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The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy |
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Introduction The God of this phenomenon that we call Hitchhiker’s was of course Douglas Adams, who sadly died in 2001 at the tender age of 49. Thankfully he left us behind the sci-fi comic bible and I personally got hooked by the books and later the TV show. Douglas Adams had a gift, he had the power to take you on a journey through a good old yarn and make you question reality through ridiculousness. The more far-fetched his tales were, the more you questioned day to day veracity. Douglas Adams was a pioneer in our world of unreality and brought me, at least, imagination and the will to read, laugh and expand my boundaries. Thanks Doug. As we all know, the phenomenon started with a radio show in 1979 and then it was made into a series of five books, later a TV show by the oh so cheesy BBC of the 80’s and later a film. Of course they all follow the same basic premise (although the film does try to take on too much in too little time). Arthur Dent is your average boring man, average house, average life but with an above average friend, Ford Prefect. Now, depending on your point of view, Arthur is the world’s luckiest man as his best mate is in fact an alien from somewhere near the planet Betelgeuse who saves Arthur form the Earth’s pending destruction by the Vogon’s to make room for a intergalactic highway. Arthur gets whisked away in his pyjamas with only a towel for protection. All the different versions follow Arthur’s trials and tribulations (although Adams did have the knack of completely contradicting himself from version to version) in the Zaphod Beeblebrox’s (Ford’s semi-cousin) quest to the answer to the ultimate question; the meaning of life and Arthur’s quest to get a decent cup of tea. Whenever Arthur is feeling hapless, which happens more than once every minute, he consults the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, a rather flippant version of Wikipedia. As the story progresses Arthur finds himself on board a stolen ship known as the Heart of Gold with a reality drive, stolen by the ex-president (Beeblebrox) and a depressed android called Marvin. As you can imagine their journey is pretty chaotic with many hurdles including most importantly Beeblebrox’s ego. Well, without wanting to give any more away to those from other planets that still haven’t read or seen Hitchhiker’s, our heroes must go to Magrathea to find the question to the answer to the ultimate question… Confused? Read the books!
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