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

by Douglas Adams

Two survivors. They are all that remains of the greatest experiment ever conducted—to find the Ultimate Question and the Ultimate Answer of Life, the Universe and Everything.

Anatomical analysis of the Vogon reveals that its brain was originally a badly deformed, misplaced and dyspeptic liver. The fairest thing you can say about them, then, is that they know what they like, and what they like generally involves hurting people and, wherever possible, getting very angry.

It has been said that Vogons are not above a little bribery and corruption in the same way that the sea is not above the clouds, and this was certainly true in his case.

One of the last areas they checked was the small bay in which the Nutri-Matic machine was located. On the delivery plate of the Nutri-Matic Drink Synthesizer was a small tray, on which sat three bone china cups and saucers, a bone china jug of milk, a silver teapot full of the best tea Arthur had ever tasted and a small printed note saying “Wait.”

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is an indispensable companion to all those who are keen to make sense of life in an infinitely complex and confusing Universe, for though it cannot hope to be useful or informative on all matters, it does at least make the reassuring claim, that where it is inaccurate it is at least definitively inaccurate. In cases of major discrepancy it’s always reality that’s got it wrong. This was the gist of the notice. It said “The Guide is definitive. Reality is frequently inaccurate.”

Modern elevators are strange and complex entities. The ancient electric winch and “maximum-capacity-eight-persons” jobs bear as much relation to a Sirius Cybernetics Corporation Happy Vertical People Transporter as a packet of mixed nuts does to the entire west wing of the Sirian State Mental Hospital. This is because they operate on the curious principle of “defocused temporal perception.” In other words they have the capacity to see dimly into the immediate future, which enables the elevator to be on the right floor to pick you up even before you knew you wanted it, thus eliminating all the tedious chatting, relaxing and making friends that people were previously forced to do while waiting for elevators. Not unnaturally, many elevators imbued with intelligence and precognition became terribly frustrated with the mindless business of going up and down, up and down, experimented briefly with the notion of going sideways, as a sort of existential protest, demanded participation in the decision-making process and finally took to squatting in basements sulking. An impoverished hitchhiker visiting any planets in the Sirius star system these days can pick up easy money working as a counselor for neurotic elevators.

For when you are put into the Vortex you are given just one momentary glimpse of the entire unimaginable infinity of creation, and somewhere in it a tiny little marker, a microscopic dot on a microscopic dot, which says “You are here.”

The elation of his recent experience was still with him though. The whole Universe. He had seen the whole Universe stretching to infinity around him—everything. And with it had come the clear and extraordinary knowledge that he was the most important thing in it. Having a conceited ego is one thing. Actually being told by a machine is another. He didn’t have time to reflect on this matter.

“Meanwhile, you and I arranged that you would steal the Improbability Drive ship—the only one which could reach the ruler’s world—and bring it to me here. This you have now done I trust, and I congratulate you.” He smiled a tight little smile which Zaphod wanted to hit with a brick. “Oh, and in case you were wondering,” added Zarniwoop, “this Universe was created specifically for you to come to. You are therefore the most important person in this Universe. You would never,” he said with an even more brickable smile, “have survived the Total Perspective Vortex in the real one. Shall we go?”

The Restaurant at the End of the Universe is one of the most extraordinary ventures in the entire history of catering. It is built on the fragmented remains of an eventually ruined planet which is (wioll haven be) enclosed in a vast time bubble and projected forward in time to the precise moment of the End of the Universe. This is, many would say, impossible. In it, guests take (willan on-take) their places at table and eat (willan on-eat) sumptuous meals while watching (willing watchen) the whole of creation explode around them. This, many would say, is equally impossible. You can arrive (mayan arrivan on-when) for any sitting you like without prior (late fore-when) reservation because you can book retrospectively, as it were, when you return to your own time (you can have on-book haventa forewhen presooning returningwenta retrohome). This is, many would now insist, absolutely impossible. At the Restaurant you can meet and dine with (mayan meetan con with dinan on when) a fascinating cross-section of the entire population of space and time. This, it can be explained patiently, is also impossible.

All you have to do is deposit one penny in a savings account in your own era, and when you arrive at the End of Time the operation of compound interest means that the fabulous cost of your meal has been paid for.

“If you’ve done six impossible things this morning, why not round it off with breakfast at Milliways, the Restaurant at the End of the Universe?”

Seen from the outside, which it never is, the Restaurant resembles a giant glittering starfish beached on a forgotten rock. Each of its arms houses the bars, the kitchens, the force-field generators which protect the entire structure and the decayed hunk of planet on which it sits, and the Time Turbines which slowly rock the whole affair backward and forward across the crucial moment. In the center sits the gigantic golden dome, almost a complete globe, and it was into this area that Zaphod, Ford, Arthur and Trillian now passed.

“Wowee,” said Zaphod. “Zappo,” said Ford. “My great-granddaddy must have really screwed up the computer’s works, you know,” said Zaphod. “I told it to take us to the nearest place to eat and it sends us to the End of the Universe. Remind me to be nice to it one day.” He paused. “Hey, everybody’s here you know. Everybody who was anybody.” “Was?” said Arthur. “At the End of the Universe you have to use the past tense a lot,” said Zaphod, “ ’cause everything’s been done, you know. Hi, guys,”

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy notes that Disaster Area, a plutonium rock band from the Gagrakacka Mind Zones, are generally held to be not only the loudest rock band in the Galaxy, but in fact the loudest noise of any kind at all. Regular concert goers judge that the best sound balance is usually to be heard from within large concrete bunkers some thirty-seven miles from the stage, while the musicians themselves play their instruments by remote control from within a heavily insulated spaceship which stays in orbit around the planet—or more frequently around a completely different planet. Their songs are on the whole very simple and mostly follow the familiar theme of boy-being meets girl-being beneath a silvery moon, which then explodes for no adequately explored reason.

“Marvin,” said Trillian in the gentle, kindly voice that only she was still capable of assuming in talking to this misbegotten creature, “if you knew all along, why then didn’t you tell us?” Marvin’s head swiveled back to her. “You didn’t ask,” he said simply.

“You mean you’ve got a hold full of frozen hairdressers?” he said. “Oh yes,” said the Captain. “Millions of them. Hairdressers, tired TV producers, insurance salesmen, personnel officers, security guards, public relations executives, management consultants, you name it. We’re going to colonize another planet.”

….which planet?

“Well, what happened you see was,” said the Captain, “our planet, the world from which we have come, was, so to speak, doomed.” “Doomed?” “Oh yes. So what everyone thought was, let’s pack the whole population into some giant spaceships and go and settle on another planet.” Having told this much of his story, he settled back with a satisfied grunt. “You mean a less doomed one?” prompted Arthur.

“Yes, so anyway,” he resumed, “the idea was that into the first ship, the ‘A’ ship, would go all the brilliant leaders, the scientists, the great artists, you know, all the achievers; and then into the third, or ‘C’ ship, would go all the people who did the actual work, who made things and did things; and then into the ‘B’ ship—that’s us—would go everyone else, the middlemen, you see.” He smiled happily at them. “And we were sent off first,” he concluded, and hummed a little bathing tune.

“And they made sure they sent you lot off first, did they?” inquired Arthur. “Oh yes,” said the Captain, “well, everyone said, very nicely I thought, that it was very important for morale to feel that they would be arriving on a planet where they could be sure of a good haircut and where the phones were clean.” “Oh yes,” agreed Ford, “I can see that would be very important. And the other ships, er…they followed on after you, did they?”

“You’re a load of useless bloody loonies!” he shouted. “Ah yes, that was it,” beamed the Captain, “that was the reason.”

That night the ship crash-landed onto an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet which circled a small unregarded yellow sun in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western spiral arm of the Galaxy. In the hours preceding the crash Ford Prefect had fought furiously but in vain to unlock the controls of the ship from their preordained flight path. It had quickly become apparent to him that the ship had been programmed to convey its payload safely, if uncomfortably, to its new home but to cripple itself beyond all hope of repair in the process. Its screaming, blazing descent through the atmosphere had stripped away most of its superstructure and outer shielding, and its final inglorious bellyflop into a murky swamp had left its crew only a few hours of darkness during which to revive and offload its deep-frozen and unwanted cargo, for the ship began to settle almost at once, slowly upending its gigantic bulk in the stagnant slime. Once or twice during the night it was starkly silhouetted against the sky as burning meteors—the detritus of its descent—flashed across the sky.

Countless numbers had, unsurprisingly, been lost to the swamp in the night, and millions more had been sucked down with the ship, but those who survived still numbered hundreds of thousands and as the day wore on they crawled out over the surrounding countryside, each looking for a few square feet of solid ground on which to collapse and recover from their nightmare ordeal.

“Why can’t people just learn to live together in peace and harmony?” said Arthur. Ford gave a loud, very hollow laugh. “Forty-two!” he said with a malicious grin. “No, doesn’t work. Never mind.”

Looking over his shoulder Arthur saw that he was twiddling with knobs on a small black box. Ford had already introduced this box to Arthur as a Sub-Etha Sens-O-Matic, but Arthur had merely nodded absently and not pursued the matter. In his mind the Universe still divided into two parts—the Earth, and everything else. The Earth having been demolished to make way for a hyperspace bypass meant that this view of things was a little lopsided, but Arthur tended to cling to that lopsidedness as being his last remaining contact with his home. Sub-Etha Sens-O-Matics belonged firmly in the “everything else” category.

“Zaphod, who is this man?” said Trillian shakily, wobbling to her feet. “What’s he doing here? Why’s he on our ship?” “He’s a very stupid man,” said Zaphod, “who wants to meet the man who rules the Universe.” “Ah,” said Trillian, taking the bottle from Zaphod and helping herself, “a social climber.”

The major problem—one of the major problems, for there are several—one of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them. To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job. To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem.

“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?” Zarniwoop stared at him. The steam began to rise from his sodden clothes. “So you answer all questions like this?” he said. The man answered quickly. “I say what it occurs to me to say when I think I hear people say things. More I cannot say.” Zaphod laughed happily. “I’ll drink to that,” he said and pulled out the bottle of Janx Spirit. He leaped and handed the bottle to the ruler of the Universe, who took it with pleasure.

“Out there?” said the man. “Out where?” “Out there!” said Zarniwoop, pointing at the door. “How can you tell there’s anything out there?” said the man politely. “The door’s closed.” The rain continued to pound the roof. Inside the shack it was warm. “But you know there’s a whole Universe out there!” cried Zarniwoop. “You can’t dodge your responsibilities by saying they don’t exist!” The ruler of the Universe thought for a long while while Zarniwoop quivered with anger. “You’re very sure of your facts,” he said at last. “I couldn’t trust the thinking of a man who takes the Universe—if there is one—for granted.”

“But don’t you believe in anything?” The man shrugged and picked up his cat. “I don’t understand what you mean,” he said. “You don’t understand that what you decide in this shack of yours affects the lives and fates of millions of people? This is all monstrously wrong!” “I don’t know. I’ve never met all these people you speak of. And neither, I suspect, have you. They only exist in words we hear. It is folly to say you know what is happening to other people. Only they know, if they exist. They have their own Universes of their eyes and ears.”

“I think I’m just popping outside for a moment.” She left and walked into the rain.

“I think the Universe is in pretty good hands, yeah?” “Very good,” said Trillian.

It wasn’t all the pastoral delights that were making Arthur feel so cheery, though. He had just had a wonderful idea about how to cope with the terrible lonely isolation, the nightmares, the failure of all his attempts at horticulture, and the sheer futurelessness and futility of his life here on prehistoric Earth, which was that he would go mad.

“The Guide says?” “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.” He smiled weakly. He pointed at the knees of his trousers and held his arms up to show the elbows. They were all torn and worn through.

“What I need,” shouted Ford, by way of clarifying his previous remarks, “is a strong drink and a peer group.”

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.

“You have something on your mind, I think,” said the mattress, floopily. “More than you can possibly imagine,” dreared Marvin. “My capacity for mental activity of all kinds is as boundless as the infinite reaches of space itself. Except of course for my capacity for happiness.” Stomp, stomp, he went. “My capacity for happiness,” he added, “you could fit into a matchbox without taking out the matches first.” The mattress globbered. This is the noise made by a live, swamp-dwelling mattress that is deeply moved by a story of personal tragedy.

million years,”

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has this to say on the subject of flying. There is an art, it says, or, rather, a knack to flying. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss. Pick a nice day, it suggests, and try it. The first part is easy. All it requires is simply the ability to throw yourself forward with all your weight, and the willingness not to mind that it’s going to hurt. That is, it’s going to hurt if you fail to miss the ground. Most people fail to miss the ground, and if they are really trying properly, the likelihood is that they will fail to miss it fairly hard. Clearly, it is this second part, the missing, which presents the difficulties. One problem is that you have to miss the ground accidentally. It’s no good deliberately intending to miss the ground because you won’t. You have to have your attention suddenly distracted by something else when you’re halfway there, so that you are no longer thinking about falling, or about the ground, or about how much it’s going to hurt if you fail to miss it.

This was their ship, and they were currently singing a little song about that, too, expressing the twin joys of achievement and ownership. The chorus was a little poignant, and told of their sorrow because their work had kept them such long hours in the garage, away from the company of their wives and children, who had missed them terribly but had kept them cheerful by bringing them continual stories of how nicely the puppy was growing up. Pow, they took off.

They flew out of the cloud. They saw the staggering jewels of the night in their infinite dust and their minds sang with fear. For a while they flew on, motionless against the starry sweep of the Galaxy, itself motionless against the infinite sweep of the Universe. And then they turned round. “It’ll have to go,” the men of Krikkit said as they headed back for home. — On the way back they sang a number of tuneful and reflective songs on the subjects of peace, justice, morality, culture, sport, family life and the obliteration of all other life forms.

“Overnight,” said Slartibartfast, “the whole population of Krikkit was transformed from being charming, delightful, intelligent…” “…if whimsical…” interpolated Arthur. “…ordinary people,” said Slartibartfast, “into charming, delightful, intelligent…” “…whimsical…” “…manic xenophobes. The idea of a Universe didn’t fit into their world picture, so to speak. They simply couldn’t cope with it. And so, charmingly, delightfully, intelligently, whimsically if you like, they decided to destroy it. What’s the matter now?”

“So, like I said, these are a bunch of really sweet guys, but you wouldn’t want to share a Galaxy with them, not if they’re just gonna keep at it, not if they’re not gonna learn to relax a little. I mean it’s just gonna be continual nervous time, isn’t it, right? Pow, pow, pow, when are they next coming at us? Peaceful coexistence is just right out, right? Get me some water somebody, thank you.”

“They believe in ‘peace, justice, morality, culture, sport, family life and the obliteration of all other life forms.’ ”

When the rest of the Universe came to its final end, when the whole of creation reached its dying fall (this was all, of course, in the days before it was known that the end of the Universe would be a spectacular catering venture) and life and matter ceased to exist, then the planet of Krikkit and its sun would emerge from its Slo-Time envelope and continue a solitary existence, such as it craved, in the twilight of the Universal void.

Instead, he had somehow got talked into doing some part-time work for the Campaign for Real Time and had started to take it all seriously for the first time in his life. As a result he now found himself spending his fast declining years combating evil and trying to save the Galaxy. He found it exhausting work and sighed heavily.

“The point is,” he said, “that people like you and me, Slartibartfast, and Arthur—particularly and especially Arthur—are just dilettantes, eccentrics, layabouts if you like.” Slartibartfast frowned, partly in puzzlement and partly in umbrage. He started to speak.

“I care about lots of things,” said Slartibartfast, his voice trembling partly with annoyance, but partly also with uncertainty. “Such as?” “Well,” said the old man, “life, the Universe. Everything, really. Fjords.”

Time travel is increasingly regarded as a menace. History is being polluted. The Encyclopedia Galactica has much to say on the theory and practice of time travel, most of which is incomprehensible to anyone who hasn’t spent at least four lifetimes studying advanced hypermathematics, and since it was impossible to do this before time travel was invented, there is a certain amount of confusion as to how the idea was arrived at in the first place. One rationalization of this problem states that time travel was, by its very nature, discovered simultaneously at all periods of history, but this is clearly bunk.

The trouble is that a lot of history is now quite clearly bunk as well.