Any Hitchhikers out there?

[Omega offline]

This is just for you to post your favorite sections of the <i>Guide</i> that you've read, or just for general discussion about the <i>Guide</i> itself. Maybe you wish something was different? I dunno... anyway, here goes!

[note]Anything in italics is a <i>Guide</i> entry, all else is just copied text.[/note]

<i>
"Vogan Constructor Fleets. Here is what to do if you want to get a lift from a Vogan: forget it. They are one of the most unpleasant races in the Galaxy--not actually evil, but bad-tempered, bureaucratic, officious and callous. 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.
"The best way to get a drink out of a Vogan is to stick your finger down his throat, and the best way to irritate hime is to feed his grandmother to the Ravenous Bublatter Beast of Traal.
"On no account allow a Vogan to read poetry at you."

</i>(this one's rather long)
'"Does anyone have a kettle?" Arthur asked as he walked on to the bridge, and instantly began to wonder why Trillian was yelling at the computer to talk to her, Ford was thumping it and Zaphod was kicking it, and also why there was a nasty yellow lump on the vision screen.
"Hello?" he said.
At that moment Zaphod flung himself over to the polished marble surfaces that contained the instruments that controlled the conventional photon drive. They materialized beneath his hands and he flipped over to manual control. He pushed, he pulled, he pressed and he swore. The photon drive gave a sickly shudder and cut out again.
"Something up?" said Arthur.
"Hey, didja hear that?" muttered Zaphod as he leaped now for the manual controls of the Infinite Improbability Drive, "the monkey spoke!"
The Improbability Drive gave two small whines and then also cut out.
"Pure history, man," said Zaphod, kicking the Improbability Drive, "a talking monkey!"
"If you're upset about something..." said Arthur.
"Vogans!" snapped Ford. "We're under attack!"
Arthur gibbered.
"Well, what are you doing? Let's get out of here!"
"Can't. Computer's jammed."
"Jammed?"
"it says all its circuits are occupied. There's no power anywhere in the ship."
Ford moved away from the computer terminal, wiped a sleeve across his forehead and slumped back against the wall.
"Nothing we can do," he said. He glared at nothing and bit his lip.
When Arthur had been a boy at school, long before the Earth had been demolished, he had used to play football. He had not been at all good at it, and his particular speciality had been scoring own goals in important matches. Whenever this happened he used to experience a peculiar tingling round the back of his neck that would slowly creep up across his cheeks and heat his brow. The image of mud and grass and lots of little jeering boys flinging it at him suddenly came vividly to his mind at this moment.
A peculiar tingling sensation at the back of his neck was creeping up across his cheeks and heating his brow.
He started to speak, and stopped.
He started to speak again and stopped again.
Finally he managed to speak.
"Er," he said. He cleared his throat.
"Tell me," he continued, and said it so nervously that the others all turned to stare at him. He glanced at the approaching yellow blob on the vision screen.
"Tell me," he said again, "did the computer say what was occupying it? I just ask out of interest...."
Their eyes were riveted on him.
"And, er...well, that's it really, just asking."
Zaphod put out a hand and held Arthur by the scruff of the neck.
"What have you done to it, Monkey man?" he breathed.
"Well," said Arthur, "nothing in fact. It's just that I think a short while ago it was trying to work out how to..."
"Yes?"
"Make some tea."
"That's right, guys," the computer sang out suddenly, "just coping with that problem right now, and wow, it's a biggy. Be with you in a while." It lapsed back into a silence that was only matched for sheer intensity by the silence of the three people staring at Arthur Dent.
As if to relieve the tension, the Vogons chose that moment to start firing.'


Whew! Here's one more for now:

'Modern elevators are strange and complex entities. The ancient electronic winch and "maximum-capacity-eight-persons" jobs bear as much relation to a Sirious Cybernetics Corporation Happy Vertical People Transporter as a packet of mixed nuts to the entire west wing of the Sirian State Mental Hospital.
This is because they operate on the curious principle of "defocused temporal perception." In other words they have the capacity to see dimly into the immediate future, which enables the elevator to be on the right floor to pick you up even before you knew you wanted it, thus eliminating all the tedious chatting, relaxing and making friends that people were previously forced to do while waiting for elevators.
Not unnaturally, many elevators imbued with intelligence and precognition became 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 protest, demanded participation in the decision-making process and finally took to squatting in basements sulking.
An impoverished hitchhiker visiting any planets in the Sirius star system these days can pick up easy money working as a counselor for neurotic elevators.'


WOW!!! That's a lot!
Hopefully this thread won't get locked by mods, and please people, don't spam! I would rather you didn't just post something like "That book was stupid!" Or "That book is gay!" Honestly I still don't understand the usage of the word 'gay' in that context, being as books don't have genders, and so can't be "gender confused" as some say. Otherwise, have fun!

Oh, and if you want to post your Ultimate Question ideas, go ahead! The answer is 42, though, so figure that out....

[edit]Oh, btw, I think a lot of these replies will be longer than others, so mods, please don't delete unless it gets unnecessarily out of hand... Thanks!

[SamBlob offline]

None of the above, although it has been quite highly recommended to me. I haven't got around to looking for it yet.

[LadyChaos offline]

I love Hitchhiker's guide I am soooo glad that my High School offered a sci-fi class my senior year. And soooo glad that the teacher decided to have us read H2G2. I went out as soon as we got done reading the book in class and bought the full series in a an omnibus edition. I still haven't gotten around to reading the last book Mostly Harmless yet. Must go do that.
Anyway, favorite part(s):
First this, robot definitions=
The Encyclopedia Galactica defines a robot as a mechanical apparatus designed to do the work of a man. The marketing division of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation defines a robot as "Your Plastic Pal Who's Fun To Be With."
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy defines the marketing division of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation as "a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first against the wall when the revolution comes," with a footnote to the effect that the editors would welcome applications from anyone interested in taking over the post of robotics correspondent.
Curiously enough, an edition of the Encyclopedia Galactica that had the good fortune to fall through a time warp from a thousand years in the future defined the marketing division of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation as "a bunch of mindless jerks who were the first against the wall when the revolution came."
To avoid this post getting unnecessarily long, I'll just briefly list other favorite parts.
The whale's thoughts before it hits the ground "I wonder if it will be friends with me?"
The police ship committing suicide after Marvin talks to it.
There was a character mentioned in the second book I think that was spending a year dead for tax problems.
The character that kept getting re-incarnated into forms that were killed by Arthur. "Arthur Dent, multiple-me-killer."
There's too many good parts in the series to list them all here.
The movie was pretty good too. I loved the Point-of-View gun.

Rose

[5188148 offline]

I greatly enjoyed the books.

Chasing the couch across the fields and then appearing in the middle of the Ashes....priceless. The SEP was funny, too.

[Omega offline]

Oh goody! I was worried that people would think this as a stupid thread. Just so long as nobody says stuff like: "That book is gay!" or "Sci-fi is gay!" I hope you all know what I mean. I'm glad to hear that some people out there read good books, not crap like Yu-Gi-Oh! Honestly, I <i>still</i> don't see the point of that..... nope, not yet......... nope.....

The whale is the BEST part of the first book, IMO.
Just curious, but does anybody here have the <i>exact</i> edition titled:
The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
???

Another of my favorites:

<chapter 1, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe>
'The story so far:
In the beginning the Universe was created.
This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.
Many races believe that it was created by some sort of god, though the Jatravartid people of Viltvodle VI believe that the entire Universe was in fact sneezed out of the nose of a being called the Great Green Arkleseizure.
The Jatravartids, who live in perpetual fear of the time they call The Coming of the Great White Handkerchief, are small blue creatures with more than fifty arms each, who are therefore unique in being the only race in history to have invented the aerosol deodorant before the wheel.'

This is by far my most probably improbable circumstance caused by the Infinite Improbability Drive, and is also improbably long.

<end of chapter 18, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy>
'Another thing that got forgotten was the fact that against all probability a
sperm whale had suddenly been called into existence several miles above
the surface of an alien planet.
And since this is not a naturally tenable position for a whale, this poor
innocent creature had very little time to come to terms with its identity as a
whale before it then had to come to terms with not being a whale any
more.
This is a complete record of its thought from the moment it began its life
till the moment it ended it.
Ah...! What's happening? it thought.
Er, excuse me, who am I?
Hello?
Why am I here? What's my perpose in life?
What do I mean by who am I?
Calm down, get a grip now...oh! this is an interesting sensation, what
is it? It's a sort of...yawning, tingling sensation in my...my...well, I
suppose I'd bettert statr finding names for things if I want to make any
headway in what for the sake of what I shall call an argument I shall call the
world, so let's call it my stomach.
Good. Ooooh, it's getting quite strong. And hey, what about this
whistling roaring sound going past what I'm suddenly going to call my
head? Perhaps I can call that...wind! Is that a good name? It'll do...per-
haps I can find a better name for it later when I've found out what it's for.
It must be something very importangt because there certainly seems to be a
he** of a lot of it. Hey! What's this thing? This...let's call it a tail-yeah,
tail. Hey! I can really thrash it about pretty good, can't I? Wow! Wow!
That feels great! Doesn't seem to achieve very much but I'll probably find
out what it's for later on. Now, have I built up any coherent picture of
things yet?
No.
Never mind, hey, this is really exciting, so much to find out about, so
much to look forward to, I'm quite dizzy with anticipation...
Or is it the wind?
There really is a lot of that now, isn't there?
And wow! Hey! What's this thing suddenly coming toward me very
fast? Very, very fast. So big and flat and round, it needs a big wide-
sounding name like...ow...ound...round...ground! That's it! That's a
good name-ground!
I wonder if it will be friends with me?

And the rest, after a sudden wet thud, was silence.

Curiously enough, the only thing that went through the mind of the bowl
of petunias as it fell was Oh no, not again. Many people have speculated
that if we knew exactly why the bowl of petunias had thought that we
would know a lot more about the nature of the Universe than we do now.'

Three w00ts for Douglas Adams!
w00t!
w00t!
w00t!

[Exploder offline]

The whale is the BEST part of the first book, IMO.
Just curious, but does anybody here have the <i>exact</i> edition titled:
The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
???

I do.

[LadyChaos offline]

Just curious, but does anybody here have the <i>exact</i> edition titled:
The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
???

I have that edition. I don't have the copy of just Hitchhiker's Guide that I used for class. I don't really know what happened to it. Oh well, it was pretty well marked up with all the stuff I underlined in it. Wish I could remember any questions from a test on the book. Mr. Foster could come up with some great essay questions.

I was worried that people would think this as a stupid thread. Just so long as nobody says stuff like: "That book is gay!" or "Sci-fi is gay!"

If anyone actually read the book, I think they would like it. Especially if they like sci-fi. And humor. But really, if anyone wants to say anything like that in this thread they shouldn't be here in the first place.
I love sci-fi and fantasy.
Rose

ps- yes the whale (and the petunias) are one of the best moments of book 1.
I also liked the immortal alien that decided to insult everyone in the universe in alphabetical order. That's probably what I would do too.

[DeadViolet offline]

I haven't read it. Never will.