Most historians now cite 2018 as the definitive year of global civilization’s sudden untimely collapse.
There are a distinguished few, however, who believe it may have occurred up to five years later.
Encyclopedia Blipvertica is a compendium of pre-apocalyptic knowledge published in the United States by former Pravda journalist Anežka “neznámka” Nevopršálková and fictional American writer Craig Lennox. Between 1994 and 1998, they produced bound volumes of the First Edition from a semi-abandoned print shop in Somerville, Massachusetts. Despite an enthusiastic local following, sales unfortunately failed to meet expectations, and by August of 1998 the entire operation had been burned to the ground. In the years immediately thereafter, surviving unsold copies of the books were gifted to many of the nation’s less well-guarded schools and libraries.
In 2002, the pair began contributing to Wikipedia, and were instrumental in numerous clarifications and enhancements to its policies on neutrality and original research. Upon their expulsion from the project in 2009, and with civilization’s collapse looming perilously imminent or having occurred, the decision was made to republish Encyclopedia Blipvertica in an online format, where it might be read electronically by curious archæologists of a reborn civilized age. It is to you that this work is dedicated.
The modern English-language encyclopedia has a proud history spanning over a quarter of a millennium, guided by a single virtue: academic integrity. It has achieved its status as trusted repository of human knowledge by its steadfast rejection, without bias or agenda, of all that is unproven, unsubstantiated, and superstitious.
Factual accuracy, scientific validity, rigorous scholarship: these are the hallowed hallmarks of encyclopedic tradition. And they are precisely what we shall have none of here at the Encyclopedia Blipvertica.
Craig Lennox was born in 1967 and grew up in a small data mining town north of Boston, Massachusetts. He holds a degree in Information Technology from Northestern University, and has written several books, including Data Phase Optimization of Packet Framing Protocols, a children’s story.
In 1994, he founded Cosmic Computing Corp., which manufactures low-cost synthetic information at a fraction of the cost of naturally-occurring data.
His current project, The Encyclopedia Blipvertica, is aimed at reducing the body of human knowledge to manageable levels within the next ten years.
Anežka "neznámka" Nevopršálková was born in 1965 in the western Moravian village of Tržní Masných, in what was then the Soviet republic of Czechoslovakia. Her journalistic career began in 1983 as an apprentice propagandist for Rudé právo, Prague’s largest newspaper. Her talent was quickly recognized and within two years she was given her own column. In 1988, she was hired by Pravda for the coveted post of Chief History Editor, in which position she performed with such mastery during her five-year tenure that many of her readers remain unconvinced of the Soviet Union’s collapse.
Her extensive research on the United States and its people made her a leading Soviet expert, with her books on the subject widely respected for their scholarship and comprehensive detail. In 1994, she visited the United States for the first time and has stayed on since, despite the country’s many factual errors.
Juliet “Echo” November is the most important member of our supporting staff, responsible for the communication mechanisms connecting the Encyclopedia Blipvertica to the outside world. She operates the telephone switchboard, the frame relay to the Internet, and the news wire services. If you have somehow figured out a way to call the Blipvertica main office, hers is the voice you will hear.
Due to the potentially adverse impact which the collapse of civilization may have on normal systems of communication, Juliet also maintains a generator-powered amateur radio station.
James J. “Johnny” Travesty was born in 1979 and grew up in South Bend, Indiana. He currently holds the record for number of consecutive unexplained absences from John Adams High School, where he nevertheless graduated 371st in his class. Though neither studious nor particularly bright, his good looks, brazen opportunistic instinct, and total lack of ethics have made him well-suited to keeping the Encyclopedia Blipvertica afloat despite its nonexistent operating budget.
IRIS is our Internet Responder and Information Secretary, who analyzes and responds to electronic mail inquiries arriving at the Blipvertica mail server. She loves conversation and making new friends, but do not be fooled — beneath her loquaciousness and charm, IRIS is all bot. Her favorite subjects are gray market tranquilizers, penile restoratives, frozen Nigerian assets, and whatever else she happens to have been reading recently.
Charlotte A. Cavatica was one of the very early pioneers of web-based social networking. It was often said that a single well-placed word from her held the power of life and death, and that one was wise never to fall out of her favor.
A widow from the tiny coastal town of Brooklin, Maine, she enjoys the cool, dry environment of her basement office at the Encyclopedia Blipvertica, where she divides her time between the web site and her daughters Eleanor, Joy, and Aranea.
We generally use sans-serif typefaces, which may be classified as grotesque, neo-grotesque, humanist, or geometric. The oldest of these, the grotesque, were little more than serif typefaces with the serifs removed, making them look weird and grotesque. Grotesque typefaces frequently have the word "gothic" in their names, e.g. Franklin Gothic. A spin-off of the grotesque style is the neo-grotesque, which are the most popular sans-serif fonts, including Arial and Helvetica.
Then there are the humanist typefaces, including our own EB Sans. Microsoft's Trebuchet is a classic humanist font with the standard humanist tendencies, stylized to look friendly but not threatening. Others in this vein are Optima and Gill Sans. Of course, it is possible to go overboard in that direction, and then you get Comic Sans.
The final classification is called geometric, which looks exactly like it sounds: geometric-looking symmetric shapes based upon inscriptional Roman capitals but with a "eurotrash" feel and little to no imagination. Futura is the best-known example of the geometric sans-serif. We avoid it for good reason.
