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asked him if he’d come to clean the windows and he said no he’d come to demolish the house. He didn’t tell me straight away, of course. Oh no. First he wiped a couple of windows and charged me a fiver. Then he told me.’
Zaphod Beeblebrox, adventurer, ex-hippy, good-timer, (crook? quite possibly), manic self-publicist, terribly bad at personal relationships, often thought to be completely out to lunch.
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.
Meanwhile, the natural forces on the planet Vogsphere had been working overtime to make up for their earlier blunder. They brought forth scintillating jewelled scuttling crabs, which the Vogons ate, smashing their shells with iron mallets; tall aspiring trees of breathtaking slenderness and colour which the Vogons cut down and burnt 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.
One of the things Ford Prefect had always found hardest to understand about humans was their habit of continually stating and repeating the very very 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 all right?
If they don’t keep exercising their lips, he thought, their brains start working.
‘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.’
I’ve just had an unhappy love affair, so I don’t see why anybody else should have a good time.
don’t want to die now!’ he yelled. ‘I’ve still got a headache! I don’t want to go to heaven with a headache, I’d be all cross and wouldn’t enjoy it!’
that I really wish I’d listened to what my mother told me when I was young.’ ‘Why, what did she tell you?’ ‘I don’t know, I didn’t listen.’
planet Bethselamin is now so worried about the cumulative erosion by ten billion visiting tourists a year that any net imbalance between the amount you eat and the amount you excrete whilst on the planet is surgically removed from your bodyweight when you leave: so every time you go to the lavatory there it is vitally important to get a receipt.)
‘I’ve been thinking about it, and it seems such a terrible idea that I think I ought to do it.’
The other two-thirds stayed firmly at home and lived full, rich and happy lives until they were all suddenly wiped out by a virulent disease contracted from a dirty telephone.
To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those people who most 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.
‘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.
LIVR (the Learned, Impartial and Very Relaxed),
that’s the deciding factor. We can’t win against obsession. They care, we don’t. They win.’
The Wikkit Key was rebuilt. Its components shone and glittered: the Steel Pillar (or Marvin’s leg) of Strength and Power, the Gold Bail (or heart of the Infinite Improbability Drive) of Prosperity, the Perspex Pillar (or Argabuthon Sceptre of Justice) of Science and Reason, the Silver Bail (or Rory Award for The Most Gratuitous Use Of The Word ‘Fuck’ In A Serious Screenplay) and the now reconstituted Wooden Pillar (or Ashes of a burnt stump signifying the death of English cricket) of Nature and Spirituality.
Zaphod did not want to tangle with them and, deciding that just as discretion was the better part of valour, so was cowardice the better part of discretion, he valiantly hid himself in a cupboard.
Douglas Adams had gone to Hollywood on his first, abortive, quest to get The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy made into a film. He had lived there for over a year, doing drafts of the film, did not have a good time and, surprised and a little battered, he had returned home to a small converted stable house off Upper Street in Islington
He hadn’t realized that life speaks with a voice to you, a voice that brings you answers to the questions you continually ask of it, had never consciously detected it or recognized its tones till it now said something it had never said to him before, which was ‘Yes’.
The Census report, like most such surveys, had cost an awful lot of money and didn’t tell anybody anything they didn’t already know – except that every single person in the Galaxy had 2.4 legs and owned a hyena.
And as he drove on, the rainclouds dragged down the sky after him, for, though he did not know it, Rob McKenna was a Rain God. All he knew was that his working days were miserable and he had a succession of lousy holidays. All the clouds knew was that they loved him and wanted to be near him, to cherish him, and to water him.
he wasn’t going in the direction that the figure wanted to go, whatever direction that might be,
none of its field researchers are allowed to accept any kind of services, discounts or preferential treatment of any kind in return for editorial favours unless: a) they have made a bona fide attempt to pay for a service in the normal way; b) their lives would be otherwise in danger; c) they really want to.
unfathomable chances of fate, he got it exactly right, though he of course would never know that. He just went up to London and knocked on the appropriate door. ‘Oh. I thought you were going to phone me first.’ Arthur gaped in astonishment. ‘You can only come in for a few minutes,’ said Fenchurch. ‘I’m just going out.’
He hadn’t realized that life speaks with a voice to you, a voice that brings you answers to the questions you continually ask of it, had never consciously detected it or recognized its tones till it now said something it had never said to him before, which was ‘Yes’. Fenchurch
‘It was just such a sudden revelation, years of almost unnoticed worry just dropping away, like taking off heavy weights, like black and white becoming colour, like a dry stick suddenly being watered. The sudden shift of perspective that says, “Put away your worries, the world is a good and perfect place. It is in fact very easy.”
Has he no spirit? Has he no passion? Does he not, to put it in a nutshell, fuck?’
do you know how much a tour operator is paying that guy not to go to Malaga this year? I mean forget irrigating the Sahara and boring stuff like that, this guy has a whole new career ahead of him, just avoiding places for money. The man’s turning into a monster, Arthur, we might even have to make him win the bingo. ‘Listen, we may want to do a feature on you, Arthur, the Man Who Made the Rain God Rain.
‘I have had a day,’ said Arthur, ‘of extreme telephonic exhaustion.
The garage attendant didn’t think much of their car, but that was fine because they didn’t either.
This was perfectly true, and a very respectable view widely held by right-thinking people, who are largely recognizable as being right-thinking people by the mere fact that they hold this view.
Nothing travels faster than the speed of light with the possible exception of bad news,
amputation of Damascus (the world had moved on from surgical strikes.
‘Organization?’ yelled Ford. ‘Organization? What a bloody stupid word for a set-up like this!’ ‘Precisely our sentiments. Under-structured, over-resourced, under-managed, over-inebriated.
‘It’s the story of my life. You see, the quality of any advice anybody has to offer has to be judged against the quality of life they actually lead.
more specific to me?’ ‘Everything you see or hear or experience in any way at all is specific to you. You create a universe by perceiving it, so everything in the universe you perceive is specific to you.’
He knew that one of the things he was supposed to do as a parent was to show trust in his child, to build a sense of trust and confidence into the bedrock of relationship between them. He had had a nasty feeling that that might be an idiotic thing to do, but he did it anyway, and sure enough it had turned out to be an idiotic thing to do.
Ship’s cabin robots get destroyed. The cyberminds that control them survive and start infesting the local wildlife. Can turn a whole ecosystem into some kind of helpless thrashing service industry, handing out hot towels and drinks to passers-by. Should be a law against it.
‘Life,’ he said, ‘will be a very great deal less weird without you!’
