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DOUGLAS ADAMS

THE ULTIMATE

HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE

Complete & Unabridged

Contents:

Introduction: A Guide to the Guide

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

Life, the Universe and Everything

So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

Young Zaphod Plays It Safe

Mostly Harmless

Footnotes

Introduction: A GUIDE TO

THE GUIDE

Some unhelpful remarks from the author

The history of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is now so

complicated that every time I tell it I contradict myself, and whenever

I do get it right I'm misquoted. So the publication of this omnibus

edition seemed like a good opportunity to set the record straight ʹ or

at least firmly crooked. Anything that is put down wrong here is, as far

as I'm concerned, wrong for good.

The idea for the title first cropped up while I was lying drunk in a

field in Innsbruck, Austria, in 1971. Not particularly drunk, just the

sort of drunk you get when you have a couple of stiff Gössers after

not having eaten for two days straight, on account of being a

penniless hitchhiker. We are talking of a mild inability to stand up.

I was traveling with a copy of the Hitch Hiker s Guide to Europe by

Ken Walsh, a very battered copy that I had borrowed from someone.

In fact, since this was 1971 and I still have the book, it must count as

stolen by now. I didn't have a copy of Europe on Five Dollars a Day (as

it then was) because I wasn't in that financial league.

Night was beginning to fall on my field as it spun lazily underneath

me. I was wondering where I could go that was cheaper than

Innsbruck, revolved less and didn't do the sort of things to me that

Innsbruck had done to me that afternoon. What had happened was

this. I had been walking through the town trying to find a particular

address, and being thoroughly lost I stopped to ask for directions

from a man in the street. I knew this mightn't be easy because I don't

speak German, but I was still surprised to discover just how much

difficulty I was having communicating with this particular man.

Gradually the truth dawned on me as we struggled in vain to

understand each other that of all the people in Innsbruck I could have

stopped to ask, the one I had picked did not speak English, did not

speak French and was also deaf and dumb. With a series of sincerely

apologetic hand movements, I disentangled myself, and a few

minutes later, on another street, I stopped and asked another man

who also turned out to be deaf and dumb, which was when I bought

the beers.

I ventured back onto the street. I tried again.

When the third man I spoke to turned out to be deaf and dumb

and also blind I began to feel a terrible weight settling on my

shoulders; wherever I looked the trees and buildings took on dark and

menacing aspects. I pulled my coat tightly around me and hurried

lurching down the street, whipped by a sudden gusting wind. I

bumped into someone and stammered an apology, but he was deaf

and dumb and unable to understand me. The sky loured. The

pavement seemed to tip and spin. If I hadn't happened then to duck

down a side street and pass a hotel where a convention for the deaf

was being held, there is every chance that my mind would have

cracked completely and I would have spent the rest of my life writing

the sort of books for which Kafka became famous and dribbling.

As it is I went to lie in a field, along with my Hitch Hiker's Guide to

Europe, and when the stars came out it occurred to me that if only

someone would write a Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy as well, then

I for one would be off like a shot. Having had this thought I promptly

fell asleep and forgot about it for six years.

I went to Cambridge University. I took a number of bathsʹand a

degree in English. I worried a lot about girls and what had happened

to my bike. Later I became a writer and worked on a lot of things that

were almost incredibly successful but in fact just failed to see the light

of day. Other writers will know what I mean.

My pet project was to write something that would combine

comedy and science fiction, and it was this obsession that drove me

into deep debt and despair. No one was interested, except finally one

man a BBC radio producer named Simon Brett who had had the same

idea, comedy and science fiction. Although Simon only produced the

first episode before leaving the BBC to concentrate on his own writing

(he is best known in the United Stares for his excellent Charles Paris

detective novels), I owe him an immense debt of gratitude for simply

getting the thing to happen in the first place. He was succeeded by

the legendary Geoffrey Perkins.

In its original form the show was going to be rather different. I was

feeling a little disgruntled with the world at the time and had put

together about six different plots, each of which ended with the

destruction of the world in a different way, and for a different reason.

It was to be called "The Ends of the Earth "

While I was filling in the details of the first plot ʹ in which the Earth

was demolished to make way for a new hyperspace express route ʹ I

realized that I needed to have someone from another planet around

to tell the reader what was going on, to give the story the context it

needed. So I had to work out who he was and what he was doing on

the Earth.

I decided to call him Ford Prefect. (This was a joke that missed

American audiences entirely, of course, since they had never heard of

the rather oddly named little car, and many thought it was a typing

error for Perfect.) I explained in the text that the minimal research my

alien character had done before arriving on this planet had led him to

think that this name would be "nicely inconspicuous." He had simply

mistaken the dominant life form.

So how would such a mistake arise? I remembered when I used to

hitchhike through Europe and would often find that the information

or advice that came my way was out of date or misleading in some

way. Most of it, of course, just came from stories of other people's

travel experiences.

At that point the title The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

suddenly popped back into my mind from wherever it had been

hiding all this time. Ford, I decided, would be a researcher who

collected data for the Guide. As soon as I started to develop this

particular notion, it moved inexorably to the center of the story, and

the rest, as the creator of the original Ford Prefect would say, is bunk.

The story grew in the most convoluted way, as many people will be

surprised to learn. Writing episodically meant that when I finished

one episode I had no idea about what the next one would contain.

When, in the twists and turns of the plot, some event suddenly

seemed to illuminate things that had gone before, I was as surprised

as anyone else.

I think that the BBC's attitude toward the show while it was in

production was very similar to that which Macbeth had toward

murdering people ʹ initial doubts, followed by cautious enthusiasm

and then greater and greater alarm at the sheer scale of the

undertaking and still no end in sight. Reports that Geoffrey and I and

the sound engineers were buried in a subterranean studio for weeks

on end, taking as long to produce a single sound effect as other

people took to produce an entire series (and stealing everybody else's

studio time in which to do so), were all vigorously denied but

absolutely true.

The budget of the series escalated to the point that it could have

practically paid for a few seconds of Dallas. If the show hadn't

worked...

The first episode went out on BBC Radio 4 at 10 30 P.M. on

Wednesday, March 8, 1978, in a huge blaze of no publicity at all. Bats

heard it. The odd dog barked.

After a couple of weeks a letter or two trickled in. So ʹ someone

out there had listened. People I Balked to seemed to like Marvin the

Paranoid Android, whom I had written in as a one ʹ scene joke and

had only developed further at Geoffrey's insistence.

Then some publishers became interested, and I was commissioned

by Pan Books in England to write up the series in book form. After a

lot of procrastination and hiding and inventing excuses and having

baths, I managed to get about two-‐thirds of it done. At this point they

said, very pleasantly and politely, that I had already passed ten

deadlines, so would I please just finish the page I was on and let them

have the damn thing.

Meanwhile, I was busy trying to write another series and was also

writing and script editing the TV series "Dr. Who," because while it

was all very pleasant to have your own radio series, especially one

that somebody had written in to say they had heard, it didn't exactly

buy you lunch.

So that was more or less the situation when the book The

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was published in England in

September 1979 and appeared on the Sunday Times mass market

best-‐seller list at number one and just stayed there. Clearly,

somebody had been listening.

This is where things start getting complicated, and this is what I

was asked, in writing this Introduction, to explain. The Guide has

appeared in so many forms ʹ books, radio, a television series, records

and soon to be a major motion picture ʹ each time with a different

story line that even its most acute followers have become baffled at

times.

Here then is a breakdown of the different versions ʹ not including

the various stage versions, which haven't been seen in the States and

only complicate the matter further.

The radio series began in England in March 1978. The first series

consisted of six programs, or "fits" as they were called. Fits 1 thru 6.

Easy. Later that year, one more episode was recorded and broadcast,

commonly known as the Christmas episode. It contained no reference

of any kind to Christmas. It was called the Christmas episode because

it was first broadcast on December 24, which is not Christmas Day.

After this, things began to get increasingly complicated.

In the fall of 1979, the first Hitchhiker book was published in

England, called The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. It was a

substantially expanded version of the first four episodes of the radio

series, in which some of the characters behaved in entirely different

ways and others behaved in exactly the same ways but for entirely

different reasons, which amounts to the same thing but saves

rewriting the dialogue.

At roughly the same time a double record album was released,

which was, by contrast, a slightly contracted version of the first four

episodes of the radio series. These were not the recordings that were

originally broadcast but wholly new recordings of substantially the

same scripts. This was done because we had used music off

gramophone records as incidental music for the series, which is fine

on radio, but makes commercial release impossible.

In January 1980, five new episodes of "The Hitchhiker's Guide to

the Galaxy" were broadcast on BBC Radio, all in one week, bringing

the total number to twelve episodes.

In the fall of 1980, the second Hitchhiker book was published in

England, around the same time that Harmony Books published the

first book in the United States. It was a very substantially reworked,

reedited and contracted version of episodes 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, S and 6

(in that order) of the radio series "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the

Galaxy." In case that seemed too straightforward, the book was called

The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, because it included the

material from radio episodes of "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the

Galaxy," which was set in a restaurant called Milliways, otherwise

known as the Restaurant at the End of the Universe.

At roughly the same time, a second record album was made

featuring a heavily rewritten and expanded version of episodes 5 and

6 of the radio series. This record album was also called The Restaurant

at the End of the Universe.

Meanwhile, a series of six television episodes of "The Hitchhiker's

Guide to the Galaxy" was made by the BBC and broadcast in January

1981. This was based, more or less, on the first six episodes of the

radio series. In other words, it incorporated most of the book The

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and the second half of the book The

Restaurant at be End of the Universe. Therefore, though it followed

the basic structure of the radio series, it incorporated revisions from

the books, which didn't.

In January 1982 Harmony Books published The Restaurant at the

End of the Universe in the United States.

In the summer of 1982, a third Hitchhiker book was published

simultaneously in England and the United States, called Life, the

Universe and Everything. This was not based on anything that had

already been heard or seen on radio or television. In fact it flatly

contradicted episodes 7, 8, 9, 10, I 1 and 12 of the radio series. These

episodes of "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," you will

remember, had already been incorporated in revised form in the book

called The Restaurant at the End of the Universe.

At this point I went to America to write a film screenplay which was

completely inconsistent with most of what has gone on so far, and

since that film was then delayed in the making (a rumor currently has

it that filming will start shortly before the Last Trump), I wrote a

fourth and last book in the trilogy, So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish.

This was published in Britain and the USA in the fall of 1984 and it

effectively contradicted everything to date, up to and including itself.

As if this all were not enough I wrote a computer game for Infocom

called The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which bore only fleeting

resemblances to anything that had previously gone under that title,

and in collaboration with Geoffrey Perkins assembled The Hitchhiker s

Guide to the Galaxy: The Original Radio Scripts (published in England

and the USA in 1985). Now this was an interesting venture. The book

is, as the title suggests, a collection of all the radio scripts, as

broadcast, and it is therefore the only example of one Hitchhiker

publication accurately and consistently reflecting another. I feel a

little uncomfortable with this ʹ which is why the introduction to that

book was written after the final and definitive one you are now

reading and, of course, flatly contradicts it.

People often ask me how they can leave the planet, so I have

prepared some brief notes.

How to Leave the Planet

I. Phone NASA. Their phone number is (713) 483-‐3111. Explain that

it's very important that you get away as soon as possible.

2. If they do not cooperate, phone any friend you may have in the

White House-‐(202) 456-‐1414-‐to have a word on your behalf with the

guys at NASA.

3. If you don't have any friends in the White House, phone the

Kremlin (ask the overseas operator for 0107-‐095-‐295-‐9051). They

don't have any friends there either (at least, none to speak of), but

they do seem to have a little influence, so you may as well try.

4. If that also fails, phone the Pope for guidance. His telephone

number is 011-‐39-‐6-‐6982, and I gather his switchboard is infallible.

5. If all these attempts fail, flag down a passing flying saucer and

explain that de's vitally important you get away before your phone bill

arrives.

Douglas Adams

Los Angeles 1983 and

London 1985/1986

DOUGLAS ADAMS

THE HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO

THE GALAXY

For Jonny Brock and Clare Gorst

and all other Arlingtonians

for tea, sympathy, and a sofa

Preface

Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of

the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow

sun.

Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-‐two million miles is an

utterly insignificant little blue green planet whose ape-‐descended life

forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches

are a pretty neat idea.

This planet has ʹ or rather had ʹ a problem, which was this: most

of the people on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many

solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were

largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper,

which is odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of

paper that were unhappy.

And so the problem remained; lots of the people were mean, and

most of them were miserable, even the ones with digital watches.

Many were increasingly of the opinion that they'd all made a big

mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place. And some

said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no one should

ever have left the oceans.

And then, one Thursday, nearly two thousand years after one man

had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice

to people for a change, one girl sitting on her own in a small cafe in

Rickmansworth suddenly realized what it was that had been going

wrong all this time, and she finally knew how the world could be

made a good and happy place. This time it was right, it would work,

and no one would have to get nailed to anything.

Sadly, however, before she could get to a phone to tell anyone

about it, a terribly stupid catastrophe occurred, and the idea was lost

forever.

This is not her story.

But it is the story of that terrible stupid catastrophe and some of its

consequences.

It is also the story of a book, a book called The Hitch Hiker's Guide

to the Galaxy ʹ not an Earth book, never published on Earth, and until

the terrible catastrophe occurred, never seen or heard of by any

Earthman.

Nevertheless, a wholly remarkable book.

In fact it was probably the most remarkable book ever to come out

of the great publishing houses of Ursa Minor ʹ of which no Earthman

had ever heard either.

Not only is it a wholly remarkable book, it is also a highly successful

one ʹ more popular than the Celestial Home Care Omnibus, better

selling than Fifty More Things to do in Zero Gravity, and more

controversial than Oolon Colluphid's trilogy of philosophical

blockbusters Where God Went Wrong, Some More of God's Greatest

Mistakes and Who is this God Person Anyway?

In many of the more relaxed civilizations on the Outer Eastern Rim

of the Galaxy, the Hitch Hiker's Guide has already supplanted the

great Encyclopedia Galactica as the standard repository of all

knowledge and wisdom, for though it has many omissions and

contains much that is apocryphal, or at least wildly inaccurate, it

scores over the older, more pedestrian work in two important

respects.

First, it is slightly cheaper; and secondly it has the words DON'T

PANIC inscribed in large friendly letters on its cover.

But the story of this terrible, stupid Thursday, the story of its

extraordinary consequences, and the story of how these

consequences are inextricably intertwined with this remarkable book

begins very simply.

It begins with a house.

Chapter 1

The house stood on a slight rise just on the edge of the village. It

stood on its own and looked over a broad spread of West Country

farmland. Not a remarkable house by any means ʹ it was about thirty

years old, squattish, squarish, made of brick, and had four windows

set in the front of a size and proportion which more or less exactly

failed to please the eye.

The only person for whom the house was in any way special was

Arthur Dent, and that was only because it happened to be the one he

lived in. He had lived in it for about three years, ever since he had

moved out of London because it made him nervous and irritable. He

was about thirty as well, dark haired and never quite at ease with

himself. The thing that used to worry him most was the fact that

people always used to ask him what he was looking so worried about.

He worked in local radio which he always used to tell his friends was a

lot more interesting than they probably thought. It was, too ʹ most of

his friends worked in advertising.

It hadn't properly registered with Arthur that the council wanted to

knock down his house and build an bypass instead.

At eight o'clock on Thursday morning Arthur didn't feel very good.

He woke up blearily, got up, wandered blearily round his room,

opened a window, saw a bulldozer, found his slippers, and stomped

off to the bathroom to wash.

Toothpaste on the brush ʹ so. Scrub.

Shaving mirror ʹ pointing at the ceiling. He adjusted it. For a

moment it reflected a second bulldozer through the bathroom

window. Properly adjusted, it reflected Arthur Dent's bristles. He

shaved them off, washed, dried, and stomped off to the kitchen to

find something pleasant to put in his mouth.

Kettle, plug, fridge, milk, coffee. Yawn.

The word bulldozer wandered through his mind for a moment in

search of something to connect with.

The bulldozer outside the kitchen window was quite a big one.

He stared at it.

"Yellow," he thought and stomped off back to his bedroom to get

dressed.

Passing the bathroom he stopped to drink a large glass of water,

and another. He began to suspect that he was hung over. Why was he

hung over? Had he been drinking the night before? He supposed that

he must have been. He caught a glint in the shaving mirror. "Yellow,"

he thought and stomped on to the bedroom.

He stood and thought. The pub, he thought. Oh dear, the pub. He

vaguely remembered being angry, angry about something that

seemed important. He'd been telling people about it, telling people

about it at great length, he rather suspected: his clearest visual

recollection was of glazed looks on other people's faces. Something

about a new bypass he had just found out about. It had been in the

pipeline for months only no one seemed to have known about it.

Ridiculous. He took a swig of water. It would sort itself out, he'd

decided, no one wanted a bypass, the council didn't have a leg to

stand on. It would sort itself out.

God what a terrible hangover it had earned him though. He looked

at himself in the wardrobe mirror. He stuck out his tongue. "Yellow,"

he thought. The word yellow wandered through his mind in search of

something to connect with.

Fifteen seconds later he was out of the house and lying in front of a

big yellow bulldozer that was advancing up his garden path.

Mr. L Prosser was, as they say, only human. In other words he was

a carbon-‐based life form descended from an ape. More specifically he

was forty, fat and shabby and worked for the local council. Curiously

enough, though he didn't know it, he was also a direct male-‐line

descendant of Genghis Khan, though intervening generations and

racial mixing had so juggled his genes that he had no discernible

Mongoloid characteristics, and the only vestiges left in Mr. L Prosser

of his mighty ancestry were a pronounced stoutness about the tum

and a predilection for little fur hats.

He was by no means a great warrior: in fact he was a nervous

worried man. Today he was particularly nervous and worried because

something had gone seriously wrong with his job ʹ which was to see

that Arthur Dent's house got cleared out of the way before the day

was out.

"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."

"I'm afraid you're going to have to accept it," said Mr. Prosser

gripping his fur hat and rolling it round the top of his head, "this

bypass has got to be built and it's going to be built!"

"First I've heard of it," said Arthur, "why's it going to be built?"

Mr. Prosser shook his finger at him for a bit, then stopped and put

it away again.

"What do you mean, why's it got to be built?" he said. "It's a bypass.

You've got to build bypasses."

Bypasses are devices which allow some people to drive from point

A to point B very fast whilst other people dash from point B to point A

very fast. People living at point C, being a point directly in between,

are often given to wonder what's so great about point A that so many

people of point B are so keen to get there, and what's so great about

point B that so many people of point A are so keen to get there. They

often wish that people would just once and for all work out where the

hell they wanted to be.

Mr. Prosser wanted to be at point D. Point D wasn't anywhere in

particular, it was just any convenient point a very long way from

points A, B and C. He would have a nice little cottage at point D, with

axes over the door, and spend a pleasant amount of time at point E,

which would be the nearest pub to point D. His wife of course wanted

climbing roses, but he wanted axes. He didn't know why ʹ he just

liked axes. He flushed hotly under the derisive grins of the bulldozer

drivers.

He shifted his weight from foot to foot, but it was equally

uncomfortable on each. Obviously somebody had been appallingly

incompetent and he hoped to God it wasn't him.

Mr. Prosser said: "You were quite entitled to make any suggestions

or protests at the appropriate time you know."

"Appropriate time?" hooted Arthur. "Appropriate time? The first I

knew about it was when a workman arrived at my home yesterday. I

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."

"But Mr. Dent, the plans have been available in the local planning

office for the last nine month."

"Oh yes, well as soon as I heard I went straight round to see them,

yesterday afternoon. You hadn't exactly gone out of your way to call

attention to them had you? I mean like actually telling anybody or

anything."

"But the plans were on display..."

"On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find

them."

"That's the display department."

"With a torch."

"Ah, well the lights had probably gone."

"So had the stairs."

"But look, you found the notice didn't you?"

"Yes," said Arthur, "yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a

locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the

door saying Beware of the Leopard."

A cloud passed overhead. It cast a shadow over Arthur Dent as he

lay propped up on his elbow in the cold mud. It cast a shadow over

Arthur Dent's house. Mr. Prosser frowned at it.

"It's not as if it's a particularly nice house," he said.

"I'm sorry, but I happen to like it."

"You'll like the bypass."

"Oh shut up," said Arthur Dent. "Shut up and go away, and take

your bloody bypass with you. You haven't got a leg to stand on and

you know it."

Mr. Prosser's mouth opened and closed a couple of times while his

mind was for a moment filled with inexplicable but terribly attractive

visions of Arthur Dent's house being consumed with fire and Arthur

himself running screaming from the blazing ruin with at least three

hefty spears protruding from his back. Mr. Prosser was often

bothered with visions like these and they made him feel very nervous.

He stuttered for a moment and then pulled himself together.

"Mr. Dent," he said.

"Hello? Yes?" said Arthur.

"Some factual information for you. Have you any idea how much

damage that bulldozer would suffer if I just let it roll straight over

you?"

"How much?" said Arthur.

"None at all," said Mr. Prosser, and stormed nervously off

wondering why his brain was filled with a thousand hairy horsemen

all shouting at him.

By a curious coincidence, None at all is exactly how much suspicion

the ape-‐descendant Arthur Dent had that one of his closest friends

was not descended from an ape, but was in fact from a small planet in

the vicinity of Betelgeuse and not from Guildford as he usually

claimed.

Arthur Dent had never, ever suspected this.

This friend of his had first arrived on the planet some fifteen Earth

years previously, and he had worked hard to blend himself into Earth

society ʹ with, it must be said, some success. For instance he had

spent those fifteen years pretending to be an out of work actor, which

was plausible enough.

He had made one careless blunder though, because he had

skimped a bit on his preparatory research. The information he had

gathered had led him to choose the name "Ford Prefect" as being

nicely inconspicuous.

He was not conspicuously tall, his features were striking but not

conspicuously handsome. His hair was wiry and gingerish and brushed

backwards from the temples. His skin seemed to be pulled backwards

from the nose. There was something very slightly odd about him, but

it was difficult to say what it was. Perhaps it was that his eyes didn't

blink often enough and when you talked to him for any length of time

your eyes began involuntarily to water on his behalf. Perhaps it was

that he smiled slightly too broadly and gave people the unnerving

impression that he was about to go for their neck.

He struck most of the friends he had made on Earth as an eccentric,

but a harmless one ʹ an unruly boozer with some oddish habits. For

instance he would often gatecrash university parties, get badly drunk

and start making fun of any astrophysicist he could find till he got

thrown out.

Sometimes he would get seized with oddly distracted moods and

stare into the sky as if hypnotized until someone asked him what he

was doing. Then he would start guiltily for a moment, relax and grin.

"Oh, just looking for flying saucers," he would joke and everyone

would laugh and ask him what sort of flying saucers he was looking

for.

"Green ones!" he would reply with a wicked grin, laugh wildly for a

moment and then suddenly lunge for the nearest bar and buy an

enormous round of drinks.

Evenings like this usually ended badly. Ford would get out of his

skull on whisky, huddle into a corner with some girl and explain to her

in slurred phrases that honestly the colour of the flying saucers didn't

matter that much really.

Thereafter, staggering semi-‐paralytic down the night streets he

would often ask passing policemen if they knew the way to

Betelgeuse. The policemen would usually say something like, "Don't

you think it's about time you went off home sir?"

"I'm trying to baby, I'm trying to," is what Ford invariably replied on

these occasions.

In fact what he was really looking out for when he stared

distractedly into the night sky was any kind of flying saucer at all. The

reason he said green was that green was the traditional space livery

of the Betelgeuse trading scouts.

Ford Prefect was desperate that any flying saucer at all would

arrive soon because fifteen years was a long time to get stranded

anywhere, particularly somewhere as mindboggingly dull as the Earth.

Ford wished that a flying saucer would arrive soon because he

knew how to flag flying saucers down and get lifts from them. He

knew how to see the Marvels of the Universe for less than thirty

Altairan dollars a day.

In fact, Ford Prefect was a roving researcher for that wholly

remarkable book The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Human beings are great adaptors, and by lunchtime life in the

environs of Arthur's house had settled into a steady routine. It was

Arthur's accepted role to lie squelching in the mud making occasional

demands to see his lawyer, his mother or a good book; it was Mr.

Prosser's accepted role to tackle Arthur with the occasional new ploy

such as the For the Public Good talk, the March of Progress talk, the

They Knocked My House Down Once You Know, Never Looked Back

talk and various other cajoleries and threats; and it was the bulldozer

drivers' accepted role to sit around drinking coffee and experimenting

with union regulations to see how they could turn the situation to

their financial advantage.

The Earth moved slowly in its diurnal course.

The sun was beginning to dry out the mud Arthur lay in.

A shadow moved across him again.

"Hello Arthur," said the shadow.

Arthur looked up and squinting into the sun was startled to see

Ford Prefect standing above him.

"Ford! Hello, how are you?"

"Fine," said Ford, "look, are you busy?"

"Am I busy?" exclaimed Arthur. "Well, I've just got all these

bulldozers and things to lie in front of because they'll knock my house

down if I don't, but other than that... well, no not especially, why?"

They don't have sarcasm on Betelgeuse, and Ford Prefect often

failed to notice it unless he was concentrating. He said, "Good, is

there anywhere we can talk?"

"What?" said Arthur Dent.

For a few seconds Ford seemed to ignore him, and stared fixedly

into the sky like a rabbit trying to get run over by a car. Then suddenly

he squatted down beside Arthur.

"We've got to talk," he said urgently.

"Fine," said Arthur, "talk."

"And drink," said Ford. "It's vitally important that we talk and drink.

Now. We'll go to the pub in the village."

He looked into the sky again, nervous, expectant.

"Look, don't you understand?" shouted Arthur. He pointed at

Prosser. "That man wants to knock my house down!"

Ford glanced at him, puzzled.

"Well he can do it while you're away can't he?" he asked.

"But I don't want him to!"

"Ah."

"Look, what's the matter with you Ford?" said Arthur.

"Nothing. Nothing's the matter. Listen to me ʹ I've got to tell you

the most important thing you've ever heard. I've got to tell you now,

and I've got to tell you in the saloon bar of the Horse and Groom."

"But why?"

"Because you are going to need a very stiff drink."

Ford stared at Arthur, and Arthur was astonished to find that his

will was beginning to weaken. He didn't realize that this was because

of an old drinking game that Ford learned to play in the hyperspace

ports that served the madranite mining belts in the star system of

Orion Beta.

The game was not unlike the Earth game called Indian Wrestling,

and was played like this:

Two contestants would sit either side of a table, with a glass in

front of each of them.

Between them would be placed a bottle of Janx Spirit (as

immortalized in that ancient Orion mining song "Oh don't give me

none more of that Old Janx Spirit/ No, don't you give me none more

of that Old Janx Spirit/ For my head will fly, my tongue will lie, my

eyes will fry and I may die/ Won't you pour me one more of that sinful

Old Janx Spirit").

Each of the two contestants would then concentrate their will on

the bottle and attempt to tip it and pour spirit into the glass of his

opponent ʹ who would then have to drink it.

The bottle would then be refilled. The game would be played again.

And again.

Once you started to lose you would probably keep losing, because

one of the effects of Janx spirit is to depress telepsychic power.

As soon as a predetermined quantity had been consumed, the final

loser would have to perform a forfeit, which was usually obscenely

biological.

Ford Prefect usually played to lose.

Ford stared at Arthur, who began to think that perhaps he did want

to go to the Horse and Groom after all.

"But what about my house...?" he asked plaintively.

Ford looked across to Mr. Prosser, and suddenly a wicked thought

struck him.

"He wants to knock your house down?"

"Yes, he wants to build..."

"And he can't because you're lying in front of the bulldozers?"

"Yes, and..."

"I'm sure we can come to some arrangement," said Ford. "Excuse

me!" he shouted.

Mr. Prosser (who was arguing with a spokesman for the bulldozer

drivers about whether or not Arthur Dent constituted a mental health

hazard, and how much they should get paid if he did) looked around.

He was surprised and slightly alarmed to find that Arthur had

company.

"Yes? Hello?" he called. "Has Mr. Dent come to his senses yet?"

"Can we for the moment," called Ford, "assume that he hasn't?"

"Well?" sighed Mr. Prosser.

"And can we also assume," said Ford, "that he's going to be staying

here all day?"

"So?"

"So all your men are going to be standing around all day doing

nothing?"

"Could be, could be..."

"Well, if you're resigned to doing that anyway, you don't actually

need him to lie here all the time do you?"

"What?"

"You don't," said Ford patiently, "actually need him here."

Mr. Prosser thought about this.

"Well no, not as such...", he said, "not exactly need..." Prosser was

worried. He thought that one of them wasn't making a lot of sense.

Ford said, "So if you would just like to take it as read that he's

actually here, then he and I could slip off down to the pub for half an

hour. How does that sound?"

Mr. Prosser thought it sounded perfectly potty.

"That sounds perfectly reasonable," he said in a reassuring tone of

voice, wondering who he was trying to reassure.

"And if you want to pop off for a quick one yourself later on," said

Ford, "we can always cover up for you in return."

"Thank you very much," said Mr. Prosser who no longer knew how

to play this at all, "thank you very much, yes, that's very kind..." He

frowned, then smiled, then tried to do both at once, failed, grasped

hold of his fur hat and rolled it fitfully round the top of his head. He

could only assume that he had just won.

"So," continued Ford Prefect, "if you would just like to come over

here and lie down..."

"What?" said Mr. Prosser.

"Ah, I'm sorry," said Ford, "perhaps I hadn't made myself fully clear.

Somebody's got to lie in front of the bulldozers haven't they? Or there

won't be anything to stop them driving into Mr. Dent's house will

there?"

"What?" said Mr. Prosser again.

"It's very simple," said Ford, "my client, Mr. Dent, says that he will

stop lying here in the mud on the sole condition that you come and

take over from him."

"What are you talking about?" said Arthur, but Ford nudged him

with his shoe to be quiet.

"You want me," said Mr. Prosser, spelling out this new thought to

himself, "to come and lie there..."

"Yes."

"In front of the bulldozer?"

"Yes."

"Instead of Mr. Dent."

"Yes."

"In the mud."

"In, as you say it, the mud."

As soon as Mr. Prosser realized that he was substantially the loser

after all, it was as if a weight lifted itself off his shoulders: this was

more like the world as he knew it. He sighed.

"In return for which you will take Mr. Dent with you down to the

pub?"

"That's it," said Ford. "That's it exactly."

Mr. Prosser took a few nervous steps forward and stopped.

"Promise?"

"Promise," said Ford. He turned to Arthur.

"Come on," he said to him, "get up and let the man lie down."

Arthur stood up, feeling as if he was in a dream.

Ford beckoned to Prosser who sadly, awkwardly, sat down in the

mud. He felt that his whole life was some kind of dream and he

sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying

it. The mud folded itself round his bottom and his arms and oozed

into his shoes.

Ford looked at him severely.

"And no sneaky knocking down Mr. Dent's house whilst he's away,

alright?" he said.

"The mere thought," growled Mr. Prosser, "hadn't even begun to

speculate," he continued, settling himself back, "about the merest

possibility of crossing my mind."

He saw the bulldozer driver's union representative approaching

and let his head sink back and closed his eyes. He was trying to

marshal his arguments for proving that he did not now constitute a

mental health hazard himself. He was far from certain about this ʹ his

mind seemed to be full of noise, horses, smoke, and the stench of

blood. This always happened when he felt miserable and put upon,

and he had never been able to explain it to himself. In a high

dimension of which we know nothing the mighty Khan bellowed with

rage, but Mr. Prosser only trembled slightly and whimpered. He

began to fell little pricks of water behind the eyelids. Bureaucratic

cock-‐ups, angry men lying in the mud, indecipherable strangers

handing out inexplicable humiliations and an unidentified army of

horsemen laughing at him in his head ʹ what a day.

What a day. Ford Prefect knew that it didn't matter a pair of

dingo's kidneys whether Arthur's house got knocked down or not now.

Arthur remained very worried.

"But can we trust him?" he said.

"Myself I'd trust him to the end of the Earth," said Ford.

"Oh yes," said Arthur, "and how far's that?"

"About twelve minutes away," said Ford, "come on, I need a drink."

Chapter 2

Here's what the Encyclopedia Galactica has to say about alcohol. It

says that alcohol is a colourless volatile liquid formed by the

fermentation of sugars and also notes its intoxicating effect on certain

carbon-‐based life forms.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy also mentions alcohol. It says ��

that the best drink in existence is the Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster.

It says that the effect of a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster is like having

your brains smashed out by a slice of lemon wrapped round a large

gold brick.

The Guide also tells you on which planets the best Pan Galactic

Gargle Blasters are mixed, how much you can expect to pay for one

and what voluntary organizations exist to help you rehabilitate

afterwards.

The Guide even tells you how you can mix one yourself.

Take the juice from one bottle of that Ol' Janx Spirit, it says.

Pour into it one measure of water from the seas of Santraginus V ʹ

Oh that Santraginean sea water, it says. Oh those Santraginean fish!!!

Allow three cubes of Arcturan Mega-‐gin to melt into the mixture (it

must be properly iced or the benzine is lost).

Allow four litres of Fallian marsh gas to bubble through it, in

memory of all those happy Hikers who have died of pleasure in the

Marshes of Fallia.

Over the back of a silver spoon float a measure of Qualactin

Hypermint extract, redolent of all the heady odours of the dark

Qualactin Zones, subtle sweet and mystic.

Drop in the tooth of an Algolian Suntiger. Watch it dissolve,

spreading the fires of the Algolian Suns deep into the heart of the

drink.

Sprinkle Zamphuor.

Add an olive.

Drink... but... very carefully...

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy sells rather better than the

Encyclopedia Galactica.

"Six pints of bitter," said Ford Prefect to the barman of the Horse

and Groom. "And quickly please, the world's about to end."

The barman of the Horse and Groom didn't deserve this sort of

treatment, he was a dignified old man. He pushed his glasses up his

nose and blinked at Ford Prefect. Ford ignored him and stared out of

the window, so the barman looked instead at Arthur who shrugged

helplessly and said nothing.

So the barman said, "Oh yes sir? Nice weather for it," and started

pulling pints.

He tried again.

"Going to watch the match this afternoon then?"

Ford glanced round at him.

"No, no point," he said, and looked back out of the window.

"What's that, foregone conclusion then you reckon sir?" said the

barman. "Arsenal without a chance?"

"No, no," said Ford, "it's just that the world's about to end."

"Oh yes sir, so you said," said the barman, looking over his glasses

this time at Arthur. "Lucky escape for Arsenal if it did."

Ford looked back at him, genuinely surprised.

"No, not really," he said. He frowned.

The barman breathed in heavily. "There you are sir, six pints," he

said.

Arthur smiled at him wanly and shrugged again. He turned and

smiled wanly at the rest of the pub just in case any of them had heard

what was going on.

None of them had, and none of them could understand what he

was smiling at them for.

A man sitting next to Ford at the bar looked at the two men, looked

at the six pints, did a swift burst of mental arithmetic, arrived at an

answer he liked and grinned a stupid hopeful grin at them.

"Get off," said Ford, "They're ours," giving him a look that would

have an Algolian Suntiger get on with what it was doing.

Ford slapped a five-‐pound note on the bar. He said, "Keep the

change."

"What, from a fiver? Thank you sir."

"You've got ten minutes left to spend it."

The barman simply decided to walk away for a bit.

"Ford," said Arthur, "would you please tell me what the hell is

going on?"

"Drink up," said Ford, "you've got three pints to get through."

"Three pints?" said Arthur. "At lunchtime?"

The man next to ford grinned and nodded happily. Ford ignored

him. He said, "Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so."

"Very deep," said Arthur, "you should send that in to the Reader's

Digest. They've got a page for people like you."

"Drink up."

"Why three pints all of a sudden?"

"Muscle relaxant, you'll need it."

"Muscle relaxant?"

"Muscle relaxant."

Arthur stared into his beer.

"Did I do anything wrong today," he said, "or has the world always

been like this and I've been too wrapped up in myself to notice?"

"Alright," said Ford, "I'll try to explain. How long have we known

each other?"

"How long?" Arthur thought. "Er, about five years, maybe six," he

said. "Most of it seemed to make some sense at the time."

"Alright," said Ford. "How would you react if I said that I'm not

from Guildford after all, but from a small planet somewhere in the

vicinity of Betelgeuse?"

Arthur shrugged in a so-‐so sort of way.

"I don't know," he said, taking a pull of beer. "Why ʹ do you think

it's the sort of thing you're likely to say?"

Ford gave up. It really wasn't worth bothering at the moment, what

with the world being about to end. He just said:

"Drink up."

He added, perfectly factually:

"The world's about to end."

Arthur gave the rest of the pub another wan smile. The rest of the

pub frowned at him. A man waved at him to stop smiling at them and

mind his own business.

"This must be Thursday," said Arthur musing to himself, sinking low

over his beer, "I never could get the hang of Thursdays."

Chapter 3

On this particular Thursday, something was moving quietly through

the ionosphere many miles above the surface of the planet; several

somethings in fact, several dozen huge yellow chunky slablike

somethings, huge as office buildings, silent as birds. They soared with

ease, basking in electromagnetic rays from the star Sol, biding their

time, grouping, preparing.

The planet beneath them was almost perfectly oblivious of their

presence, which was just how they wanted it for the moment. The

huge yellow somethings went unnoticed at Goonhilly, they passed

over Cape Canaveral without a blip, Woomera and Jodrell Bank

looked straight through them ʹ which was a pity because it was

exactly the sort of thing they'd been looking for all these years.

The only place they registered at all was on a small black device

called a Sub-‐Etha Sens-‐O-‐Matic which winked away quietly to itself. It

nestled in the darkness inside a leather satchel which Ford Prefect

wore habitually round his neck. The contents of Ford Prefect's satchel

were quite interesting in fact and would have made any Earth

physicist's eyes pop out of his head, which is why he always concealed

them by keeping a couple of dog-‐eared scripts for plays he pretended

he was auditioning for stuffed in the top. Besides the Sub-‐Etha Sens-‐

O-‐Matic and the scripts he had an Electronic Thumb ʹ a short squat

black rod, smooth and matt with a couple of flat switches and dials at

one end; he also had a device which looked rather like a largish

electronic calculator. This had about a hundred tiny flat press buttons

and a screen about four inches square on which any one of a million

"pages" could be summoned at a moment's notice. It looked insanely

complicated, and this was one of the reasons why the snug plastic

cover it fitted into had the words Don't Panic printed on it in large

friendly letters. The other reason was that this device was in fact that

most remarkable of all books ever to come out of the great publishing

corporations of Ursa Minor ʹ The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

The reason why it was published in the form of a micro sub meson

electronic component is that if it were printed in normal book form,

an interstellar hitch hiker would require several inconveniently large

buildings to carry it around in.

Beneath that in Ford Prefect's satchel were a few biros, a notepad,

and a largish bath towel from Marks and Spencer.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy has a few things to say on the

subject of towels.

A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an

interstellar hitch hiker can have. Partly it has great practical value ʹ

you can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold

moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-‐sanded

beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapours; you can

sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert

world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a mini raft down the slow heavy river

Moth; wet it for use in hand-‐to-‐hand-‐combat; wrap it round your

head to ward off noxious fumes or to avoid the gaze of the Ravenous

Bugblatter Beast of Traal (a mindboggingly stupid animal, it assumes

that if you can't see it, it can't see you ʹ daft as a bush, but very

ravenous); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress

signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean

enough.

More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For

some reason, if a strag (strag: non-‐hitch hiker) discovers that a hitch

hiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is

also in possession of a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits,

flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet weather gear,

space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the

hitch hiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitch hiker

might accidentally have "lost". What the strag will think is that any

man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it,

slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows

where his towel is is clearly a man to be reckoned with.

Hence a phrase which has passed into hitch hiking slang, as in "Hey,

you sass that hoopy Ford Prefect? There's a frood who really knows

where his towel is." (Sass: know, be aware of, meet, have sex with;

hoopy: really together guy; frood: really amazingly together guy.)

Nestling quietly on top of the towel in Ford Prefect's satchel, the

Sub-‐Etha Sens-‐O-‐Matic began to wink more quickly. Miles above the

surface of the planet the huge yellow somethings began to fan out. At

Jodrell Bank, someone decided it was time for a nice relaxing cup of

tea.

"You got a towel with you?" said Ford Prefect suddenly to Arthur.

Arthur, struggling through his third pint, looked round at him.

"Why? What, no... should I have?" He had given up being surprised,

there didn't seem to be any point any longer.

Ford clicked his tongue in irritation.

"Drink up," he urged.

At that moment the dull sound of a rumbling crash from outside

filtered through the low murmur of the pub, through the sound of the

jukebox, through the sound of the man next to Ford hiccupping over

the whisky Ford had eventually bought him.

Arthur choked on his beer, leapt to his feet.

"What's that?" he yelped.

"Don't worry," said Ford, "they haven't started yet."

"Thank God for that," said Arthur and relaxed.

"It's probably just your house being knocked down," said Ford,

drowning his last pint.

"What?" shouted Arthur. Suddenly Ford's spell was broken. Arthur

looked wildly around him and ran to the window.

"My God they are! They're knocking my house down. What the hell

am I doing in the pub, Ford?"

"It hardly makes any difference at this stage," said Ford, "let them

have their fun."

"Fun?" yelped Arthur. "Fun!" He quickly checked out of the window

again that they were talking about the same thing.

"Damn their fun!" he hooted and ran out of the pub furiously

waving a nearly empty beer glass. He made no friends at all in the pub

that lunchtime.

"Stop, you vandals! You home wreckers!" bawled Arthur. "You half

crazed Visigoths, stop will you!"

Ford would have to go after him. Turning quickly to the barman he

asked for four packets of peanuts.

"There you are sir," said the barman, slapping the packets on the

bar, "twenty-‐eight pence if you'd be so kind."

Ford was very kind ʹ he gave the barman another five-‐pound note

and told him to keep the change. The barman looked at it and then

looked at Ford. He suddenly shivered: he experienced a momentary

sensation that he didn't understand because no one on Earth had

ever experienced it before. In moments of great stress, every life form

Did you know? Tumblr DOES have a post length limit. Strangely, though, it's based on how many blocks of text you have. Supposedly this implies that you can have any length post so long as it's one block of text? Very strange, will have to investigate further.