The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy #1-5)

by Douglas Adams

“Come off it, Mr. Dent,” he said, “you can’t win, you know. You can’t lie in front of the bulldozer indefinitely.” He tried to make his eyes blaze fiercely but they just wouldn’t do it. Arthur lay in the mud and squelched at him. “I’m game,” he said, “we’ll see who rusts first.”

The Damogran Frond Crested Eagle had heard of the notion of survival of the species but wanted no truck with it.

“What’s so unpleasant about being drunk?” “You ask a glass of water.”

Five wild Event Maelstroms swirled in vicious storms of unreason and spewed up a pavement.

One of the major difficulties Trillian experienced in her relationship with Zaphod was learning to distinguish between him pretending to be stupid just to get people off their guard, pretending to be stupid because he couldn’t be bothered to think and wanted someone else to do it for him, pretending to be outrageously stupid to hide the fact that he actually didn’t understand what was going on, and really being genuinely stupid.

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

He attacked everything in life with a mixture of extraordinary genius and naive incompetence and it was often difficult to tell which was which.

Ford carried on counting quietly. This is about the most aggressive thing you can do to a computer, the equivalent of going up to a human being and saying Blood…blood…blood…blood…

“I only know as much about myself as my mind can work out under its current conditions. And its current conditions are not good.”

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—while 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.

“Look,” said Arthur, “would it save you a lot of time if I just gave up and went mad now?”

In the sky a huge sign appeared, replacing the catalog number. It said, Whatever your tastes, Magrathea can cater for you. We are not proud.

“Hey, they’re shooting at us,” said Arthur, crouching in a tight ball. “I thought they said they didn’t want to do that.” “Yeah, I thought they said that,” agreed Ford. Zaphod stuck a head up for a dangerous moment. “Hey,” he said, “I thought you said you didn’t want to shoot us!” and ducked again. They waited. After a moment a voice replied, “It isn’t easy being a cop!” “What did he say?” whispered Ford in astonishment.

“But that’s crazy!” cried Trillian. “You wouldn’t do that!” “Oh yes, we would,” shouted the cop, “wouldn’t we?” he asked the other one. “Oh yes, we’d have to, no question,” the other one called back. “But why?” demanded Trillian. “Because there are some things you have to do even if you are an enlightened liberal cop who knows all about sensitivity and everything!” “I just don’t believe these guys,” muttered Ford, shaking his head. One cop shouted to the other, “Shall we shoot them again for a bit?” “Yeah, why not?”

“Yeah. Listen, I’m Zaphod Beeblebrox, my father was Zaphod Beeblebrox the Second, my grandfather Zaphod Beeblebrox the Third…” “What?” “There was an accident with a contraceptive and a time machine. Now concentrate!”

For instance, when the Editors of the Guide were sued by the families of those who had died as a result of taking the entry on the planet Traal literally (it said “Ravenous Bugblatter Beasts often make a very good meal for visiting tourists” instead of “Ravenous Bugblatter Beasts often make a very good meal of visiting tourists”), they claimed that the first version of the sentence was the more aesthetically pleasing, summoned a qualified poet to testify under oath that beauty was truth, truth beauty and hoped thereby to prove that the guilty party in this case was Life itself for failing to be either beautiful or true. The judges concurred, and in a moving speech held that Life itself was in contempt of court, and duly confiscated it from all those there present before going off to enjoy a pleasant evening’s ultragolf.

“We can all see into the future,” whispered the elevator in what sounded like terror, “it’s part of our programming.”

He was clearly a man of many qualities, even if they were mostly bad ones.

Nevertheless, like every parking lot in the Galaxy throughout the entire history of parking lots, this parking lot smelled predominantly of impatience.

The paintwork and accessory detail clearly said “Not only am I rich enough to afford this ship, I am also rich enough not to take it seriously.” It was wonderfully hideous.

It is a curious fact, and one to which no one knows quite how much importance to attach, that something like 85 percent of all known worlds in the Galaxy, be they primitive or highly advanced, have invented a drink called jynnan tonnyx, or gee-N-N-T’N-ix, or jinond-o-nicks, or any one of a thousand or more variations on the same phonetic theme. The drinks themselves are not the same, and vary between the Sivolvian “chinanto/mnigs” which is ordinary water served at slightly above room temperature, and the Gagrakackan “tzjin-anthony-ks” which kills cows at a hundred paces; and in fact the one common factor between all of them, beyond the fact that the names sound the same, is that they were all invented and named before the worlds concerned made contact with any other worlds.

“Trouble with a long journey like this,” continued the Captain, “is that you end up just talking to yourself a lot, which gets terribly boring because half the time you know what you’re going to say next.” “Only half the time?” asked Arthur in surprise. The Captain thought for a moment. “Yes, about half, I’d say. Anyway—where’s the soap?”

The princes, who are of course brave, noble and wise, travel widely in distant lands, fight giant ogres, pursue exotic philosophies, take tea with weird gods and rescue beautiful monsters from ravening princesses before finally announcing that they have achieved enlightenment and that their wanderings are therefore accomplished. The second, and much longer, part of each song would then tell of all their bickerings about which one of them is going to have to walk back.

“Do you rule the Universe?” said Zaphod. The man smiled at him. “I try not to,” he said.

“How can I tell,” said the man, “that the past isn’t a fiction designed to account for the discrepancy between my immediate physical sensations and my state of mind?”

His mouth started to speak, but his brain decided it hadn’t got anything to say yet and shut it again. His brain then started to contend with the problem of what his eyes told it they were looking at, but in doing so relinquished control of the mouth which promptly fell open again. Once more gathering up the jaw, his brain lost control of his left hand which then wandered around in an aimless fashion. For a second or so the brain tried to catch the left hand without letting go of the mouth and simultaneously tried to think about what was buried in the ice, which is probably why the legs went and Arthur dropped restfully to the ground.

Wail, wail, screech, wail, howl, honk, squeak went the bagpipes, increasing the Captain’s already considerable pleasure at the thought that any moment now they might stop. That was something he looked forward to as well.

“All right,” said Ford, “let’s see how you’re doing.” He plunked himself down on the ground to see how long he could keep his temper. The Captain made a sort of conciliatory harrumphing noise. “I would like to call to order,” he said pleasantly, “the five hundred and seventy-third meeting of the colonization committee of Fintlewoodlewix….” Ten seconds, thought Ford, as he leaped to his feet again. “This is futile,” he exclaimed. “Five hundred and seventy-three committee meetings and you haven’t even discovered fire yet!”

The crowd were tense. They were expecting something wonderful from Ford. “Stick it up your nose,” he said. “Which is precisely the sort of thing we need to know,” insisted the girl. “Do people want fire that can be fitted nasally?” “Do you?” Ford asked the crowd. “Yes!” shouted some. “No!” shouted others happily. They didn’t know, they just thought it was great.

They clattered to a halt and banged to attention. One of them fell over and never moved again.

“Put the Scrabble away, Arthur,” he said, “it won’t save the human race, because this lot aren’t going to be the human race. The human race is currently sitting around a rock on the other side of this hill making documentaries about themselves.”

They moped about for a bit. Arthur sat on the ground and started pulling up bits of grass, but found that it wasn’t an occupation he could get deeply engrossed in.

“That’s it.” “Six by nine. Forty-two.” “That’s it. That’s all there is.”

In the end, it was the Sunday afternoons he couldn’t cope with, and that terrible listlessness that starts to set in at about 2:55, when you know you’ve taken all the baths you can usefully take that day, that however hard you stare at any given paragraph in the newspaper you will never actually read it, or use the revolutionary new pruning technique it describes, and that as you stare at the clock the hands will move relentlessly on to four o’clock, and you will enter the long dark teatime of the soul.

“The Guide says that there is an art to flying,” said Ford, “or rather a knack. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.”

Arthur felt happy. He was terribly pleased that the day was for once working out so much according to plan. Only twenty minutes ago he had decided he would go mad, and now here he was already chasing a Chesterfield sofa across the fields of prehistoric Earth.

Arthur’s consciousness approached his body as from a great distance, and reluctantly. It had had some bad times in there. Slowly, nervously, it entered and settled down into its accustomed position.

“Hello?” he said into the imaginary mouthpiece. “Is that Arthur Dent? Ah, hello, yes. This is Arthur Dent speaking. Don’t hang up.” He looked at the imaginary phone in disappointment. “He hung up,” he said, shrugged and put the imaginary phone neatly back on its imaginary hook. “This is not my first temporal anomaly,” he added. A glummer look replaced the already glum look on Arthur Dent’s face.

“Ah, good,” said Arthur, and relaxed. He had no idea what all that was about, but at least it seemed to be over. It wasn’t.

His brain lurked like a frightened puppy in its kennel.

Oh, hello, Slartibartfast, what are you doing here?” “Oh, pottering, pottering,” said the old man gravely.

“What I need,” shouted Ford, by way of clarifying his previous remarks, “is a strong drink and a peer group.” He continued to run, pausing only for a moment to grab Arthur’s arm and drag him along with him. Arthur had adopted his normal crisis role, which was to stand with his mouth hanging open and let it all wash over him.

Arthur lay in startled stillness on the acceleration couch. He wasn’t certain whether he had just got space-sickness or religion.

Raffia-wrapped bottles lurked hideously in the shadows.

“A curse has arisen from the mists of time,” said Slartibartfast. “Yes, I expect so,” said Ford.

“What’s Slartibartfast looking so anxious about?” said Arthur. “Nothing,” said Ford. “Doom,” said Slartibartfast.

“My doctor says that I have a malformed public duty gland and a natural deficiency in moral fiber,” he muttered to himself, “and that I am therefore excused from saving Universes.”

Bistromathics itself is simply a revolutionary new way of understanding the behavior of numbers. Just as Einstein observed that space was not an absolute but depended on the observer’s movement in space, and that time was not an absolute, but depended on the observer’s movement in time, so it is now realized that numbers are not absolute, but depend on the observer’s movement in restaurants.

The second nonabsolute number is the given time of arrival, which is now known to be one of those most bizarre of mathematical concepts, a recipriversexcluson, a number whose existence can only be defined as being anything other than itself.

Arthur nodded wisely to himself. After a while he realized that this wasn’t getting him anywhere and decided that he would say “What?” after all. “In space travel,” repeated Slartibartfast, “all the numbers are awful.” Arthur nodded again and looked around to Ford for help, but Ford was practicing being sullen and getting quite good at it.