And Another Thing... (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #6)

by Eoin Colfer

It is a universal maxim that if someone goes to the trouble of printing something on a T-shirt, then it is almost definitely not a hundred percent untrue, which is to say that it is more than likely fairly definitely not altogether false.

The Vogons, irritated by the Earth’s refusal to stay ka-boomed, had engineered the bird to lure the escapees back to the planet before they destroyed it in every dimension, thus fulfilling their original order.

The man remembered having a cat once, if memories could be trusted as anything more than neuron configurations across trillions of synapses. Memories could not be touched with one’s fingers. Could not be felt like the surf flowing over his gnarled toes could be felt. But then what were physical feelings but more electrical messages from the brain? Why believe in them either?

Whenever the Universe fell apart, Ford Prefect was never far behind. Him and that accursed book of his. What was it called? Oh, yes. The Pitchforker’s Pride Is a Fallacy. That, or something very close to it.

“You are a froody dude, Ford Prefect,” he invariably told himself. “Yes, you are.”

Every time she looked into her daughter’s eyes, it was like staring into pools of her own guilt.

“I like being stupid. You see things clearly. Being stupid is like squinting through the sunlight.”

I am home in my beach house. All that other stuff, with the Earth exploding and the green aliens, was all a nightmare. It was nice to see everybody, but why does there always have to be genocide?

And just like that she was gone. Again. No less painful than the first time.

Given Random Dent’s instant and irrational hatred of Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged, it was inevitable that he would eventually become her stepfather. The well-known actor Angus deBeouf, who played a psychiatrist on the hit show Psych-O-Rama for seven seasons, postulated that single mothers feel an attraction to males that is proportional to the revulsion their teenagers feel toward that same person.

“I hate you!” she screamed and stormed off to her room, presumably to replicate more black clothing.

“Don’t feel too badly,” said Trillian, hurrying after her daughter. “She hates everyone.”

Hunt, kill, burn, flay. Those were the kind of words he liked. Especially flay, but it was difficult to work into everyday conversation.

It was a dreamworld, if the dreamers were testosterone-fueled males who were never forced to behave like adults.

This notion genuinely shocked Zaphod, as he believed that the act of sharing his personality with certain people was an act of love in itself.

The past is made up of memories, which are made up of dead stuff that can’t hurt you, like say a pointy stick could.

And…And haven’t you claimed to be in love before? Yes, but that was different. I thought it was love, but I see now it was just an absence of disgust.

“Zaphod Beeblebrox,” said Hillman, as though the name itself were a curse, which on several planets it had indeed become. “Zaphod feckin’ Beeblebrox.”

When his Irish aunt Maedhbhdhb (pronounced Hilda) had received a lethal blow from a falling church gargoyle, Arthur had whispered in her ear: At least the cigarettes won’t kill you now, eh, Aunty?

Most craft give a nod, however brief and unfriendly, toward beauty. Vogon ships did not nod toward beauty. They pulled on ski masks and mugged beauty in a dark alley. They spat in the eye of beauty and bludgeoned their way through the notions of aesthetics and aerodynamics. Vogon cruisers did not so much travel through space as defile it and toss it aside.

“The Hitchhiker’s Guide is a hundred percent accurate. Reality, however, is not as reliable.”

“I would never give you orders, Mighty One. I wouldn’t dream of it. What I’m doing is manipulatering you, for your own good.”

By now the mammoth torpedo was clearly visible to the naked eye, swooping relentlessly toward Innisfree, labored jetstream sputtering behind like Morse code. “Dot dash, dot dash dot,” said Ford. “I think the whole thing reads, Arthur Philip Dent is a jerk and complete arsehole.”

Zaphod threw him a look that asked Hillman just how stupid he was exactly, and when Z. Beeblebrox thinks a person is stupid, then that person is by implication more stupid than Zaphod himself, which is very stupid indeed, but then again probably too stupid to interpret the look, or be insulted even if he did.