Frequently Asked Questions

Questions involving CTUniverse

Plenty of people have asked the authors questions, and the authors are sure that they have plenty of other questions that they just haven't happened to ask. To clarify on questions related to CTU, WYV, and CTUniverse itself (and to avoid being asked the questions constantly) they have decided to add an FAQ.

A name that someone might more quickly think of, such as Childrenstalesoftheuniverse.com, seemed too long for the authors when they were looking for a domain name for the website. CTUniverse sounded like a good name because it had the acronym for Children's Tales of the Universe and cleverly made the U in CTU into the U in Universe. They tried CTUniverse.com, but that domain name was and still is taken by Network Solutions. This infruiated the authors. Network Solutions had purchased the domain in order to place ads about the television show "24". It claims that it is under construction, but it has said that at least since early November, when Jack and Daniel first started looking for a good website name. Now, as a result, CTUniverse.net is the name of the website for Children's Tales of the Universe.

Emminar is a website by a former classmate of the authors' and the creator of the now-defunct website Gladiator Studios. It will help CTUniverse with its server capabilities, and has been working with us on the CTUniverse Official Games, which will benefit both websites.

We try to have truly meaningful updates. A little change here and there doesn't seem worth anyone's time. We try to make an update whenever we have a significant amount of new information to share or when we finish a CTU game. We will try to keep you informed on the latest projects.

Questions involving Children's Tales of the Universe

Those noble people who have read Children's Tales of the Universe would probably know. However, many people here are here to find out about the book, and are not so learned. In the book, as part of Simon's half-diplomatic, half-pyschological attack on Roy, he plants his missile base on the planet Zebus, the Universe's largest producer of pickles and practically the homeland of the Pickle Universe. Roy uses a secret tunnel through the Pickle Universe to fill the planet's core with Boomwater, a dangerous substance with a self-explanatory name. The cover of Children's Tales of the Universe and the logo for CTUniverse is a picture of the planet explodinng, with a question mark somewhat hidden in the center, to represent the oddities in the book. Though Zebus is not the most important thing in the book, its destruction brings about many things in the plot and the explosion with a question mark design seemed perfect for the book's cover. The picture was created by Jack Ferguson.

Well, it could be stranger than that. One of the planets (this one is notorious for its outrageous lies) is called Blasphemes! The names are picked if they sound good by Daniel's standards or if they are descriptive of the planet. The name "Zebus", however, is not as obvious. The name came from a suggestion of Jack's. Late in the sixth grade year, Daniel came up with the term "boomwater" when a more scientific name was lacking. Jack liked the term, and later on the car ride home he told a strange story of how Roy laughed and said something like, "Ha! I've filled planet Zebes with Boomwater!" Daniel asked why he said "Zebes". Jack responded, "I don't know" and left it at that, so Daniel thought he had made up the term. In CTU he found a way how to make planet Zebes significant to the plot, and then, shortly after Jack found out about Daniel's secret work on Children's Tales of the Universe, he admitted that the name Zebes came from the name of a planet in a video game, and if the planet had been intended to be in a book, he would have chosen a more original name. Daniel liked the name, though, and decided to make the planet be named "Zebus" so that the planet still sounded like the original name.

Questions involving Worship Your Vermin

Question 6: Why such an odd book title? When the CTU story was first developing while the authors were in fifth grade, it wasn't always logical and many times things were added for their entertainment value at the time they were thought of. CTU 1.0's science fiction was less sophisticated and the Universe was almost like a divine being that handed out immortality purposefully. After the Battle of the El Tuna Cafe all the immortals were wiped out, and Daniel randomly suggested that the Universe would have to replace the immortals as quickly as possible and the ones that happened to get the immortality were a penguin, a poodle, and two cockroaches. The penguin and poodle never really had an impact on the story, but the siege of the cockroaches became important to the plot because in the early sixth grade the authors were studying Greece and the siege was meant to be a parody of the siege of Troy. Of course that didn't go over well, but the cockroaches continued to get more importance. The cockroaches importance made Daniel think of them when trying to think of a title for what would be CTU's sequel, and the name "Worship your Vermin" came into his head and stuck. Daniel liked the name so much that even as the poodle and penguin were dropped, the name and the cockroaches with it stuck, although no cockroach is immortal. To make the title make sense in the published version of WYV Daniel made the line "Worship your Vermin" a line in WonderClaus's outburst over Presleytarianism. It is the last line of the book.

Questions involving Mysteries of the Ghost Squeenburg

Question 7: When will MGS be finished? Because it is so difficult to have the creativity required to write a book, Daniel failed to write WYV in the middle of the seventh grade school year and decided that he would wait until summer to write it, since he had written CTU in the previous summer and because of the carefreeness of the summer and all the spare time to think it seemed like the perfect time to work on especially creative projects. Daniel doesn't want to wait another year to write MGS, but on top of the old disadvantages to writing in the middle of a school year there is the added disadvantage of there being no commute during which Jack and Daniel can discuss ideas for MGs. Daniel hopes that his experience in writing will compensate for both those disadvantages.