The storm had now definitely abated, and what thunder there was now
grumbled over more distant hills, like a man saying ‘And another
thing . . .’ twenty minutes after admitting he’s lost the argument
– Douglas Adams
We have travelled through space and time, my friends, to rock this
house again
– Tenacious D
Foreword
If you own a copy of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy then
one of the last things you would be likely to type into its
v-board would be the very same title of that particular Sub-
Etha volume as, presumably, since you have a copy, then
you already know all about the most remarkable book ever
to come out of the great publishing corporations of Ursa
Minor. However, presumption has been the runner-up in
every major Causes of Intergalactic Conflict poll for the past
few millennia, first place invariably going to Land-Grabbing
Bastards with Big Weapons and third usually being a toss-up
between Coveting Another Sentient Being’s Significant Other and
Misinterpretation of Simple Hand Gestures. One man’s ‘Wow!
This pasta is fantastico!’ is another’s ‘Your momma plays it
fast and loose with sailors.’
Let us say, for example, that you are on an eight-hour
layover in Port Brasta without enough credit for a Gargle
Blaster on your implant, and if upon realizing that you know
almost nothing about this supposedly wonderful book you
hold in your hands, you decide out of sheer brain-fogging
boredom to type the words ‘the hitchhiker’s guide to the
galaxy’ into the search bar on The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the
Galaxy, what results will this fl ippant tappery yield?
Firstly, an animated icon appears in a flash of pixels and
informs you that there are three results, which is confusing
as there are obviously five listed below, numbered in the
usual order.
Guide Note: That is if your understanding of the usual numerical
order is from small to large and not from derivative to inspired, as with
Folfangan Slugs who judge a number’s worth based on the artistic
integrity of its shape. Folfangan supermarket receipts are beauteous
ribbons, but their economy collapses at least once a week.
Each of these five results is a lengthy article, accompanied
by many hours of video and audio files and some dramatic
reconstructions featuring quite well-known actors.
This is not the story of those articles.
But if you scroll down past article five, ignoring the offers
to remortgage your kidneys and lengthen your pormwrangler,
you will come to a line in tiny font that reads ‘If you
liked this, then you might also like to read . . .’ Have your icon rub
itself along this link and you will be led to a text only appendix
with absolutely no audio and not so much as a frame of
video shot by a student director who made the whole thing
in his bedroom and paid his drama soc. mates with sandwiches.
This is the story of that appendix.
Introduction
So far as we know . . . The Imperial Galactic Government
decided, over a bucket of jewelled crabs one day, that a hyperspace
expressway was needed in the unfashionable end of
the Western Spiral Arm of the Galaxy. This decision was
rushed through channels ostensibly to pre-empt traffic congestion
in the distant future, but actually to provide employment
for a few ministers’ cousins who were forever mooching
around Government Plaza. Unfortunately the Earth was in
the path of this planned expressway, so the remorseless
Vogons were dispatched in a constructor fleet to remove the
offending planet with gentle use of thermonuclear weapons.
Two survivors managed to hitch a ride on a Vogon ship:
Arthur Dent, a young English employee of a regional radio
station whose plans for the morning did not include having
his home planet blasted to dust beneath his slippers. Had the
human race held a referendum, it would have been quite likely
that Arthur Dent would have been voted least suitable to carry
the hopes of humankind into space. Arthur’s university yearbook
actually referred to him as ‘most likely to end up living in a
hole in the Scottish highlands with only the chip on his shoulder
for company’. Luckily Arthur’s Betelgeusean friend, Ford
Prefect, a roving researcher for that illustrious interstellar
travel almanac The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, was more
of an optimist. Ford saw silver linings where Arthur saw only
clouds and so between them they made one prudent space
traveller, unless their travels led them to the planet Junipella
where the clouds actually did have silver linings. Arthur would
have doubtless steered the ship straight into the nearest cloud
of gloom and Ford would have almost certainly attempted to
steal the silver, which would have resulted in the catastrophic
combustion of the natural gas inside the lining. The explosion
would have been pretty, but as a heroic ending it would
lack a certain something, i.e. a hero in one piece.
The only other Earthling left alive was Tricia McMillan,
or Trillian to use her cool, spacey name, a fiercely ambitious
astrophysicist cum fledgling reporter who had always
believed that there was more to life than life on Earth. In
spite of this conviction, Trillian had nevertheless been
amazed when she was whisked off to the stars by Zaphod
Beeblebrox, the maverick two-headed Galactic President.
What can one say of President Beeblebrox that he has
not already had printed on T-shirts and circulated throughout
the Galaxy free with every uBid purchase? Zaphod
Says Yes to Zaphod was probably the most famous Tshirt
slogan, though not even his team of psychiatrists
understood what it actually meant. Second favourite was
probably: Beeblebrox. Just be glad he’s out there.
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 defi nitely not altogether false.
Consequentially, when Zaphod Beeblebrox arrived on a planet,
people invariably said ‘yes’ to whatever questions he asked
and when he left they were glad he was out there.
These less than traditional heroes were improbably drawn
to each other and embarked on a series of adventures, which
mostly involved gadding around through space and time,
sitting on quantum sofas, chatting with gaseous computers
and generally failing to find meaning or fulfilment in any
corner of the Universe.