* * *
Very far in the unfashionable end of the Galaxy lies a small yellow sun. Orbiting this sun at a distance of about ninety-two million miles is a tiny blue-green planet whose ape-descended [1] life forms are so primitive that they still think digital watches are a great idea.
This planet has – or had – a problem, which was this: most of the people on it (even the ones with digital watches) were unhappy most of the time. Many thought that they had all made a big mistake coming down from the trees. And some even said that no one should have ever left the oceans.
Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of them involved the small green pieces of paper. And so the problem remained.
And then, one Thursday, almost two thousand years after one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change[2], one girl sitting alone in a small cafe suddenly realized what it was that had been going wrong all this time, and she finally knew how the world could be made a good and happy place. Sadly, however, before she could get to a phone to tell anyone about it, a terribly stupid catastrophe happened, and the idea was lost forever.
This is not her story. But it is the story of that terribly stupid catastrophe.
It is also the story of a book called The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (not an Earth book, never published on Earth, and until the terrible catastrophe, never seen or heard of by any Earthman). It is a remarkable book. In fact, it was probably the most remarkable book ever published by the great publishing houses of Ursa Minor [3].
It is also a very successful book – more popular than Oolon Colluphid’s philosophical bestsellers Where God Was Wrong, Some More of God’s Greatest Mistakes and Who Is This God Person Anyway?
In many of the more relaxed civilizations of the Galaxy, The Hitchhiker’s Guide has already beaten the great Encyclopedia Galactica as the main source of all knowledge and wisdom. Why? There are two reasons. First, it is a bit cheaper. Secondly, it has the words DONT’T PANIC written in large friendly letters on its cover.
But the story of this terrible, stupid Thursday, the story of its extraordinary consequences, and the story of this remarkable book begins very simply.
It begins with a house.
The house stood alone on the edge of the village and looked over the farmland. It was not a remarkable house – it was about thirty years old, small, made of brick, with four windows in the front that failed to please the eye[4].
The only person for whom this house was special was Arthur Dent, and that was only because he was the one who lived in it. He had lived in it for about three years, ever since he had left London because it made him nervous. He was about thirty as well, with dark hair, and never quite comfortable with himself. What used to worry him most was the fact that people always used to ask him what he was so worried about. He worked in local radio, and he always used to tell his friends that his job was a lot more interesting than they probably thought.
On Wednesday night it had rained very heavily, the road was wet and muddy, but the Thursday morning sun was bright and clear as it shone on Arthur Dent’s house for the last time.
Arthur hadn’t quite realized that the local council was planning to demolish his house and build a bypass[5] instead.
* * *
At eight o’clock on Thursday morning Arthur didn’t feel very good. He woke up, got up, walked round his room, opened a window, saw a bulldozer, found his slippers, and walked to the bathroom to wash.
He put toothpaste on the brush and looked at himself in the mirror. For a moment it reflected a second bulldozer outside the bathroom window. Arthur Dent shaved, washed, dried, and walked to the kitchen to find something pleasant to put in his mouth.
Kettle, fridge, milk, coffee.
The word bulldozer went through Arthur’s mind for a moment, trying to find something to connect with. The bulldozer outside the kitchen window was quite a big one. He stared at it. “Yellow,” he thought and walked back to his bedroom to get dressed.
Passing the bathroom, he stopped to drink a large glass of water, and another. He suspected that he had a hangover. Why? Had he been drinking the night before? Maybe. “Yellow,” he thought again and went to the bedroom.
There he stood for a while[6] and thought.
The pub, he thought. Oh dear, the pub.
He remembered being angry about something that seemed important. He’d been telling people about it. Telling people about it for too long, he suspected, remembering the looks on other people’s faces. Something about a new bypass he had just found out about. No one had heard about it. Ridiculous. It wouldn’t work, he had decided, because no one wanted a bypass.
God, what a terrible hangover it had brought him though. He looked at himself in the mirror. “Yellow,” he thought. The word yellow went through his mind, trying to find something to connect with.
