Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy One Thursday lunchtime the Earth is unexpectedly demolished to make way for a new hyperspace bypass. For , who has only just had his house demolished that morning, this seems already to be more than he can cope with. Sadly, however, the weekend has only just begun, and the galaxy is a very strange and startling place. The Restaurant at the End of the Universe Facing annihilation at the hands of the warlike is a curious time to have a cosmically displaced Arthur Dent and his curious comrades in arms as they hurtle through space powered by pure improbability - and desperately in search of a place to eat. Life, The Universe and Everything The unhappy inhabitants of the planet Krikkit are sick of looking at the night sky above their heads - so they plan to destroy it. The universe, that is. Now only five individuals stand between the killer robots of Krikkit and their goals of annihilation. So Long, and Thanks For All The Fish Left at the end of LIFE, THE UNIVERSE AND EVERYTHING with the address for God's Final Message To His Creation, Arthur Dent let this crucial information slip his mind. Mostly Harmless It's easy to become disheartened when your planet has been demolished for an unnecessary hyperspacial express route, the woman you love has vanished in a misunderstanding about the nature of space/time, the spaceship in which you are travelling crashed in flames on a remote and Bob-fearing planet, and all you have to fall back on are a few sandwich-making skills. The Original Radio Scripts So you think you know all there is to know about Douglas Adams' Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy? You've read the books, You've seen the TV programme, (You've even got your towel ready), You've listened to the show on the radio, But you haven't read or seen anything like THE ORIGINAL HITCH HIKER RADIO SCRIPTS! Unavailable for years, here are the complete, unedited scripts from the original BBC "Hitch Hiker Radio Show", as broadcast in the United States on the National Public Radio. The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - The Adventure Game Beyond question, the most mind-bogglingly hilarious story Infocom has ever produced is The Hitch Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy, written and designed by Douglas Adams, author of the bestselling novel, and Steve Meretzky, the award-winning designer of Infocom's Planetfall and Sorcerer. What We Learned From the 'Hitchhiker's Guide' Established in 2001 in memory of the late, great Douglas Adams, marks a celebration of Adams’ best-known creation, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy , and invites fans to carry around a towel (due to the object’s immense significance in the series, natch) to commemorate the day. Though the concept might sound bizarre to a strag (that is, a non-Hitchhiker), the event fits right in thematically with Adams’ eccentric tale of comedic science-fiction. In HG2G , Douglas Adams toys with language, pokes fun at humanity, and whips his hapless, mischievous, and unfailingly memorable characters across the universe on dozens of rollicking space adventures. But for all its sidesplitting humor, the Guide also offers us important lessons about life, the universe, and everything. So grab your towel, sit back with a glass of Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster, and listen up to the wise and wacky words of our favorite Hitchhiker: 1. Always Carry a Towel. As explained in the Guide , towels are “the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have.” A towel has both practical value (can be used for warmth, as shelter, as a weapon, and, strangely, to dry one’s body) as well as psychological value (if a non-Hitchhiker sees you with a towel, they’ll assume you’re fully stocked with other necessities as well). 2. Don’t Panic! The Guide has become the most successful publishing sensation to emerge from Ursa Minor, due in no small part to the appearance of the comforting words “DON’T PANIC!” emblazoned in friendly lettering on the cover. Embrace this simple message while humming along to the Bob Marley song of the same theme and you won’t have another stressful day in your life. 3. Two heads aren’t necessarily better than one. , President of the Galaxy, has two heads, but neither of them prevent him from engaging in a bunch of really stupid, really inadvisable activities, such as stealing a priceless spaceship of Infinite Improbability. He has also managed to be voted the "Worst Dressed Sentient Being in the Known Universe" seven consecutive times. 4. Improbable does not mean impossible. The Infinite Improbability Drive — a logically sound but otherwise mind-numbing little device used to power the Heart of Gold spaceship — produces a whole host of logically sound but otherwise mind-numbing side effects that demonstrates the reality of even infinitesimally small odds. As Justin Bieber precociously said: Never say never. Because sometimes, things that seem impossible — such as the spontaneous transformation of a pair of guided nuclear missiles into a sperm whale and a bowl of petunias, or the typing out of the text of Hamlet by an infinite number of monkeys randomly pounding on an infinite number of keyboards — are actually only really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really improbable. 5. “Just when you think life can’t possibly get any worse it suddenly does.” We feel you, Marvin. Life can, at times, be a downer. Especially if you're a robot and, you know, not alive . 6. There are few things in the universe worse than bad poetry. The public reading of the second-worst poetry in the universe, written by a member of the Azgoths of Kria race, was so intolerable that “four of his audience died of internal hemorrhaging and the president of the Mid-Galactic Arts Nobbling Council survived only by gnawing one of his own legs off.” Poetry is a powerful tool… which is probably where the term “poetic license ” comes from. Write safely, kids. 7. There are few things in the universe better than a solid cup of tea. All Arthur Dent really wants after the destruction of his planet is a steaming cup of tea, but it took hours of collaboration with even the most technologically fancy drink synthesizer to produce one to his liking. Tea also served as the catalyst for the invention of the aforementioned Infinite Improbability Drive, engine of the fantastically advanced Heart of Gold spaceship. In retrospect, the irreplaceable importance of tea to scientific advancement makes the dumping of a perfectly good shipment of the stuff into the Boston Harbor one of the verifiably dumbest things America has ever done. 8. We are not the most intelligent species on Earth, so stop acting pretentious. In HG2G, only the dolphins and the mice managed to peace out before the Earth was destroyed to make way for a hyperspace bypass. The ever- courteous dolphins attempted to warn us pitiable humans, but the messages were misinterpreted as “amusing attempts to punch football or whistle for tidbits.” The mice, on the other hand, spent most of their time in laboratories conducting complex experiments on humans. #forscience. 9. Digital watches are pretty pointless. Humans, as defined by the Guide, are “not noted for being particularly bright, up until they are destroyed, if they even manage to do that much correctly, they actually still think that digital watches are a pretty neat idea, and they spend most of their time concerning themselves with moving about little green pieces of paper.” Don’t worry, Mr. Adams, we’ve clearly progressed as a species since your time, in that we all pretty much agree digital watches aren’t a neat idea at all, and… yep, that’s about it. 10. Check your intellectual blind spots. The existence of the “Somebody Else’s Problem” field, developed to render something invisible, provides yet another knock on our inherently self- centered nature. The SEP field “relies on people's natural predisposition not to see anything they don't want to, weren't expecting, or can't explain.” To paraphrase the ubiquitous Sherlock Holmes, we see but we do not observe . For shame, humanity. For shame. 11. The art of flying. Thus stateth the Guide : “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.” Piece of (hopefully un-smushed) cake. 12. Always listen to your mother. …because there are times, such as when you’re “trapped in a airlock with a man from Betelgeuse, and about to die of asphyxiation in deep space,” when you’ll really wish you’d listened to what your mother told you when you were young, which you wouldn't know, because you weren’t listening. 13. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Douglas Adams’s humor is not for the existentially faint of heart; his satire reflects postmodernist notions of the ostensible lack of any Ultimate Meaning in the universe. But, hey, yet another excuse to YOLO it up! 14. If you’re unsatisfied with your lot in life, just be glad you’re not an elevator. At least you have not, like elevators in the Hitchhiker's Guide offices that have the misfortune of being intelligent, become “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 [taken] to squatting in basements sulking.” 15. If you want to run for president, don’t. As per the Guide, “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.” 16. Bad news travels faster than light. Bad news, as we all know, “obeys its own special laws.” Watch your back! 17. It is the questions, not the answers, that truly matter. When the supercomputer “Deep Thought” finally produced the Ultimate Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything after a calculation period of seven and a half million years, those who were at hand to receive The Answer were left wondering what The Question was in the first place. Our very own Earth was then commissioned to calculate it. 18. …But if you really want to know, the ultimate answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything is: Hold up. I’m not about to spoil something that massively important, am I? Here: have a nice, steaming cup of tea. And don’t forget your towel on your way out. Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The Restaurant at the End of the Universe is one of the most extraordinary ventures in the history of catering. It has been built on the fragmented remains of… it will be built on the fragmented… that is to say it will have been built by this time, and indeed has been— One of the major problems encountered in time travel is not that of becoming your own father or mother. There is no problem in becoming your own father or mother that a broad-minded and well-adjusted family can't cope with. There is no problem with changing the course of history—the course of history does not change because it all fits together like a jigsaw. All the important changes have happened before the things they were supposed to change and it all sorts itself out in the end. The major problem is simply one of grammar, and the main work to consult in this matter is Dr. Dan Streetmentioner's Time Traveler's Handbook of 1001 Tense Formations . It will tell you, for instance, how to describe something that was about to happen to you in the past before you avoided it by time-jumping forward two days in order to avoid it. The event will be descibed differently according to whether you are talking about it from the standpoint of your own natural time, from a time in the further future, or a time in the further past and is futher complicated by the possibility of conducting conversations while you are actually traveling from one time to another with the intention of becoming your own mother or father. Most readers get as far as the Future Semiconditionally Modified Subinverted Plagal Past Subjunctive Intentional before giving up; and in fact in later aditions of the book all pages beyond this point have been left blank to save on printing costs. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy skips lightly over this tangle of academic abstraction, pausing only to note that the term "Future Perfect" has been abandoned since it was discovered not to be. The Restaurant at the End of the Universe is one of the most extraordinary ventures in the 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) sumptous 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 not 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. You can visit it as many times as you like (mayan on-visit re-onvisiting. and so on - for further tense correction consult Dr. Streetmentioner's book) and be sure of never meeting yourself, becauses of the embarrassment this usually causes. This, even if the rest were true, which it isn't, is patently impossible, say the doubters. 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 operations of compound interest means that the fabulous cost of your meal has been paid for. This, many claim, is not merely impossible but clearly insane, which is why the advertising executives of the star system of Bastablon came up with this slogan: "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?" The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. This is an excerpt from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy . How To Fly. © by Douglas Adams. 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, [ The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy ] 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 the 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. It is notoriously difficult to prize your attention away from these three things during the split second you have at your disposal. Hence most people's failure, and their eventual disillusionment with this exhilarating and spectacular sport. If, however, you are lucky enough to have your attention momentarily distracted at the crucial moment by, say, a gorgeous pair of legs (tentacles, pseudopodia, according to phyllum and/or personal inclination) or a bomb going off in your vicinty, or by suddenly spotting an extremely rare species of beetle crawling along a nearby twig, then in your astonishment you will miss the ground completely and remain bobbing just a few inches above it in what might seem to be a slightly foolish manner. This is a moment for superb and delicate concentration. Bob and float, float and bob. Ignore all consideration of your own weight simply let yourself waft higher. Do not listen to what anybody says to you at this point because they are unlikely to say anything helpful. They are most likely to say something along the lines of "Good God, you can't possibly be flying!" It is vitally important not to believe them or they will suddenly be right. Waft higher and higher. Try a few swoops, gentle ones at first, then drift above the treetops breathing regularly. DO NOT WAVE AT ANYBODY. When you have done this a few times you will find the moment of distraction rapidly easier and easier to achieve. You will then learn all sorts of things about how to control your flight, your speed, your maneuverability, and the trick usually lies in not thinking too hard about whatever you want to do, but just allowing it to happen as if it were going to anyway. You will also learn about how to land properly, which is something you will almost certainly screw up, and screw up badly, on your first attempt. There are private clubs you can join which help you achieve the all-important moment of distraction. They hire people with surprising bodies or opinions to leap out from behind bushes and exhibit and/or explain them at the critical moments. Few genuine hitchhikers will be able to afford to join these clubs, but some may be able to get temporary employment at them. Mattresses. Mattresses are friendly, dim-witted, docile creatures capable of speech. They are all called Zem and live in the swamps of Sqornshellous Zeta. Many of them are slaughtered, dried out, and shipped around the galaxy to be slept on by grateful customers, though they do not appear to mind this, one noting that since they are all called Zem they never know which of them have been killed anyway so their concern and grief - "globbering" - is kept to a minimum. No one really knows what mattresses are meant to gain from life. They live quiet, private lives where they "flollop and vollue" to amuse themselves. Mattresses make a variety of noises that are not supposed to be able to be made by other lifeforms throughout the galaxy, such as willomies, globbers, flurs, and glurries. Those being only a few examples. Mattresses are also capable of doing things floopily, meaning in a floopy manner.