can fully understand any one religion in a single lifetime however, this theory is impossible to prove.

As for the character disputes, I have thought about that a lot and have come up with no decent answer whatsoever. Several years ago I participated in a message board honoring Douglas Adams back on Prodigy. This was SEVERAL years ago now. Each participant in the message board took on one of the characters from the books, and everyone chatted and pseudo-roleplayed their parts in the conversations. This was fun, but also problematic, because the people who started the message board naturally took on the roles of the bigger characters since they had first dibs, and everything was set up on a first come first served basis.

Unfortunately, very few of the originators of the project remained as regular participants. So not only were Arthurt Dent, Trillian, Ford and Zaphod taken, they were also in abstentia, and other old timers in the msg board refused to allow others to take the big roles due in hopes the original participants would return.

I think I took on the part of the Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster or some such. Most of the conversations dealt with the much lesser known roles like the Man in the Shack, Frankie Mouse, Veet Voojagig, Wonko the Sane and several inanimate objects including The Heart of Gold, a Bowl of Petunias, and A Small Lump of Green Putty I Found In My Armpit One Midsummer Morning. It was delightful fun and none of it made any sense whatsoever which was even more fun, but often there would be arguments where someone wanted to be Arthur, and he was already taken by someone who simply was no longer there.

So I don't think first come first serve can work. I purposefully worked the major characters out of the picture to encourage people to be more creative and either come up with their own characters or use lesser characters like some of those mentioned above. I plan to incorporate Max Quordlepleen into the end of the book. He works both Millyways and QuadBee as the emcee. It's a logical progression.

When a person chooses to use a DNA character, they have to be willing to accept that said character is not THEIRS. All DNA characters are DNA's. We're merely borrowing them.

They also have to attempt to keep DNA characters relatively in the same condition DNA left them in. Though I have rather extreme plans for Marvin, technically others can do what they want with him too. We're dealing with time anomalies and a lot of scientific technobabble. Theoretically we should be able to work around any inconsistencies between people's use of the different characters. Where problems occur, it'll be my job to try to figure out a solution.

At this point, the characters don't concern me as much as the universe itself. I'm already seeing blatant difficulties in pulling this off. Since I've established in Reality Two that there is no destruction of the Earth, there's a whole helluva lotta stuff that happened in the first five books, which people will take for granted and want to include in Tales of QuadBee, which just don't fit. And one person has already asked me about the Babel fish which I had been trying to worm out of Reality Two because again I'm trying not to copy DNA 100% here. I'm beginning to see there's no real way to write the Babelfish out though, and most people are going to expect it to be there as a given.

Again, where we find inconsistencies, part of the fun will be to write chapters that explain the inconsistencies away. Group collaborative efforts are always a lot of fun because of the exponential amount of brainstorming it illicits.

DNA wrote the first five books. He has very big shoes for us to fill. It may take practically every DNA fan on this planet to write the sixth one.

It's fun though! =)

Zach, I think you just solved it. The Ultimate question I mean. If we feed all of the religious viewpoints in the world into a big computer, we might be able to come up with it

Yes but i heard The Big Computer is temporarily out of order and until The Big Computer Servicer comes along (no time has been given at this point) we are religiously a bit stuffed! However this is not fitting in entirely to the said subject and so i will also add that while speaking completly over my head (as i lent most of my sleep to someone else and as a result am very tired) this idea of working in a burger bar fascinates me and i may just become a part of it!