Kyra and I were debating the idea of putting a chapter zero into this book but I think we have pretty much decided on not putting a chapter zero. But who knows? I am against putting a chapter zero in this book. How can you have a chapter zero anyway? I mean, if a book ends on chapter ten, you expect there to be ten chapters in the book, not eleven, so it is really illogical to put a chapter zero in.
I realize that people use prologues and forewords and epilogues and all that sort of stuff, and then there's The Lord of the Rings which has three books and three books within each book or something like that. But really, a chapter zero? Who ever heard of a chapter zero? Zero means nothing, so chapter zero should have nothing in it, right?
Zero itself is a stupid number. If you subtract it from anything, nothing changes. If you multiply it by anything, you get nothing and if you divide it by anything your math teacher yells at you. And yet everyone thinks that zero is the most important number. They applaud the ancient civilizations that had a zero in their number system for inventing place value or something. Have you ever heard of anything so stupid? We think that the most important number is the number for nothing!
So, if you really think that there should be a chapter nothing, fine. I just won't be very happy.
Thus ends chapter zero.
partly inspired by Kyra Davies' speech "The Stupidity and General Uselessness of Zero", 2 September 1999
back