Krikkit Wars

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The Krikkit Wars were a fictional war in the universe of Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, as featured in the novel Life, the Universe and Everything.

The war was started by the people of planet Krikkit. The planet itself was situated on the very edge of the Milky Way and surrounded, on the other side of the planet from the galaxy’s edge, by an enormous dust cloud, both of which combined to produce an utterly black and featureless sky, even being totally devoid of visible stars at night. Due to these factors the natives of Krikkit had no concept of a “sky” or a “universe” (or even of “up”); they had no idea they sky existed because it was so dull that they never looked at it. Thus, when a spaceship crash-landed on Krikkit it was their first indication that anything outside their own planet existed.

Demonstrating an incredible level of intelligence and ingenuity, the people of Krikkit managed to reverse-engineer the technology inside the ship into a spaceship of their own in only a single year, and soon the first expedition to outer space was launched. When the Krikkit astronauts finally made it past the dust cloud and the entirety of the universe was revealed to them in all its glory their minds simply could not handle the concept of something so vast and they immediately decided that it would “have to go”. Thus, the Krikkit people were transformed practically overnight from a friendly, peace-loving agrarian society to a highly advanced, warlike, and extremely xenophobic race bent on the complete destruction of all other intelligent life in the universe.

They then constructed a massive fleet of battle cruisers and a huge army of deadly white robots and declared war on the rest of their galaxy. Although galactic casualties numbered about two grillion, the entire Krikkit race was eventually captured (except for one battle cruiser which was missing, presumed destroyed) and put on trial. They were sentenced by Judiciary Pag L.I.V.R (Learned, Impartial, and Very Relaxed), also known as Zipo Bibrok 5 × 10⁸, to have their planet sealed in a Slo-Time envelope, within which time would progress almost infinitely slowly, and remain there until the end of the universe, at which point it would theoretically emerge and be the sole inhabitant of the universe. The lock that could open the envelope would be found on an asteroid orbiting the planet just outside the envelope, while the key would be the Wikkit Gate.

It was later discovered that the entire war, and indeed the development of the Krikkiters themselves had been controlled by a massive, sentient computer named Hactar. Hactar wished to atone for an earlier incident in which it had been tasked with designing a weapon capable of destroying the universe for the Silastic Armorfiends, a violent and warlike race, and had developed a "Supernova Bomb" that would use a hyperspace junction to link every star in the universe and make them all go supernova simultaneously. However, it deliberately incorporated a design flaw, resulting in his being pulverized by the Silastic Armorfiends. Hactar itself was the dust cloud surrounding Krikkit. It later realized that it was not its place to make such decisions and nurtured the Krikkiters to arrive at the same state of mind as the Armorfiends by building the spaceship, crashing it onto their planet, and subconsciously aiding them in developing their own technology from it. He then aided the Krikkiters in creating the Supernova Bomb anew, which they would then use to destroy the universe.

During the storyline of the book the missing Krikkit warship reappears and its robot crew become determined to release Krikkit from its slo-time envelope and restart the wars. However, though they succeed in their plan to release the planet, it is found that the majority of the Krikkiters have no desire to continue the war having been freed from Hactar's influence for long enough to regain their former state of mind. Thus the destruction of the universe was averted and Hactar, who only really wanted to cease existing, was granted its wish and the feeble bonds still holding it together were broken, scattering it across the universe.

The Krikkit wars were so devastating that they were remembered by every species of intelligent life that followed, even by the most primitive races, who remembered the wars as a racial memory, though these memories were often exaggerated and distorted over time. The human sport of Cricket is one such memory, though it is considered highly vulgar and disrespectful by the other denizens of the galaxy, especially the part where the ball hits the wicket.