Help

The twisted mind who originally started the Fan Fiction Library was a dude who liked to do things differently. I can safely say that, because that twisted dude is me. Therefore, some things at the Fan Fiction Library may need a few explanations. Allow me to talk you through the basics...

How do I read/download the short stories?
Short stories are posted at the Library in standard HTML format. This means that they can be viewed on-line, simply by clicking on the title of the story you want to read. If you wish to save the story on your hard drive (for later reading), there are two ways to do it:

1. With Netscape Navigator, click "File", "Save As...", then choose where you want to save on your hard drive. Note that you can save the file both as HTML (viewable only in your browser) and as a text document (viewable in almost any word processer).
   With Internet Explorer... who knows? That damn thing never does what it's told, anyway.
2. Mark the whole story (by holding down your mouse button at the first paragraph and dragging the cursor all the way down the screen), press CTRL+C, go into your favorite word processor, and press CTRL+V. This will paste the story into your word processor. You can save it to your hard drive from here, just like you would save a normal document.

How do I read/download the novels?
The novels are a little different than the short stories. Since novels are typically very large, I didn't bother putting them up as HTML. Few people want to sit down and read a novel through their browser, anyway. <g>

The novels are all posted in ZIP-format. This format needs to be downloaded onto your hard drive and un-zipped before you can read the novel. You can download the file simply by clicking on the title of the novel you want to download. Then, once the file is downloaded, you will need to unzip the file using an unzipping-tool (I recommend WinZip, it's shareware and does the job well).

Once unzipped, the files are in Microsoft Word 6.0 format. This format is native to the Windows operating system, and can be read by most Windows-based word processors. Sorry, Mac users, I do not possess the necessary tools to convert the documents to Mac-based formats.

Note, though, that the Offend-o-Meter only shows the offensiveness of that particular preview, not the final story.

What's the Offend-o-Meter?
I'm glad you asked! The Offend-o-Meter is your little friend and happy helper, who lets you know how offensive you might find the stories and novels. You see, where the original Space Quest games weren't particularly explicit in nature (although the designers used every excuse to sneak in a little naughty bit where people wouldn't notice), many of the stories do not care for this "beating-about-the-bush" trick and simply goes ahead with it.

Rather than censoring the stories, preventing adult readers from the enjoyment of true freedom of speech, Jess and I came up with the Offend-o-Meter, which grades the stories on their offensiveness, on a scale from 1 to 5. Here's how they look and what they mean:

The Offend-o-Meter is not a censoring tool, it is here to help young space cadets (and those durn religious people) who may be offended by harsh language or explicit content.

Is there any copyright information I should be aware of?
Most certainly! Of course, the authors own their works. For instance, if a short story is written by Dan Cerulo, that means Dan Cerulo is the copyright owner of his story. The characters, however, are copyright Sierra. This copyright means that you can't copy, reproduce, sell or in any other way redistribute without written permission from the copyright holder. If your plan is not to sell the story, then you only need to ask permission from the author. Redistributing the stories without permission is a copyright infringement, and are liable grounds for a lawsuit. Holster those thoughts, mister!

May I run the stories at my website? It's really cool!
If the author agrees that you may redistribute his story at your website, then you may do so. The Fan Fiction Library doesn't "own" the stories--we merely distribute them. The stories belong to whomever (or whatever) is the author.