Extracts from the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy

p.15

There was a mood of immense excitement thrilling through all of them. Together and between them they

had gone to and beyond the furthest limits of physical laws, restructured the fundamental fabric of matter,

strained, twisted and broken the laws of possibility and impossibility, but still the greatest excitement of

all seemed to be to meet a man with an orange sash round his neck. (An orange sash was what the

President of the Galaxy traditionally wore.) It might not even have made much difference to them if they’d

known exactly how much power the President of the Galaxy actually wielded: none at all. Only six people

in the Galaxy knew that the job of the Galactic President was not to wield power but to attract attention

away from it.

Zaphod Beeblebrox was amazingly good at his job.

pag 15 – zaphod

The robot camera homed in for a close up on the more popular of his two heads and he waved again.

He was roughly humanoid in appearance except for the extra head and third arm. His fair tousled hair

stuck out in random directions, his blue eyes glinted with something completely unidentifiable, and his

chins were almost always unshaven.

pag 16- trillian

Zaphod Beeblebrox would not be needing his set speech and he gently deflected the one being offered

him by the spider.

“Hi,” he said again.

The Term Paper on Vice President of India

The Vice President of India is the second-highest office in India, after the President.[2] The Vice President is elected indirectly by an electoral college consisting members of both houses of the Parliament. The Vice President would ascend to the Presidency upon the death, resignation, impeachment, or other situations leading to the vacancy in the Office of President. The normal function of the ...

Everyone beamed at him, or, at least, nearly everyone. He singled out Trillian from the crowd. Trillian was

a gird that Zaphod had picked up recently whilst visiting a planet, just for fun, incognito. She was slim,

darkish, humanoid, with long waves of black hair, a full mouth, an odd little nob of a nose and

ridiculously brown eyes. With her red head scarf knotted in that particular way and her long flowing silky

brown dress she looked vaguely Arabic. Not that anyone there had ever heard of an Arab of course. The

Arabs had very recently ceased to exist, and even when they had existed they were five hundred thousand

light years from Damogran. Trillian wasn’t anybody in particular, or so Zaphod claimed. She just went

around with him rather a lot and told him what she thought of him.

16 – Stealing heart of gold

The next thing he said though was not a lot of use to them. One of the officials of the party had

irritably decided that the President was clearly not in a mood to read the deliciously turned speech that

had been written for him, and had flipped the switch on the remote control device in his pocket. Away in

front of them a huge white dome that bulged against the sky cracked down in the middle, split, and slowly

folded itself down into the ground. Everyone gasped although they had known perfectly well it was going to

do that because they had built it that way. Beneath it lay uncovered a huge starship, one hundred and fifty metres long, shaped like a sleek running

shoe, perfectly white and mindboggingly beautiful. At the heart of it, unseen, lay a small gold box which

carried within it the most brain-wretching device ever conceived, a device which made this starship unique

in the history of the galaxy, a device after which the ship had been named – The Heart of Gold.

“Wow”, said Zaphod Beeblebrox to the Heart of Gold. There wasn’t much else he could say.

He said it again because he knew it would annoy the press.

“Wow.”

The crowd turned their faces back towards him expectantly. He winked at Trillian who raised her

eyebrows and widened her eyes at him. She knew what he was about to say and thought him a terrible

The Term Paper on Artifical Pumping Of Heart Using Transcutaneous Transformer

Abstract: A power supply system using a transcutaneous transformer to power an artificial heart through intact skin is presented in this paper. With the number of cardiac patients increasing dramatically each year, the potential for development of implantable circulatory assist devices is remarkable. Such circulatory assist devices consist of totally artificial hearts and ventricular assist ...

showoff.

“That is really amazing,” he said. “That really is truly amazing.

That is so amazingly amazing I think I’d like to steal it.”

A marvellous Presidential quote, absolutely true to form. The crowd laughed appreciatively, the

newsmen gleefully punched buttons on their Sub-Etha News-Matics and the President grinned.

As he grinned his heart screamed unbearably and he fingered the small Paralyso-Matic bomb that nestled

quietly in his pocket.

Finally he could bear it no more. He lifted his heads up to the sky, let out a wild whoop in major thirds,

threw the bomb to the ground and ran forward through the sea of suddenly frozen smiles.

p.17- vogons

Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz was not a pleasant sight, even for other Vogons. His highly domed nose rose

high above a small piggy forehead. His dark green rubbery skin was thick enough for him to play the game of

Vogon Civil Service politics, and play it well, and waterproof enough for him to survive indefinitely at sea

depths of up to a thousand feet with no ill effects.

Not that he ever went swimming of course. His busy schedule would not allow it. He was the way he was

because billions of years ago when the Vogons had first crawled out of the sluggish primeval seas of

Vogsphere, and had lain panting and heaving on the planet’s virgin shores… when the first rays of the

bright young Vogsol sun had shone across them that morning, it was as if the forces of evolution ad simply

given up on them there and then, had turned aside in disgust and written them off as an ugly and

unfortunate mistake. They never evolved again; they should never have survived.

The fact that they did is some kind of tribute to the thick-willed slug-brained stubbornness of these

creatures. Evolution? they said to themselves, Who needs it?, and what nature refused to do for them they

simply did without until such time as they were able to rectify the grosser anatomical inconveniences with

surgery.

Meanwhile, the natural forces on the planet Vogsphere had been working overtime to make up for

The Essay on Advertisements Built Ford Tough

The target audience throughout the 129-year history of Popular Science magazine has traditionally been working age males. The advertisements within that magazine reflect the audience in whom they are attempting to reach. From new technological gadgets to old-fashioned tools, the advertisers know what will be attractive to the reader, and to the readers wallet. Of these advertisers, the most ...

their earlier blunder. They brought forth scintillating jewelled scuttling crabs, which the Vogons ate,

smashing their shells with iron mallets; tall aspiring trees with breathtaking slenderness and colour which

the Vogons cut down and burned the crab meat with; elegant gazelle-like creatures with silken coats and

dewy eyes which the Vogons would catch and sit on. They were no use as transport because their backs

would snap instantly, but the Vogons sat on them anyway.

Thus the planet Vogsphere whiled away the unhappy millennia until the Vogons suddenly discovered

the principles of interstellar travel. Within a few short Vog years every last Vogon had migrated to the

Megabrantis cluster, the political hub of the Galaxy and now formed the immensely powerful backbone of

the Galactic Civil Service. They have attempted to acquire learning, they have attempted to acquire style and

social grace, but in most respects the modern Vogon is little different from his primitive forebears.

pag 18- dentrassi

Somewhere in a small dark cabin buried deep in the intestines of Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz’s flagship, a

small match flared nervously. The owner of the match was not a Vogon, but he knew all about them and

was right to be nervous. His name was Ford Prefect*.

He looked about the cabin but could see very little; strange monstrous shadows loomed and leaped

with the tiny flickering flame, but all was quiet. He breathed a silent thank you to the Dentrassis. The

Dentrassis are an unruly tribe of gourmands, a wild but pleasant bunch whom the Vogons had recently

taken to employing as catering staff on their long haul fleets, on the strict understanding that they keep

themselves very much to themselves.

This suited the Dentrassis fine, because they loved Vogon money, which is one of the hardest currencies

in space, but loathed the Vogons themselves. The only sort of Vogon a Dentrassi liked to see was an

annoyed Vogon.

pag.18 – ford offer beans

Ford Prefect said: “I bought some peanuts.”

Arthur Dent moved, and groaned again, muttering incoherently.

The Business plan on Ford Corporation

The manufacturing capabilities kept on improving and in 1917 he built the Rouge plant that put the whole operation, from the raw material, to the final product, under the same roof. In 1915 Henry Ford’s son, Edsel Ford joined his father in the company. Edsel brought to the company the desire of making a product not only functional, but stylish and beautiful. Ford became entirely family owned in ...

“Here, have some,” urged Ford, shaking the packet again, “if you’ve never been through a matter

transference beam before you’ve probably lost some salt and protein. The beer you had should have

cushioned your system a bit.”

“Whhhrrrr…” said Arthur Dent. He opened his eyes.

“It’s dark,” he said.

“Yes,” said Ford Prefect, “it’s dark.”

“No light,” said Arthur Dent. “Dark, no light.”

One of the things Ford Prefect had always found hardest to understand about human beings was

their habit of continually stating and repeating the obvious, as in It’s a nice day, or You’re very tall, or

Oh dear you seem to have fallen down a thirty-foot well, are you alright? At first Ford had formed a

theory to account for this strange behaviour. If human beings don’t keep exercising their lips, he thought,

their mouths probably seize up. After a few months’ consideration and observation he abandoned this

theory in favour of a new one. If they don’t keep on exercising their lips, he thought, their brains start

working. After a while he abandoned this one as well as being obstructively cynical and decided he quite

liked human beings after all, but he always remained desperately worried about the terrible number of

things they didn’t know about.

“Yes,” he agreed with Arthur, “no light.” He helped Arthur to some peanuts. “How do you feel?” he

asked.

“Like a military academy,” said Arthur, “bits of me keep on passing out.”

pag 19 – hitchhiking

“How did we get here?” he asked, shivering slightly.

“We hitched a lift,” said Ford.

“Excuse me?” said Arthur. “Are you trying to tell me that we just stuck out our thumbs and some green

bug-eyed monster stuck his head out and said, Hi fellas, hop right in. I can take you as far as the Basingstoke

roundabout?”

“Well,” said Ford, “the Thumb’s an electronic sub-etha signalling device, the roundabout’s at Barnard’s

The Essay on Rumble Fish

In thinking of films that are able to exemplify many film elements that are put together in an interesting and organized manner the movie Rumble Fish comes to mind. The director Francis Ford Coppola demonstrates how metaphors are able to help decipher a deeper meaning of the film. Rumble Fish is a film that is about growing up and seeing new things that have never been seen before. The two main ...

Star six light years away, but otherwise, that’s more or less right.”

“And the bug-eyed monster?”

“Is green, yes.”

“Fine,” said Arthur, “when can I get home?”

“You can’t,” said Ford Prefect, and found the light switch.

“Shade your eyes …” he said, and turned it on.

Even Ford was surprised.

“Good grief,” said Arthur, “is this really the interior of a flying saucer?”

pag-20 – the guide and vogons

“The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. It’s a sort of electronic book. It tells you everything you need to

know about anything. That’s its job.”

Arthur turned it over nervously in his hands.

“I like the cover,” he said. “Don’t Panic. It’s the first helpful or intelligible thing anybody’s said to me all

day.”

“I’ll show you how it works,” said Ford. He snatched it from Arthur who was still holding it as if it was

a two-week-dead lark and pulled it out of its cover.

“You press this button here you see and the screen lights up giving you the index.”

A screen, about three inches by four, lit up and characters began to flicker across the surface.

“You want to know about Vogons, so I enter that name so.” His fingers tapped some more keys. “And

there we are.”

The words Vogon Constructor Fleets flared in green across the screen.

Ford pressed a large red button at the bottom of the screen and words began to undulate across it. At

the same time, the book began to speak the entry as well in a still quiet measured voice. This is what the book

said.

“Vogon Constructor Fleets. Here is what to do if you want to get a lift from a Vogon: forget it. They

are one of the most unpleasant races in the Galaxy — not actually evil, but bad tempered, bureaucratic,

officious and callous. They wouldn’t even lift a finger to save their own grandmothers from the Ravenous

Bugblatter Beast of Traal without orders signed in triplicate, sent in, sent back, queried, lost, found,

The Term Paper on Ford Prefect Arthur Planet Ship

The Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy is a wholly remarkable book. Thought many of the concepts are slightly abstract and obscure, the book itself is a truly great work. The basic idea is that the day we meet our adventurous crew is the single worst Thursday of Arthur Dents life. Sadly, it is not just Arthur who will be having a bad day. You see, it is this Thursday when the earth gets destroyed. Of ...

subjected to public inquiry, lost again, and finally buried in soft peat and recycled as firelighters.

“The best way to get a drink out of a Vogon is to stick your finger down his throat, and the best way to

irritate him is to feed his grandmother to the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal.

“On no account allow a Vogon to read poetry at you.”

pag – 21 – the guide

“I’m doing the field

research for the New Revised Edition, and one of the things I’ll have to include is a bit about how the

Vogons now employ Dentrassi cooks which gives us a rather useful little loophole.”

A pained expression crossed Arthur’s face. “But who are the Dentrassi?” he said.

“Great guys,” said Ford. “They’re the best cooks and the best drink mixers and they don’t give a wet slap

about anything else. And they’ll always help hitch hikers aboard, partly because they like the company, but

mostly because it annoys the Vogons. Which is exactly the sort of thing you need to know if you’re an

impoverished hitch hiker trying to see the marvels of the Universe for less than thirty Altairan Dollars a

day. And that’s my job. Fun, isn’t it?”

Arthur looked lost.

“It’s amazing,” he said and frowned at one of the other mattresses.

“Unfortunately I got stuck on the Earth for rather longer than I intended,” said Ford. “I came for a

week and got stuck for fifteen years.”

“But how did you get there in the first place then?”

“Easy, I got a lift with a teaser.”

“A teaser?”

“Yeah.”

“Er, what is …”

“A teaser? Teasers are usually rich kids with nothing to do. They cruise around looking for planets which

haven’t made interstellar contact yet and buzz them.”

“Buzz them?” Arthur began to feel that Ford was enjoying making life difficult for him.

“Yeah”, said Ford, “they buzz them. They find some isolated spot with very few people around, then

land right by some poor soul whom no one’s ever going to believe and then strut up and down in front of him

pag. 21 – babel fish

“Alright so I’m panicking, what else is there to do?”

“You just come along with me and have a good time. The Galaxy’s a fun place. You’ll need to have this

fish in your ear.”

“I beg your pardon?” asked Arthur, rather politely he thought.

Ford was holding up a small glass jar which quite clearly had a small yellow fish wriggling around in it.

Arthur blinked at him. He wished there was something simple and recognizable he could grasp hold of. He

would have felt safe if alongside the Dentrassi underwear, the piles of Squornshellous mattresses and the

man from Betelgeuse holding up a small yellow fish and offering to put it in his ear he had been able to see

just a small packet of corn flakes. He couldn’t, and he didn’t feel safe.

[…]

“But I can’t speak Vogon!”

“You don’t need to. Just put that fish in your ear.”

Ford, with a lightning movement, clapped his hand to Arthur’s ear, and he had the sudden sickening

sensation of the fish slithering deep into his aural tract. Gasping with horror he scrabbled at his ear for a

second or so, but then slowly turned goggle-eyed with wonder. He was experiencing the aural equivalent of

looking at a picture of two black silhouetted faces and suddenly seeing it as a picture of a white

candlestick. Or of looking at a lot of coloured dots on a piece of paper which suddenly resolve

themselves into the figure six and mean that your optician is going to charge you a lot of money for a

new pair of glasses.

He was still listening to the howling gargles, he knew that, only now it had taken on the semblance of

perfectly straightforward English.

This is what he heard …

“Howl howl gargle howl gargle howl howl howl gargle howl gargle howl howl gargle gargle howl

gargle gargle gargle howl slurrp uuuurgh should have a good time. Message repeats. This is your captain

speaking, so stop whatever you’re doing and pay attention. First of all I see from our instruments that we

have a couple of hitchhikers aboard. Hello wherever you are. I just want to make it totally clear that you are

not at all welcome. I worked hard to get where I am today, and I didn’t become captain of a Vogon

constructor ship simply so I could turn it into a taxi service for a load of degenerate freeloaders. I have sent

out a search party, and as soon that they find you I will put you off the ship. If you’re very lucky I might read

you some of my poetry first.

“Secondly, we are about to jump into hyperspace for the journey to Barnard’s Star. On arrival we will

stay in dock for a seventy-two hour refit, and no one’s to leave the ship during that time. I repeat, all planet

leave is cancelled. I’ve just had an unhappy love affair, so I don’t see why anybody else should have a good

time. Message ends.”

pag.23 – babel fish entry

pag 24. earth entry

“Yes it does,” he said, “down there, see at the bottom of the screen, just under Eccentrica Gallumbits,

the triple-breasted whore of Eroticon 6.”

Arthur followed Ford’s finger, and saw where it was pointing. For a moment it still didn’t register, then his

mind nearly blew up.

“What? Harmless? Is that all it’s got to say? Harmless! One word!”

Ford shrugged. “Well, there are a hundred billion stars in the Galaxy, and only a limited amount of space in the book’s

microprocessors,” he said, “and no one knew much about the Earth of course.”

“Well for God’s sake I hope you managed to rectify that a bit.”

“Oh yes, well I managed to transmit a new entry off to the editor. He had to trim it a bit, but it’s still an

improvement.”

“And what does it say now?” asked Arthur.

“Mostly harmless,” admitted Ford with a slightly embarrassed cough.

“Mostly harmless!” shouted Arthur.

pag.24 – vogon poetry

Vogon poetry is of course the third worst in the Universe.

The second worst is that of the Azagoths of Kria. During a recitation by their Poet Master Grunthos

the Flatulent of his poem “Ode To A Small Lump of Green Putty I Found In My Armpit One Midsummer

Morning” four of his audience died of internal haemorrhaging, and the President of the Mid-Galactic

Arts

Nobbling Council survived by gnawing one of his own legs off. Grunthos is reported to have been

“disappointed” by the poem’s reception, and was about to embark on a reading of his twelve-book epic

entitled My Favourite Bathtime Gurgles when his own major intestine, in a desperate attempt to save

life and civilization, leapt straight up through his neck and throttled his brain.

[…]

The prisoners sat in Poetry Appreciation Chairs –strapped in. Vogons suffered no illusions as to the

regard their works were generally held in. Their early attempts at composition had been part of bludgeoning

insistence that they be accepted as a properly evolved and cultured race, but now the only thing that kept

them going was sheer bloodymindedness.

[…]

The Vogon began to read – a fetid little passage of his own devising.

“Oh frettled gruntbuggly …” he began. Spasms wracked Ford’s body – this was worse than ever he’d been

prepared for.

“… thy micturations are to me | As plurdled gabbleblotchits on a lurgid bee.”

“Aaaaaaarggggghhhhhh!” went Ford Prefect, wrenching his head back as lumps of pain thumped through

it. He could dimly see beside him Arthur lolling and rolling in his seat. He clenched his teeth.

“Groop I implore thee,” continued the merciless Vogon, “my foonting turlingdromes.”

His voice was rising to a horrible pitch of impassioned

stridency. “And hooptiously drangle me with crinkly

bindlewurdles,| Or I will rend thee in the gobberwarts with my blurglecruncheon, see if I don’t!”

“Resistance is useless!” shouted the Vogon guard back at him. It was the first phrase he’d learnt when he

joined the Vogon Guard Corps.

pag. 28 – vogon guard

“Resistance is useless!”

“Oh give it a rest,” said Ford. He twisted his head till he was looking straight up into his captor’s face. A

thought struck him.

“Do you really enjoy this sort of thing?” he asked suddenly.

The Vogon stopped dead and a look of immense stupidity seeped slowly over his face.

“Enjoy?” he boomed. “What do you mean?” “What I mean,” said Ford, “is does it give you a full satisfying

life? Stomping around, shouting, pushing people out of spaceships

…”

The Vogon stared up at the low steel ceiling and his eyebrows almost rolled over each other. His

mouth slacked. Finally he said, “Well the hours are good …”

“They’d have to be,” agreed Ford.

Arthur twisted his head to look at Ford.

“Ford, what are you doing?” he asked in an amazed whisper.

“Oh, just trying to take an interest in the world around me, OK?” he said. “So the hours are pretty good

then?” he resumed.

The Vogon stared down at him as sluggish thoughts moiled around in the murky depths.

“Yeah,” he said, “but now you come to mention it, most of the actual minutes are pretty lousy. Except

…” he thought again, which required looking at the ceiling – “except some of the shouting I quite like.”

He filled his lungs and bellowed, “Resistance is …”

“Sure, yes,” interrupted Ford hurriedly, “you’re good at that, I can tell. But if it’s mostly lousy,” he said,

slowly giving the words time to reach their mark, “then why do you do it? What is it? The girls? The

leather? The machismo? Or do you just find that coming to terms with the mindless tedium of it all presents

an interesting challenge?”

“Er …” said the guard, “er … er … I dunno. I think I just sort of … do it really. My aunt said that spaceship

guard was a good career for a young Vogon – you know, the uniform, the low-slung stun ray holster, the

mindless tedium …”

“There you are Arthur,” said Ford with the air of someone reaching the conclusion of his argument,

“you think you’ve got problems.”

Arthur rather thought he had. Apart from the unpleasant business with his home planet the Vogon

guard had half-throttled him already and he didn’t like the sound of being thrown into space very much.

“Try and understand his problem,” insisted Ford. “Here he is poor lad, his entire life’s work is stamping

around, throwing people off spaceships …”

“And shouting,” added the guard.

“And shouting, sure,” said Ford patting the blubbery arm clamped round his neck in friendly

condescension, “… and he doesn’t even know why he’s doing it!”

Arthur agreed this was very sad. He did this with a small feeble gesture, because he was too asphyxicated

to speak.

Deep rumblings of bemusement came from the guard.

“Well. Now you put it like that I suppose …”

“Good lad!” encouraged Ford.

“But alright,” went on the rumblings, “so what’s the alternative?”

“Well,” said Ford, brightly but slowly, “stop doing it of course! Tell them,” he went on, “you’re not going

to do it anymore.” He felt he had to add something to that, but for the moment the guard seemed to have

his mind occupied pondering that much.

“Eerrrrrrmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm …” said the guard, “erm, well that doesn’t sound that

great to me.”

Ford suddenly felt the moment slipping away.

“Now wait a minute,” he said, “that’s just the start you see, there’s more to it than that you see …”

But at that moment the guard renewed his grip and continued his original purpose of lugging his

prisoners to the airlock. He was obviously quite touched.

“No, I think if it’s all the same to you,” he said, “I’d better get you both shoved into this airlock and then

go and get on with some other bits of shouting I’ve got to do.”

It wasn’t all the same to Ford Prefect after all. “Come on now … but look!” he said, less slowly, less brightly.

“Huhhhhgggggggnnnnnnn …” said Arthur without any clear inflection.

“But hang on,” pursued Ford, “there’s music and art and things to tell you about yet! Arrrggghhh!”

“Resistance is useless,” bellowed the guard, and then added, “You see if I keep it up I can eventually

get promoted to Senior Shouting Officer, and there aren’t usually many vacancies for non-shouting and

non-pushing-people-about officers, so I think I’d better stick to what I know.”

p.29- rescue

To be fair though, when confronted by the sheer enormity of distances between the stars, better

minds than the one responsible for the Guide’s introduction have faltered. Some invite you to consider

for a moment a peanut in reading and a small walnut in Johannesburg, and other such dizzying concepts.

The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination.

Even light, which travels so fast that it takes most races thousands of years to realize that it travels at

all, takes time to journey between the stars. It takes eight minutes from the star Sol to the place where the

Earth used to be, and four years more to arrive at Sol’s nearest stellar neighbour, Alpha Proxima.

For light to reach the other side of the Galaxy, for it to reach Damogran for instance, takes rather longer:

five hundred thousand years.

The record for hitch hiking this distance is just under five years, but you don’t get to see much on the

way.

The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy says that if you hold a lungful of air you can survive in the total

vacuum of space for about thirty seconds. However it goes on to say that what with space being the mind

boggling size it is the chances of getting picked up by another ship within those thirty seconds are two to the

power of two hundred and sixty-seven thousand seven hundred and nine to one against.

By a totally staggering coincidence that is also the telephone number of an Islington flat where Arthur

once went to a very good party and met a very nice girl whom he totally failed to get off with – she went off

with a gatecrasher.

Though the planet Earth, the Islington flat and the telephone have all now been demolished, it is

comforting to reflect that they are all in some small way commemorated by the fact that twenty-nine

seconds later Ford and Arthur were rescued.

pag. 31- heart of gold

They both sat on the pavement and watched with a certain unease as huge children bounced heavily

along the sand and wild horses thundered through the sky taking fresh supplies of reinforced railings to the

Uncertain Areas.

“You know,” said Arthur with a slight cough, “if this is Southend, there’s something very odd about it

…”

“You mean the way the sea stays steady and the buildings keep washing up and down?” said Ford. “Yes

I thought that was odd too. In fact,” he continued as with a huge bang Southend split itself into six equal

segments which danced and span giddily round each other in lewd and licentious formation, “there is

something altogether very strange going on.”

Wild yowling noises of pipes and strings seared through the wind, hot doughnuts popped out of the road

for ten pence each, horrid fish stormed out of the sky and Arthur and Ford decided to make a run for it.

They plunged through heavy walls of sound, mountains of archaic thought, valleys of mood music, bad

shoe sessions and footling bats and suddenly heard a girl’s voice.

It sounded quite a sensible voice, but it just said, “Two to the power of one hundred thousand to one

against and falling,” and that was all.

Ford skidded down a beam of light and span round trying to find a source for the voice but could see

nothing he could seriously believe in.

“What was that voice?” shouted Arthur.

“I don’t know,” yelled Ford, “I don’t know. It sounded like a measurement of probability.”

“Probability? What do you mean?”

“Probability. You know, like two to one, three to one, five to four against. It said two to the power of one

hundred thousand to one against. That’s pretty improbable you know.”

[…]

Bulges appeared in the fabric of space-time. Great ugly bulges.

“Haaaauuurrgghhh …” said Arthur as he felt his body softening and bending in unusual directions.

“Southend seems to be melting away … the stars are swirling … a dustbowl … my legs are drifting off into

the sunset … my left arm’s come off too.” A frightening thought struck him: “Hell,” he said, “how am I going

to operate my digital watch now?” He wound his eyes desperately around in Ford’s direction.

“Ford,” he said, “you’re turning into a penguin. Stop it.”

Again came the voice.

“Two to the power of seventy-five thousand to one against and falling.”

Ford waddled around his pond in a furious circle.

“Hey, who are you,” he quacked. “Where are you? What’s going on and is there any way of stopping it?”

“Please relax,” said the voice pleasantly, like a stewardess in an airliner with only one wing and two

engines one of which is on fire, “you are perfectly safe.”

“But that’s not the point!” raged Ford. “The point is that I am now a perfectly save penguin, and my

colleague here is rapidly running out of limbs!”

“It’s alright, I’ve got them back now,” said Arthur.

“Two to the power of fifty thousand to one against and falling,” said the voice.

“Admittedly,” said Arthur, “they’re longer than I usually like them, but …”

“Isn’t there anything,” squawked Ford in avian fury, “you feel you ought to be telling us?”

The voice cleared its throat. A giant petit four lolloped off into the distance.

“Welcome,” the voice said, “to the Starship Heart of Gold.”

The voice continued.

“Please do not be alarmed,” it said, “by anything you see or hear around you. You are bound to feel some

initial ill effects as you have been rescued from certain death at an improbability level of two to the power of

two hundred and seventy-six thousand to one against – possibly much higher. We are now cruising at a level

of two to the power of twenty-five thousand to one against and falling, and we will be restoring normality

just as soon as we are sure what is normal anyway. Thank you. Two to the power of twenty thousand to

one against and falling.”

pag.32 – improbability drive

The Infinite Improbability Drive is a wonderful new method of crossing vast interstellar distances in a

mere nothingth of a second, without all that tedious mucking about in hyperspace.

It was discovered by a lucky chance, and then developed into a governable form of propulsion by the

Galactic Government’s research team on Damogran.

This, briefly, is the story of its discovery.

The principle of generating small amounts of finite improbability by simply hooking the logic circuits of

a Bambleweeny 57 Sub-Meson Brain to an atomic vector plotter suspended in a strong Brownian Motion

producer (say a nice hot cup of tea) were of course well understood – and such generators were often used

to break the ice at parties by making all the molecules in the hostess’s undergarments leap simultaneously

one foot to the left, in accordance with the Theory of Indeterminacy.

copiar até and turn it on!

pag.34 – marvim

In the corner, the robot’s head swung up sharply, but then wobbled about imperceptibly. It pulled

itself up to its feet as if it was about five pounds heavier that it actually was, and made what an outside

observer would have thought was a heroic effort to cross the room. It stopped in front of Trillian and

seemed to stare through her left shoulder.

“I think you ought to know I’m feeling very depressed,” it said.

Its voice was low and hopeless.

“Oh God,” muttered Zaphod and slumped into a seat.

“Well,” said Trillian in a bright compassionate tone, “here’s something to occupy you and keep your

mind off things.”

“It won’t work,” droned Marvin, “I have an exceptionally large mind.”

>>>As soon as the ship’s drive reaches

Infinite Improbability it passes through every point in the Universe. <<<

pag.35 – GPP

“Listen,” said Ford, who was still engrossed in the sales brochure, “they make a big thing of the ship’s

cybernetics. A new generation of Sirius Cybernetics Corporation robots and computers, with the new

GPP feature.”

“GPP feature?” said Arthur. “What’s that?”

“Oh, it says Genuine People Personalities.”

“Oh,” said Arthur, “sounds ghastly.”

A voice behind them said, “It is.” The voice was low and hopeless and accompanied by a slight clanking

sound. They span round and saw an abject steel man standing hunched in the doorway.

“What?” they said.

“Ghastly,” continued Marvin, “it all is. Absolutely ghastly. Just don’t even talk about it. Look at this

door,” he said, stepping through it. The irony circuits cut into his voice modulator as he mimicked the style of

the sales brochure. “All the doors in this spaceship have a cheerful and sunny disposition. It is their

pleasure to open for you, and their satisfaction to close again with the knowledge of a job well done.”

As the door closed behind them it became apparent that it did indeed have a satisfied sigh-like

quality to it. “Hummmmmmmyummmmmmm ah!” it said.

pag.40 – arthur and zaphod

“Oh, Zaphod, this is a friend of mine, Arthur Dent,” he said, “I saved him when his planet blew up.”

“Oh sure,” said Zaphod, “hi Arthur, glad you could make it.” His right-hand head looked round casually,

said “hi” and went back to having his teeth picked.

Ford carried on. “And Arthur,” he said, “this is my semi-cousin Zaphod Beeb …”

“We’ve met,” said Arthur sharply.

When you’re cruising down the road in the fast lane and you lazily sail past a few hard driving cars

and are feeling pretty pleased with yourself and then accidentally change down from fourth to first instead

of third thus making your engine leap out of your bonnet in a rather ugly mess, it tends to throw you off your

stride in much the same way that this remark threw Ford Prefect off his.

“Err … what?”

“I said we’ve met.”

Zaphod gave an awkward start of surprise and jabbed a gum sharply.

“Hey … er, have we? Hey … er …”

Ford rounded on Arthur with an angry flash in his eyes. Now he felt he was back on home ground he

suddenly began to resent having lumbered himself with this ignorant primitive who knew as much about the

affairs of the Galaxy as an Ilford-based gnat knew about life in Peking.

“What do you mean you’ve met?” he demanded. “This is Zaphod Beeblebrox from Betelgeuse Five you

know, not bloody Martin Smith from Croydon.”

“I don’t care,” said Arthur coldly. We’ve met, haven’t we Zaphod Beeblebrox – or should I say … Phil?”

“What!” shouted Ford.

“You’ll have to remind me,” said Zaphod. “I’ve a terrible memory for species.”

“It was at a party,” pursued Arthur.

“Yeah, well I doubt that,” said Zaphod.

“Cool it will you Arthur!” demanded Ford.

Arthur would not be deterred. “A party six months ago. On Earth … England …”

Arthur would not be deterred. “A party six months ago. On Earth … England …”

Zaphod shook his head with a tight-lipped smile.

“London,” insisted Arthur, “Islington.”

“Oh,” said Zaphod with a guilty start, “that party.”

This wasn’t fair on Ford at all. He looked backwards and forwards between Arthur and Zaphod. “What?”

he said to Zaphod. “You don’t mean to say you’ve been on that miserable planet as well do you?”

“No, of course not,” said Zaphod breezily. “Well, I may have just dropped in briefly, you know, on my way

somewhere …” “But I was stuck there for fifteen years!”

“Well I didn’t know that did I?”

“But what were you doing there?”

“Looking about, you know.”

“He gatecrashed a party,” persisted Arthur, trembling with anger, “a fancy dress party …”

“It would have to be, wouldn’t it?” said Ford.

“At this party,” persisted Arthur, “was a girl … oh well, look it doesn’t matter now. The whole place

has gone up in smoke anyway …”

“I wish you’d stop sulking about that bloody planet,” said Ford.

“Who was the lady?”

“Oh just somebody. Well alright, I wasn’t doing very well with her. I’d been trying all evening. Hell, she

was something though. Beautiful, charming, devastatingly intelligent, at last I’d got her to myself for a bit

and was plying her with a bit of talk when this friend of yours barges up and says Hey doll, is this guy

boring you? Why don’t you talk to me instead? I’m from a different planet.” I never saw her again.”

“Zaphod?” exclaimed Ford.

“Yes,” said Arthur, glaring at him and trying not to feel foolish. “He only had the two arms and the

one head and he called himself Phil, but …”

“But you must admit he did turn out to be from another planet,” said Trillian wandering into sight at

the other end of the bridge. She gave Arthur a pleasant smile which settled on him like a ton of bricks and

then turned her attention to the ship’s controls again.

There was silence for a few seconds, and then out of the scrambled mess of Arthur’s brain crawled

some words.

“Tricia McMillian?” he said. “What are you doing here?”

“Same as you,” she said, “I hitched a lift. After all with a degree in Maths and another in astrophysics

what else was there to do? It was either that or the dole queue again on Monday.”

pag.41 –

Trillian couldn’t sleep. She sat on a couch and stared at a small cage which contained her last and only

links with Earth – two white mice that she had insisted Zaphod let her bring. She had expected not to see

the planet again, but she was disturbed by her negative reaction to the planet’s destruction. It seemed

remote and unreal and she could find no thoughts to think about it. She watched the mice scurrying round

the cage and running furiously in their little plastic treadwheels till they occupied her whole attention.

Suddenly she shook herself and went back to the bridge to watch over the tiny flashing lights and figures

that charted the ship’s progress through the void. She wished she knew what it was she was trying not to think

about.

Zaphod couldn’t sleep. He also wished he knew what it was that he wouldn’t let himself think about. For

as long as he could remember he’d suffered from a vague nagging feeling of being not all there. Most of the

time he was able to put this thought aside and not worry about it, but it had been re-awakened by the sudden

inexplicable arrival of Ford Prefect and Arthur Dent. Somehow it seemed to conform to a pattern that he

couldn’t see.

Ford couldn’t sleep. He was too excited about being back on the road again. Fifteen years of virtual

imprisonment were over, just as he was finally beginning to give up hope. Knocking about with Zaphod for a

bit promised to be a lot of fun, though there seemed to be something faintly odd about his semi-cousin

that he couldn’t put his finger on. The fact that he had become President of the Galaxy was frankly

astonishing, as was the manner of his leaving the post. Was there a reason behind it? There would be no

point in asking Zaphod, he never appeared to have a reason for anything he did at all: he had turned

unfathomably into an art form. He attacked everything in life with a mixture of extraordinary genius

and naive incompetence and it was often difficult to tell which was which.

Arthur slept: he was terribly tired.

pag. 43 – entry: magrathea

(Excerpt from The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Page 634784, Section 5a, Entry: Magrathea)

Far back in the mists of ancient time, in the great and glorious days of the former Galactic Empire, life

was wild, rich and largely tax free.

Mighty starships plied their way between exotic suns, seeking adventure and reward amongst the

furthest reaches of Galactic space. In those days spirits were brave, the stakes were high, men were real

men, women were real women, and small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were real small furry

creatures from Alpha Centauri. And all dared to brave unknown terrors, to do mighty deeds, to boldly split

infinitives that no man had split before – and thus was the Empire forged.

Many men of course became extremely rich, but this was perfectly natural and nothing to be ashamed of

because no one was really poor – at least no one worth speaking of. And for all the richest and most

successful merchants life inevitably became rather dull and niggly, and they began to imagine that this was

therefore the fault of the worlds they’d settled on – none of them was entirely satisfactory: either the climate

wasn’t quite right in the later part of the afternoon, or the day was half an hour too long, or the sea was

exactly the wrong shade of pink.

And thus were created the conditions for a staggering new form of specialist industry: custom-made luxury

planet building. The home of this industry was the planet Magrathea, where hyperspatial engineers sucked

matter through white holes in space to form it into dream planets – gold planets, platinum planets, soft rubber

planets with lots of earthquakes – all lovingly made to meet the exacting standards that the Galaxy’s richest

men naturally came to expect.

But so successful was this venture that Magrathea itself soon became the richest planet of all time and

the rest of the Galaxy was reduced to abject poverty. And so the system broke down, the Empire collapsed,

and a long sullen silence settled over a billion worlds, disturbed only by the pen scratchings of scholars as

they laboured into the night over smug little treaties on the value of a planned political economy.

Magrathea itself disappeared and its memory soon passed into the obscurity of legend.

In these enlightened days of course, no one believes a word of it.

pag.44 – magrathea

“You’re crazy, Zaphod,” he was saying, “Magrathea is a myth, a fairy story, it’s what parents tell their

kids about at night if they want them to grow up to become economists, it’s …”

“And that’s what we are currently in orbit around,” insisted Zaphod.

“Look, I can’t help what you may personally be in orbit around,” said Ford, “but this ship …”

“Computer!” shouted Zaphod.

“Oh no …”

“Hi there! This is Eddie your shipboard computer, and I’m feeling just great guys, and I know I’m just

going to get a bundle of kicks out of any programme you care to run through me.”

Arthur looked inquiringly at Trillian. She motioned him to come on in but keep quiet.

“Computer,” said Zaphod, “tell us again what our present trajectory is.”

“A real pleasure feller,” it burbled, “we are currently in orbit at an altitude of three hundred miles around

the legendary planet of Magrathea.”

pag. 44 – magrathea sunrise

“In a few seconds,” he continued, “we should see … there!”

The moment carried itself. Even the most seasoned star tramp can’t help but shiver at the spectacular

drama of a sunrise seen from space, but a binary sunrise is one of the marvels of the Galaxy.

Out of the utter blackness stabbed a sudden point of blinding light. It crept up by slight degrees and

spread sideways in a thin crescent blade, and within seconds two suns were visible, furnaces of light,

searing the black edge of the horizon with white fire. Fierce shafts of colour streaked through the thin

atmosphere beneath them.

“The fires of dawn … !” breathed Zaphod. “The twin suns of Soulianis and Rahm … !”

“Or whatever,” said Ford quietly.

“Soulianis and Rahm!” insisted Zaphod.

The suns blazed into the pitch of space and a low ghostly music floated through the bridge: Marvin was

humming ironically because he hated humans so much.

As Ford gazed at the spectacle of light before them excitement burnt inside him, but only the excitement

of seeing a strange new planet, it was enough for him to see it as it was. It faintly irritated him that Zaphod

had to impose some ludicrous fantasy on to the scene to make it work for him. All this Magrathea nonsense seemed juvenile. Isn’t it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are

fairies at the bottom of it too?

>>The deadly missile attack shortly to be launched by an ancient automatic defence system will result

merely in the breakage of three coffee cups and a micecage, the bruising of somebody’s upper arm, and the

untimely creation and sudden demise of a bowl of petunias and an innocent sperm whale. <<

pag.46 – nutri-matic machine

He had found a Nutri-Matic machine which

had provided him with a plastic cup filled with a liquid that was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea.

The way it functioned was very interesting. When the Drink button was pressed it made an instant but highly

detailed examination of the subject’s taste buds, a spectroscopic analysis of the subject’s metabolism and then

sent tiny experimental signals down the neural pathways to the taste centres of the subject’s brain to see

what was likely to go down well. However, no one knew quite why it did this because it invariably

delivered a cupful of liquid that was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea. The Nutri-Matic was

designed and manufactured by the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation whose complaints department now

covers all the major land masses of the first three planets in the Sirius Tau Star system.

pag. 46 – recording @ magrathea

Someone from the dead planet was talking to them.

“Computer!” shouted Zaphod.

“Hi there!”

“What the photon is it?”

“Oh, just some five-million-year-old tape that’s being broadcast at us.”

“A what? A recording?”

“Shush!” said Ford. “It’s carrying on.”

The voice was old, courteous, almost charming, but was underscored with quite unmistakable

menace.

“This is a recorded announcement,” it said, “as I’m afraid we’re all out at the moment. The commercial

council of Magrathea thanks you for your esteemed visit …”

(“A voice from ancient Magrathea!” shouted Zaphod. “OK, OK,” said Ford.)

“… but regrets,” continued the voice, “that the entire planet is temporarily closed for business. Thank you.

If you would care to leave your name and the address of a planet where you can be contacted, kindly speak

when you hear the tone.”

A short buzz followed, then silence.

“They want to get rid of us,” said Trillian nervously. “What do we do?”

“It’s just a recording,” said Zaphod. “We keep going. Got that, computer?”

“I got it,” said the computer and gave the ship an extra kick of speed.

They waited.

After a second or so came the fanfare once again, and then the voice.

“We would like to assure you that as soon as our business is resumed announcements will be made in

all fashionable magazines and colour supplements, when our clients will once again be able to select from

all that’s best in contemporary geography.” The menace in the voice took on a sharper edge. “Meanwhile we

thank our clients for their kind interest and would ask them to leave. Now.”

Arthur looked round the nervous faces of his companions.

“Well, I suppose we’d better be going then, hadn’t we?” he suggested.

“Shhh!” said Zaphod. “There’s absolutely nothing to be worried about.”

“Then why’s everyone so tense?”

“They’re just interested!” shouted Zaphod. “Computer, start a descent into the atmosphere and prepare

for landing.”

This time the fanfare was quite perfunctory, the voice distinctly cold.

“It is most gratifying,” it said, “that your enthusiasm for our planet continues unabated, and so we

would like to assure you that the guided missiles currently converging with your ship are part of a special

service we extend to all of our most enthusiastic clients, and the fully armed nuclear warheads are of

course merely a courtesy detail. We look forward to your custom in future lives … thank you.”

>>>>A new and astounding image appeared in the mirrors.

“They would appear,” said Ford doubtfully, “to have turned into a bowl of petunias and a very surprised

looking whale …”

“At an Improbability Factor,” cut in Eddie, who hadn’t changed a bit, “of eight million seven hundred and

sixty-seven thousand one hundred and twenty-eight to one against.”

Zaphod stared at Arthur.

“Did you think of that, Earthman?” he demanded.

“Well,” said Arthur, “all I did was …”

“That’s very good thinking you know. Turn on the Improbability Drive for a second without first

activating the proofing screens. Hey kid you just saved our lives, you know that?”

<<<<<

pag.50 – the whale

Another thing that got forgotten was the fact that against all probability a sperm whale had suddenly been

called into existence several miles above the surface of an alien planet.

And since this is not a naturally tenable position for a whale, this poor innocent creature had very little

time to come to terms with its identity as a whale before it then had to come to terms with not being a whale

any more.

This is a complete record of its thoughts from the moment it began its life till the moment it ended it.

Ah … ! What’s happening? it thought.

Er, excuse me, who am I?

Hello?

Why am I here? What’s my purpose in life?

What do I mean by who am I?

Calm down, get a grip now … oh! this is an interesting sensation, what is it? It’s a sort of …

yawning, tingling sensation in my … my … well I suppose I’d better start finding names for things if I

want to make any headway in what for the sake of what I shall call an argument I shall call the world, so

let’s call it my stomach.

Good. Ooooh, it’s getting quite strong. And hey, what’s about this whistling roaring sound going past

what I’m suddenly going to call my head? Perhaps I can call that … wind! Is that a good name? It’ll do …

perhaps I can find a better name for it later when I’ve found out what it’s for. It must be something very

important because there certainly seems to be a hell of a lot of it. Hey! What’s this thing? This … let’s call it a

tail – yeah, tail. Hey! I can can really thrash it about pretty good can’t I? Wow! Wow! That feels great!

Doesn’t seem to achieve very much but I’ll probably find out what it’s for later on. Now – have I built up any

coherent picture of things yet?

No.

Never mind, hey, this is really exciting, so much to find out about, so much to look forward to, I’m

quite dizzy with anticipation …

Or is it the wind?

There really is a lot of that now isn’t it?

And wow! Hey! What’s this thing suddenly coming towards me very fast? Very very fast. So big and flat

and round, it needs a big wide sounding name like … ow … ound … round … ground! That’s it! That’s a good name – ground!

I wonder if it will be friends with me?

And the rest, after a sudden wet thud, was silence.

Curiously enough, the only thing that went through the mind of the bowl of petunias as it fell was Oh no,

not again. Many people have speculated that if we knew exactly why the bowl of petunias had thought that

we would know a lot more about the nature of the universe than we do now.

>>>>”Oh God,” muttered Ford, slumped against a bulkhead and started to count to ten. He was desperately

worried that one day sentinent life forms would forget how to do this. Only by counting could

humans demonstrate their independence of computers.

<<<<<

pag-54 – zaphod’s brain

Zaphod paused for a while. For a while there was silence. Then he frowned and said, “Last night I was

worrying about this again. About the fact that part of my mind just didn’t seem to work properly. Then it

occurred to me that the way it seemed was that someone else was using my mind to have good ideas with,

without telling me about it. I put the two ideas together and decided that maybe that somebody had locked

off part of my mind for that purpose, which was why I couldn’t use it. I wondered if there was a way I could

check.

“I went to the ship’s medical bay and plugged myself into the encephelographic screen. I went through

every major screening test on both my heads – all the tests I had to go through under government medical

officers before my nomination for Presidency could be properly ratified. They showed up nothing.

Nothing unexpected at least. They showed that I was clever, imaginative, irresponsible, untrustworthy,

extrovert, nothing you couldn’t have guessed. And no other anomalies. So I started inventing further

tests, completely at random. Nothing. Then I tried superimposing the results from one head on top of

the results from the other head. Still nothing. Finally I got silly, because I’d given it all up as nothing more

than an attack of paranoia. Last thing I did before I packed it in was take the superimposed picture and look

at it through a green filter. You remember I was always superstitious about the color green when I was a kid?

I always wanted to be a pilot on one of the trading scouts?”

Ford nodded.

“And there it was,” said Zaphod, “clear as day. A whole section in the middle of both brains that related

only to each other and not to anything else around them. Some bastard had cauterized all the synapses and

electronically traumatised those two lumps of cerebellum.”

Ford stared at him, aghast. Trillian had turned white.

“Somebody did that to you?” whispered Ford.

“Yeah.”

“But have you any idea who? Or why?”

“Why? I can only guess. But I do know who the bastard was.”

“You know? How do you know?”

“Because they left their initials burnt into the cauterized synapses. They left them there for me to see.”

Ford stared at him in horror and felt his skin begin to crawl.

“Initials? Burnt into your brain?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, what were they, for God’s sake?”

Zaphod looked at him in silence again for a moment. Then he looked away.

“Z.B.,” he said.

At that moment a steel shutter slammed down behind them and gas started to pour into the chamber.

“I’ll tell you about it later,” choked Zaphod as all three passed out.

pag 55- biro theory

Somewhere in the cosmos, he said, along with all the planets inhabited

by humanoids, reptiloids, fishoids, walking treeoids and superintelligent shades of the colour blue,

there was also a planet entirely given over to biro life forms. And it was to this planet that unattended biros

would make their way, slipping away quietly through wormholes in space to a world where they knew they

could enjoy a uniquely biroid lifestyle, responding to highly biro-oriented stimuli, and generally

leading the biro equivalent of the good life.

pag. 58 – slartibartifast

“What an extraordinary person,” he muttered to himself.

“I beg your pardon?” said the old man.

“Oh nothing, I’m sorry,” said Arthur in embarrassment. “Alright, where do we go?”

“In my aircar,” said the old man motioning Arthur to get into the craft which had settled silently next to

them. “We are going deep into the bowels of the planet where even now our race is being revived from its

five-million-year slumber. Magrathea awakes.”

Arthur shivered involuntarily as he seated himself next to the old man. The strangeness of it, the silent

bobbing movement of the craft as it soared into the night sky quite unsettled him.

He looked at the old man, his face illuminated by the dull glow of tiny lights on the instrument panel.

“Excuse me,” he said to him, “what is your name by the way?”

“My name?” said the old man, and the same distant sadness came into his face again. He paused. “My

name,” he said, “… is Slartibartfast.”

Arthur practically choked.

“I beg your pardon?” he spluttered.

“Slartibartfast,” repeated the old man quietly.

“Slartibartfast?”

The old man looked at him gravely.

“I said it wasn’t important,” he said.

The aircar sailed through the night.

pag. 58 – mice

It is an important and popular fact that things are not always what they seem. For instance, on the planet

Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much

– the wheel, New York, wars and so on – whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water

having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent

than man – for precisely the same reasons.

Curiously enough, the dolphins had long known of the impending destruction of the planet Earth and

had made many attempts to alert mankind of the danger; but most of their communications were

misinterpreted as amusing attempts to punch footballs or whistle for tidbits, so they eventually gave up

and left the Earth by their own means shortly before the Vogons arrived.

The last ever dolphin message was misinterpreted as a surprisingly sophisticated attempt to do a

double-backwards-somersault through a hoop whilst whistling the “Star Sprangled Banner”, but in fact the

message was this: So long and thanks for all the fish.

In fact there was only one species on the planet more intelligent than dolphins, and they spent a lot of their

time in behavioural research laboratories running round inside wheels and conducting frighteningly elegant

and subtle experiments on man. The fact that once again man completely misinterpreted this relationship

was entirely according to these creatures’ plans.

p 59 – hyperspace

He continued: “I should warn you that the chamber we are about to pass into does not literally exist

within our planet. It is a little too … large. We are about to pass through a gateway into a vast tract of

hyperspace. It may disturb you.”

Arthur made nervous noises.

Slartibartfast touched a button and added, not entirely reassuringly. “It scares the willies out of me.

Hold tight.”

The car shot forward straight into the circle of light, and suddenly Arthur had a fairly clear idea of

what infinity looked like.

It wasn’t infinity in fact. Infinity itself looks flat and uninteresting. Looking up into the night sky is

looking into infinity – distance is incomprehensible and therefore meaningless. The chamber into

which the aircar emerged was anything but infinite, it was just very very big, so that it gave the impression

of infinity far better than infinity itself.

Arthur’s senses bobbed and span, as, travelling at the immense speed he knew the aircar attained, they

climbed slowly through the open air leaving the gateway through which they had passed an invisible pinprick

in the shimmering wall behind them.

The wall.

The wall defied the imagination – seduced it and defeated it. The wall was so paralysingly vast and sheer

that its top, bottom and sides passed away beyond the reach of sight. The mere shock of vertigo could kill a

man.

The wall appeared perfectly flat. It would take the finest laser measuring equipment to detect that as it

climbed, apparently to infinity, as it dropped dizzily away, as it planed out to either side, it also curved. It

met itself again thirteen light seconds away. In other words the wall formed the inside of a hollow sphere,

a sphere over three million miles across and flooded with unimaginable light.

“Welcome,” said Slartibartfast as the tiny speck that was the aircar, travelling now at three times the

speed of sound, crept imperceptibly forward into the mindboggling space, “welcome,” he said, “to our factory

floor.”

pag 62- mice running earth

“Earthman, the planet you lived on was commissioned, paid for, and run by mice. It was destroyed

five minutes before the completion of the purpose for which it was built, and we’ve got to build another

one.”

Only one word registered with Arthur.

“Mice?” he said.

“Indeed Earthman.”

“Look, sorry – are we talking about the little white furry things with the cheese fixation and women

standing on tables screaming in early sixties sit coms?”

Slartibartfast coughed politely.

“Earthman,” he said, “it is sometimes hard to follow your mode of speech. Remember I have been

asleep inside this planet of Magrathea for five million years and know little of these early sixties sit coms

of which you speak. These creatures you call mice, you see, they are not quite as they appear. They are

merely the protrusion into our dimension of vast hyperintelligent pan-dimensional beings. The whole

business with the cheese and the squeaking is just a front.”

The old man paused, and with a sympathetic frown continued.

“They’ve been experimenting on you I’m afraid.”

Arthur thought about this for a second, and then his face cleared.

“Ah no,” he said, “I see the source of the misunderstanding now. No, look you see, what happened

was that we used to do experiments on them. They were often used in behavioural research, Pavlov

and all that sort of stuff. So what happened was hat the mice would be set all sorts of tests, learning to ring

bells, run around mazes and things so that the whole nature of the learning process could be examined. From

our observations of their behaviour we were able to learn all sorts of things about our own …”

Arthur’s voice tailed off.

“Such subtlety …” said Slartibartfast, “one has to admire it.”

“What?” said Arthur.

“How better to disguise their real natures, and how better to guide your thinking. Suddenly running

down a maze the wrong way, eating the wrong bit of cheese, unexpectedly dropping dead of myxomatosis,

– if it’s finely calculated the cumulative effect is enormous.”

He paused for effect.

“You see, Earthman, they really are particularly clever hyperintelligent pan-dimensional beings.

Your planet and people have formed the matrix of an organic computer running a ten-million-year research

programme …

“Let me tell you the whole story. It’ll take a little time.”

“Time,” said Arthur weakly, “is not currently one of my problems.”

PAG.62- THE COMPUTER

Many many millions of years ago a race of hyperintelligent pan-dimensional beings (whose physical

manifestation in their own pan-dimensional universe is not dissimilar to our own) got so fed up with the

constant bickering about the meaning of life which used to interrupt their favourite pastime of Brockian

Ultra Cricket (a curious game which involved suddenly hitting people for no readily apparent reason and

then running away) that they decided to sit down and solve their problems once and for all.

And to this end they built themselves a stupendous super computer which was so amazingly intelligent

that even before the data banks had been connected up it had started from I think therefore I am and got as

far as the existence of rice pudding and income tax before anyone managed to turn it off.

It was the size of a small city.

Its main console was installed in a specially designed executive

office, mounted on an enormous executive desk of finest

ultramahagony topped with rich ultrared leather. The dark

carpeting was discreetly sumptuous, exotic pot plants and

tastefully engraved prints of the principal computer programmers and their families were deployed

liberally about the room, and stately windows looked out upon a tree-lined public square.

On the day of the Great On-Turning two soberly dressed programmers with brief cases arrived and

were shown discreetly into the office. They were aware that this day they would represent their entire

race in its greatest moment, but they conducted themselves calmly and quietly as they seated themselves

deferentially before the desk, opened their brief cases and took out their leather-bound notebooks.

Their names were Lunkwill and Fook.

For a few moments they sat in respectful silence, then, after exchanging a quiet glance with Fook,

Lunkwill leaned forward and touched a small black panel.

The subtlest of hums indicated that the massive computer was now in total active mode. After a pause it

spoke to them in a voice rich resonant and deep.

It said: “What is this great task for which I, Deep Thought, the second greatest computer in the Universe

of Time and Space have been called into existence?”

Lunkwill and Fook glanced at each other in surprise.

“Your task, O Computer …” began Fook.

“No, wait a minute, this isn’t right,” said Lunkwill, worried. “We distinctly designed this computer to be

the greatest one ever and we’re not making do with second best. Deep Thought,” he addressed the

computer, “are you not as we designed you to be, the greatest most powerful computer in all time?”

“I described myself as the second greatest,” intoned Deep Thought, “and such I am.”

PG 63 – The answer

“O Deep Thought Computer,” he said, “the task we have designed you to perform is this. We want you

to tell us …” he paused, “… the Answer!”

“The answer?” said Deep Thought. “The answer to what?”

“Life!” urged Fook.

“The Universe!” said Lunkwill.

“Everything!” they said in chorus.

Deep Thought paused for a moment’s reflection.

“Tricky,” he said finally.

“But can you do it?”

Again, a significant pause.

“Yes,” said Deep Thought, “I can do it.”

“There is an answer?” said Fook with breathless excitement.”

“A simple answer?” added Lunkwill.

“Yes,” said Deep Thought. “Life, the Universe, and Everything. There is an answer. But,” he added,

“I’ll have to think about it.”

A sudden commotion destroyed the moment: the door flew open and two angry men wearing the coarse

faded-blue robes and belts of the Cruxwan University burst into the room, thrusting aside the ineffectual

flunkies who tried to bar their way.

“We demand admission!” shouted the younger of the two men elbowing a pretty young secretary in

the throat.

“Come on,” shouted the older one, “you can’t keep us out!” He pushed a junior programmer back

through the door.

“We demand that you can’t keep us out!” bawled the younger one, though he was now firmly inside the

room and no further attempts were being made to stop him.

“Who are you?” said Lunkwill, rising angrily from his seat. “What do you want?”

“I am Majikthise!” announced the older one.

“And I demand that I am Vroomfondel!” shouted the younger one.

Majikthise turned on Vroomfondel. “It’s alright,” he explained angrily, “you don’t need to demand that.”

“Alright!” bawled Vroomfondel banging on an nearby desk. “I am Vroomfondel, and that is not a

demand, that is a solid fact! What we demand is solid facts!”

“No we don’t!” exclaimed Majikthise in irritation. “That is precisely what we don’t demand!”

Scarcely pausing for breath, Vroomfondel shouted, “We don’t demand solid facts! What we demand

is a total absence of solid facts. I demand that I may or may not be Vroomfondel!”

“But who the devil are you?” exclaimed an outraged Fook.

“We,” said Majikthise, “are Philosophers.”

“Though we may not be,” said Vroomfondel waving a warning finger at the programmers.

“Yes we are,” insisted Majikthise. “We are quite definitely here as representatives of the Amalgamated

Union of Philosophers, Sages, Luminaries and Other Thinking Persons, and we want this machine off, and

we want it off now!”

“What’s the problem?” said Lunkwill.

“I’ll tell you what the problem is mate,” said Majikthise, “demarcation, that’s the problem!”

“We demand,” yelled Vroomfondel, “that demarcation may or may not be the problem!”

“You just let the machines get on with the adding up,” warned Majikthise, “and we’ll take care of the

eternal verities thank you very much. You want to check your legal position you do mate. Under law the

Quest for Ultimate Truth is quite clearly the inalienable prerogative of your working thinkers. Any

bloody machine goes and actually finds it and we’re straight out of a job aren’t we? I mean what’s the use of

our sitting up half the night arguing that there may or may not be a God if this machine only goes and gives

us his bleeding phone number the next morning?”

>>>>calculating the answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything -” he paused and

satisfied himself that he now had everyone’s attention, before continuing more quietly, “but the

programme will take me a little while to run.”

Fook glanced impatiently at his watch.

“How long?” he said.

“Seven and a half million years,” said Deep Thought.

<<<<<<

the wall?

pag 66 – the answer

“Seven and a half million years our race has waited for this Great and Hopefully Enlightening Day!”

cried the cheer leader. “The Day of the Answer!”

Hurrahs burst from the ecstatic crowd.

“Never again,” cried the man, “never again will we wake up in the morning and think Who am I? What is

my purpose in life? Does it really, cosmically speaking, matter if I don’t get up and go to work? For today

we will finally learn once and for all the plain and simple answer to all these nagging little problems of Life,

the Universe and Everything!”

[…]

There was a moment’s expectant pause whilst panels slowly came to life on the front of the console.

Lights flashed on and off experimentally and settled down into a businesslike pattern. A soft low hum came

from the communication channel.

“Good morning,” said Deep Thought at last.

“Er … Good morning, O Deep Thought,” said Loonquawl nervously, “do you have … er, that is …”

“An answer for you?” interrupted Deep Thought majestically. “Yes.

I have.”

The two men shivered with expectancy. Their waiting had not been in vain. “There really is one?” breathed Phouchg.

“There really is one,” confirmed Deep Thought.

“To Everything? To the great Question of Life, the Universe and Everything?”

“Yes.”

Both of the men had been trained for this moment, their lives had been a preparation for it, they had been

selected at birth as those who would witness the answer, but even so they found themselves gasping and

squirming like excited children.

“And you’re ready to give it to us?” urged Loonquawl.

“I am.”

“Now?”

“Now,” said Deep Thought.

They both licked their dry lips.

“Though I don’t think,” added Deep Thought, “that you’re going to like it.”

“Doesn’t matter!” said Phouchg. “We must know it! Now!”

“Now?” inquired Deep Thought.

“Yes! Now …”

“Alright,” said the computer and settled into silence again. The two men fidgeted. The tension was

unbearable.

“You’re really not going to like it,” observed Deep Thought.

“Tell us!”

“Alright,” said Deep Thought. “The Answer to the Great Question

…”

“Yes …!”

“Of Life, the Universe and Everything …” said Deep Thought.

“Yes …!”

“Is …” said Deep Thought, and paused.

“Yes …!”

“Is …”

“Yes …!!!…?”

“Forty-two,” said Deep Thought, with infinite majesty and calm.

pag. 68 – the ultimate question

“I checked it very thoroughly,” said the computer, “and that quite definitely is the answer. I think the

problem, to be quite honest with you, is that you’ve never actually known what the question is.”

“But it was the Great Question! The Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything!” howled

Loonquawl.

“Yes,” said Deep Thought with the air of one who suffers fools gladly, “but what actually is it?”

A slow stupefied silence crept over the men as they stared at the computer and then at each other.

“Well, you know, it’s just Everything … Everything …” offered Phouchg weakly. “Exactly!” said Deep Thought. “So once you do know what the question actually is, you’ll know what

the answer means.”

“Oh terrific,” muttered Phouchg flinging aside his notebook and wiping away a tiny tear.

“Look, alright, alright,” said Loonquawl, “can you just please tell us the Question?”

“The Ultimate Question?”

“Yes!”

“Of Life, the Universe, and Everything?”

“Yes!”

Deep Thought pondered this for a moment.

“Tricky,” he said.

“But can you do it?” cried Loonquawl.

Deep Thought pondered this for another long moment.

Finally: “No,” he said firmly.

Both men collapsed on to their chairs in despair.

“But I’ll tell you who can,” said Deep Thought.

They both looked up sharply.

“Who?” “Tell us!”

Suddenly Arthur began to feel his apparently non-existent scalp begin to crawl as he found himself

moving slowly but inexorably forward towards the console, but it was only a dramatic zoom on the part of

whoever had made the recording he assumed.

“I speak of none other than the computer that is to come after me,” intoned Deep Thought, his voice

regaining its accustomed declamatory tones. “A computer whose merest operational parameters I am

not worthy to calculate – and yet I will design it for you. A computer which can calculate the Question to the

Ultimate Answer, a computer of such infinite and subtle complexity that organic life itself shall form

part of its operational matrix. And you yourselves shall take on new forms and go down into the computer

to navigate its ten-million-year program! Yes! I shall design this computer for you. And I shall name it also

unto you. And it shall be called … The Earth.”

Phouchg gaped at Deep Thought.

“What a dull name,” he said and great incisions appeared down the length of his body. Loonquawl too

suddenly sustained horrific gashed from nowhere. The Computer console blotched and cracked, the walls

flickered and crumbled and the room crashed upwards into its own ceiling …

Slartibartfast was standing in front of Arthur holding the two wires.

“End of the tape,” he explained.

>>>>>>>With an amazingly balletic movement Zaphod was standing and scanning the horizon, because that

was how far the gold ground stretched in every direction, perfectly smooth and solid. It gleamed like …

it’s impossible to say what it gleamed like because nothing in the Universe gleams in quite the same way that

a planet of solid gold does.

“Who put all that there?” yelped Zaphod, goggle-eyed.

“Don’t get excited,” said Ford, “it’s only a catalogue.”

“A who?”

“A catalogue,” said Trillian, “an illusion.”

<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

pag 70 – yooden

“So I reckon, what’s so secret that I can’t let anybody know I know it, not the Galactic Government, not

even myself? And the answer is I don’t know. Obviously. But I put a few things together and I can begin to guess. When did I decide to run for President? Shortly after the death of President Yooden Vranx.

You remember Yooden, Ford?”

“Yeah,” said Ford, “he was that guy we met when we were kids, the Arcturan captain. He was a gas. He

gave us conkers when you bust your way into his megafreighter. Said you were the most amazing kid he’d

ever met.”

“What’s all this?” said Trillian.

“Ancient history,” said Ford, “when we were kids together on Betelgeuse. The Arcturan megafreighters

used to carry most of the bulky trade between the Galactic Centre and the outlying regions The Betelgeuse

trading scouts used to find the markets and the Arcturans would supply them. There was a lot of trouble

with space pirates before they were wiped out in the Dordellis wars, and the megafreighters had to be

equipped with the most fantastic defence shields known to Galactic science. They were real brutes of ships,

and huge. In orbit round a planet they would eclipse the sun.

“One day, young Zaphod here decides to raid one. On a tri-jet scooter designed for stratosphere work, a

mere kid. I mean forget it, it was crazier than a mad monkey. I went along for the ride because I’d got some

very safe money on him not doing it, and didn’t want him coming back with fake evidence. So what happens?

We got in his tri-jet which he had souped up into something totally other, crossed three parsecs in a matter

of weeks, bust our way into a megafreighter I still don’t know how, marched on to the bridge waving toy

pistols and demanded conkers. A wilder thing I have not known. Lost me a year’s pocket money. For what?

Conkers.”

“The captain was this really amazing guy, Yooden Vranx,” said Zaphod. “He gave us food, booze –

stuff from really weird parts of the Galaxy – lots of conkers of course, and we had just the most incredible

time. Then he teleported us back. Into the maximum security wing of Betelgeuse state prison. He was a

cool guy. Went on to become President of the Galaxy.”

[…]

“Ford,” said Zaphod quietly.

“Yeah?”

“Just before Yooden died he came to see me.”

“What? You never told me.”

“No.”

“What did he say? What did he come to see you about?”

“He told me about the Heart of Gold. It was his idea that I should steal it.”

“His idea?”

“Yeah,” said Zaphod, “and the only possible way of stealing it was to be at the launching ceremony.”

Ford gaped at him in astonishment for a moment, and then roared with laughter.

“Are you telling me,” he said, “that you set yourself up to become President of the Galaxy just to steal

that ship?”

“That’s it,” said Zaphod with the sort of grin that would get most people locked away in a room with soft

walls.

“But why?” said Ford. “What’s so important about having it?”

“Dunno,” said Zaphod, “I think if I’d consciously known what was so important about it and what I would

need it for it would have showed up on the brain screening tests and I would never have passed. I think

Yooden told me a lot of things that are still locked away.”

“So you think you went and mucked about inside your own brain as a result of Yooden talking to you?”

“He was a hell of a talker.”

“Yeah, but Zaphod old mate, you want to look after yourself you know.”

pag. 71 – earth

“So there you have it,” said Slartibartfast, making a feeble and perfunctory attempt to clear away some of

the appalling mess of his study. He picked up a paper from the top of a pile, but then couldn’t think of

anywhere else to put it, so he but it back on top of the original pile which promptly fell over. “Deep Thought

designed the Earth, we built it and you lived on it.”

“And the Vogons came and destroyed it five minutes before the program was completed,” added Arthur,

not unbitterly.

“Yes,” said the old man, pausing to gaze hopelessly round the room. “Ten million years of planning

and work gone just like that. Ten million years, Earthman … can you conceive of that kind of time span?

A galactic civilization could grow from a single worm five times over in that time. Gone.” He paused.

“Well that’s bureaucracy for you,” he added.

“You know,” said Arthur thoughtfully, “all this explains a lot of things. All through my life I’ve had this

strange unaccountable feeling that something was going on in the world, something big, even sinister, and no

one would tell me what it was.”

“No,” said the old man, “that’s just perfectly normal paranoia.

Everyone in the Universe has that.”

“Everyone?” said Arthur. “Well, if everyone has that perhaps it

means something! Perhaps somewhere outside the Universe we know

…”

“Maybe. Who cares?” said Slartibartfast before Arthur got too excited. “Perhaps I’m old and tired,” he

continued, “but I always think that the chances of finding out what really is going on are so absurdly remote

that the only thing to do is to say hang the sense of it and just keep yourself occupied. Look at me: I design

coastlines. I got an award for Norway.”

[…]

“Where’s the sense in that?” he said. “None that I’ve been able to make out. I’ve been doing fjords in

all my life. For a fleeting moment they become fashionable and I get a major award.”

He turned it over in his hands with a shrug and tossed it aside carelessly, but not so carelessly that it

didn’t land on something soft.

“In this replacement Earth we’re building they’ve given me Africa to do and of course I’m doing it with all

fjords again because I happen to like them, and I’m old fashioned enough to think that they give a lovely

baroque feel to a continent. And they tell me it’s not equatorial enough. Equatorial!” He gave a hollow laugh.

“What does it matter? Science has achieved some wonderful things of course, but I’d far rather be happy than

right any day.”

pag. 73 – The dog incident

It is of course well known that careless talk costs lives, but the full scale of the problem is not always

appreciated.

For instance, at the very moment that Arthur said “I seem to be having tremendous difficulty with my

lifestyle,” a freak wormhole opened up in the fabric of the space-time continuum and carried his words far

far back in time across almost infinite reaches of space to a distant Galaxy where strange and warlike beings

were poised on the brink of frightful interstellar battle.

The two opposing leaders were meeting for the last time.

A dreadful silence fell across the conference table as the commander of the Vl’hurgs, resplendent in

his black jewelled battle shorts, gazed levelly at the G’Gugvuntt leader squatting opposite him in a cloud of

green sweet-smelling steam, and, with a million sleek and horribly beweaponed star cruisers poised to

unleash electric death at his single word of command, challenged the vile creature to take back what it had

said about his mother.

The creature stirred in his sickly broiling vapour, and at that very moment the words I seem to be having

tremendous difficulty with my lifestyle drifted across the conference table.

Unfortunately, in the Vl’hurg tongue this was the most dreadful insult imaginable, and there was

nothing for it but to wage terrible war for centuries.

Eventually of course, after their Galaxy had been decimated over a few thousand years, it was realized

that the whole thing had been a ghastly mistake, and so the two opposing battle fleets settled their few

remaining differences in order to launch a joint attack on our own Galaxy – now positively identified as the

source of the offending remark.

For thousands more years the mighty ships tore across the empty wastes of space and finally dived

screaming on to the first planet they came across – which happened to be the Earth – where due to a terrible

miscalculation of scale the entire battle fleet was accidentally swallowed by a small dog.

Those who study the complex interplay of cause and effect in the history of the Universe say that this sort

of thing is going on all the time, but that we are powerless to prevent it.

“It’s just life,” they say.

pag 74 – mice

“Hosts?” said Arthur. “What hosts? I don’t see any …”

A small voice said, “Welcome to lunch, Earth creature.”

Arthur glanced around and suddenly yelped.

“Ugh!” he said. “There are mice on the table!”

There was an awkward silence as everyone looked pointedly at Arthur.

He was busy staring at two white mice sitting in what looked like whisky glasses on the table. He heard

the silence and glanced around at everyone.

“Oh!” he said, with sudden realization. “Oh, I’m sorry, I wasn’t quite prepared for …”

“Let me introduce you,” said Trillian. “Arthur this is Benji mouse.”

“Hi,” said one of the mice. His whiskers stroked what must have been a touch sensitive panel on the

inside of the whisky-glass like affair, and it moved forward slightly.

“And this is Frankie mouse.”

The other mouse said, “Pleased to meet you,” and did likewise.

Arthur gaped.

“But aren’t they …”

“Yes,” said Trillian, “they are the mice I brought with me from the Earth.”

She looked him in the eye and Arthur thought he detected the tiniest resigned shrug.

“Could you pass me that bowl of grated Arcturan Megadonkey?” she said.

Slartibartfast coughed politely.

“Er, excuse me,” he said.

“Yes, thank you Slartibartfast,” said Benji mouse sharply, “you may go.”

“What? Oh … er, very well,” said the old man, slightly taken aback, “I’ll just go and get on with some of

my fjords then.”

“Ah, well in fact that won’t be necessary,” said Frankie mouse. “It looks very much as if we won’t be

needing the new Earth any longer.” He swivelled his pink little eyes. “Not now that we have found a native of

the planet who was there seconds before it was destroyed.”

“What?” cried Slartibartfast, aghast. “You can’t mean that! I’ve got a thousand glaciers poised and ready to

roll over Africa!”

“Well perhaps you can take a quick skiing holiday before you dismantle them,” said Frankie, acidly.

“Skiing holiday!” cried the old man. “Those glaciers are works of art! Elegantly sculptured contours,

soaring pinnacles of ice, deep majestic ravines! It would be sacrilege to go skiing on high art!”

“Thank you Slartibartfast,” said Benji firmly. “That will be all.”

“Yes sir,” said the old man coldly, “thank you very much. Well, goodbye Earthman,” he said to Arthur,

“hope the lifestyle comes together.”

With a brief nod to the rest of the company he turned and walked sadly out of the room.

Arthur stared after him not knowing what to say.

>>>>riends.”

“Magrathea is a gateway back to our own dimension,” put in Benji.

“Since when,” continued his murine colleague, “we have had an offer of a quite enormously fat contract

to do the 5D chat show and lecture circuit back in our own dimensional neck of the woods, and we’re very

much inclined to take it.”

“I would, wouldn’t you Ford?” said Zaphod promptingly.

“Oh yes,” said Ford, “jump at it, like a shot.”

<<<<<<

>>>>>>> arthur’s brain

pag. 80 – sucidial starship

He jacked himself up to his feet and stood resolutely facing the opposite direction.

“That ship hated me,” he said dejectedly, indicating the policecraft.

“That ship?” said Ford in sudden excitement. “What happened to it? Do you know?”

“It hated me because I talked to it.”

“You talked to it?” exclaimed Ford. “What do you mean you talked to it?”

“Simple. I got very bored and depressed, so I went and plugged myself in to its external computer feed. I

talked to the computer at great length and explained my view of the Universe to it,” said Marvin.

“And what happened?” pressed Ford.

“It committed suicide,” said Marvin and stalked off back to the Heart of Gold.

pag 80 – the restaurant

That night, as the Heart of Gold was busy putting a few light years between itself and the Horsehead

Nebula, Zaphod lounged under the small palm tree on the bridge trying to bang his brain into shape with

massive Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters; Ford and Trillian sat in a corner discussing life and matters arising

from it; and Arthur took to his bed to flip through Ford’s copy of The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Since

he was going to live in the place, he reasoned, he’d better start finding out something about it.

He came across this entry.

It said: ‘The History of every major Galactic Civilization tends to pass through three distinct and

recognizable phases, those of Survival, Inquiry and Sophistication, otherwise known as the How, Why and

Where phases.

“For instance, the first phase is characterized by the question How can we eat? the second by the question

Why do we eat? and the third by the question Where shall we have lunch?”

He got no further before the ship’s intercom buzzed into life.

“Hey Earthman? You hungry kid?” said Zaphod’s voice.

“Er, well yes, a little peckish I suppose,” said Arthur.

“OK baby, hold tight,” said Zaphod. “We’ll take in a quick bite at the Restaurant at the End of the

Universe.”