Frequently Asked Questions

What is the Answer to the Great Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything?
42. The Answer was discovered by the great computer Deep Thought. Deep Thought was quite simply, the second greatest computer ever created.
Back to top

OK, so then what is the question?
The problem is that nobody really knows what the question is. There is a theory that states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.
Back to top

What are Vogons?
Though not actually evil, the Vogons are thoroughly vile. Officious, bad-tempered, callous, rude, unpleasant. They wouldn't even lift a finger to save their own grandmothers from the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal without orders signed in triplicate, sent in, sent back, queried, lost, found, subjected to public inquiry, lost again, and finally buried in soft peat for three months and recycled as firelighters. They write some of the worst poetry in the known universe.
Back to top

What is the importance of towels?
A towel is just about the most massively useful thing any interstellar Hitchhiker can carry. For one thing it has great practical value - you can wrap it around you for warmth on the cold moons of Jaglan Beta, sunbathe on it on the marble beaches of Santraginus Five, huddle beneath it for protection from the Arcturan Megagnats as you sleep beneath the stars 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 avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal, and even dry yourself off with it if it still seems clean enough. More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: non-hitchhiker) 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.
Back to top

What is a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster?
Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster is a potent drink invented by Zaphod Beeblebrox. The effects have been likened to having your brains smashed out with a slice of lemon wrapped round a large gold brick. There are many voluntary organizations which will help to rehabilitate you after you've had one.
Back to top

Who is this President of the Imperial Galactic Government fellow?
The President is very much a figurehead - he wields no real power whatsoever. He is apparently chosen by the government, but the qualities he is required to display are not those of leadership but those of finely judged outrage. For this reason the President is always a controversial choice, always an infuriating but fascinating character. His job is not to wield power but to draw attention away from it. On those criteria Zaphod Beeblebrox is one of the most successful Presidents the Galaxy has ever had. He spent two of his ten Presidential years in prison for fraud. Very few people realize that the President and the Government have virtually no power at all, and of these very few people only six know whence ultimate political power is wielded. Most of the others secretly believe that the ultimate decision-making process is handled by a computer. They couldn't be more wrong.
Back to top

What is the Heart of Gold?
A brand new state of the art spaceship, stolen at its unveiling on the planet Damogran by Galactic President Zaphod Beeblebrox. The Heart of Gold is equipped with the new Infinite Improbability Drive. The core of this drive is made of solid gold, thus the name.
Back to top

What is the Infinite Improbability Drive?
The Infinite Improbability Drive simultaneously places a starship at every conceivable point in the universe, thereby eliminating all that tedious mucking about in hyperspace. It uses vast amounts of improbability, and many silly things happen in its wake. The prototype drive system was installed on the Starship Heart of Gold.
Back to top

I'm falling off a cliff and heard that the guide could help me learn to fly. How?
This is what The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has to say on the subject of flying: There is an art, or, rather, a knack to flying. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss. It's going to hurt if you fail to miss the ground. Most people fall to miss the ground, and if they are really trying properly, the likelihood is that they will fail to miss it fairly hard. 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. If you are lucky enough to have your attention momentarily distracted at the crucial moment by, say, a gorgeous pair of legs or a bomb going off in your vicinity, 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. 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.
Back to top

How does the Babel Fish translate?
The Babel Fish is small, yellow and leech-like, and probably the oddest thing in the Universe. It feeds on brainwave energy not from its carrier, but from those around it. It absorbs all unconscious mental frequencies from this brainwave energy to nourish itself with. It then excretes into the mind of its carrier a telepathic matrix formed by combining the conscious thought frequencies with nerve signals picked up from the speech centers of the brain which has supplied them. The practical upshot of all this is that if you stick a Babel fish in your ear you can instantly understand anything said to you in any form of language. The speech patterns you actually hear decode the brainwave matrix which has been fed into your mind by your Babel fish.
Back to top

How did the Babel Fish disproved the existence of God?
The Final Proof of the non-Existence of God was proved by a Babel Fish. Now, it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mind-bogglingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some have chosen to see it as the final proof of the NON-existence of God. The argument goes something like this:
"I refuse to prove that I exist," says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing."
"But," says Man, "the Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves that You exist, and so therefore, by Your own arguments, You don't. QED"
"Oh dear," says God, "I hadn't thought of that," and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.
"Oh, that was easy," says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing.
Back to top

What was God's final message to the Universe?
After discovering that the people of the Universe were rather unhappy with their Universe, God set out to make sure they understood He hadn't purposefully tried to screw with them. And so He wrote the following message on a mountain for anybody within range to see. The message went as follows: WE APOLOGISE FOR THE INCONVENIENCE. The message eventually became a tourist attraction.
Back to top

What is this Earth place that you are trying to get us to buy a book from?
Earth is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the galaxy. The sapient life forms on Earth are, in descending order of intelligence, mice, dolphins and humans, the lattermost of whom may or may not be descended from a race of Golgafrinchan telephone sanitizers, hairdressers, management consultants, and documentary film producers." These Golgafrinchans arrived in a space ark which crashed into the planet circa 2 mya, promptly christening their new home "Fintlewoodlewix" (though obviously the name didn't stick). Although often mistaken for a planet, Earth is in reality the greatest supercomputer of all time, designed by the second greatest supercomputer of all time, Deep Thought, to calculate the Ultimate Question of Life, The Universe and Everything (to which the answer is 42). It was built by the then-thriving custom planet industry of Magrathea to run a ten-million-year program in which organic life would play a major role. Slartibartfast, a Magrathean designer, was involved in the project and signed his name among the fjords of Norway (an area that won him an award). Five minutes before the program was to finish running, Earth was destroyed by the Vogons, allegedly to make way for a hyperspace bypass but in fact to prevent the Ultimate Question being discovered, as it was seen as a threat to the psychiatric industry.
Back to top

Who are the Teasers?
Teasers are bored rich kids who cruise the galaxy looking for planets yet to make interstellar contact, find some isolated spot, land in front of some credulous soul they know no one will ever believe, strut up and down in front of them with silly antennas on their head and make beep-beep noises at them. Ford regards this practice as "rather childish, really".
Back to top

Where can I go to get a custom planet built?
You’re looking for Magrathea, a legendary planet. Generally regarded as a myth, the Magratheans manufacture whole planets. They lived most of their lives beneath the surface of Magrathea, because they didn't much like the surface.
Back to top

Why is hyperspace travel unsafe if you are from Galactic Sector ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha?
Galactic Sector ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha is a galactic sector containing Earth, Barnard's Star, and probably other nearby systems. The "Plural" designation may indicate probability problems; after Fenchurch disappeared during a hyperspace jump, it was pointed out to Arthur Dent that the small print advised against hyperspace travel for those born in Plural sectors. This is apparently common knowledge throughout the rest of the galaxy.
Back to top

How can I make a reservation at The Restaurant at the End of the Universe?
Reservations are easily obtained, since they can be booked once the patron returns to his or her original time after their meal, and the restaurant's bill can be paid by depositing a penny in any bank account of the present time. By the end of the universe, the compound interest on that penny over the course of time after 170 quintillion years will be enough to pay the extremely high bill.
Back to top

Sources

advertisement