Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Original 1978 Audio

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Technology is the word we use to describe things we don’t understand.”

---- Douglas Adams

"The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" originally was a 1978 BBC radio series, written by Douglas Adams, which first premiered in the US on PBS radio in 1980. The subsequent TV show (available on DVD) recreates the insight and beauty of the radio broadcast with visuals that were precognizant and beyond “state of the art.” The book of the same name was actually a transcript of the original audio. The book pales by comparison to the original radio episodes because of the genius of the audio effects. (The 2005 movie version was an abomination.)

Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Quotes

Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.

The history of warfare is similarly subdivided, although here the phases are Retribution, Anticipation, and Diplomacy.

Thus:
Retribution: I'm going to kill you because you killed my brother.

Anticipation: I'm going to kill you because I killed your brother.

Diplomacy: I'm going to kill my brother and then kill you on the pretext that your brother did it.

Numbers written on restaurant bills within the confines of restaurants do not follow the same mathematical laws as numbers written on any other pieces of paper in any other parts of the Universe.

The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair.

"You know, it's at times like this when I'm trapped in a Vogon airlock with a man from Betelgeuse and about to die of asphyxiation in deep space that I really wish I'd listened to what my mother told me when I was young!"
“Why, what did she tell you?"
“I don't know, I didn't listen."

Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.

If you've done six impossible things before breakfast, why not round it off with dinner at Milliway's, the restaurant at the end of the universe?

The startling truth finally became apparent, and it was this: Numbers written on restaurant checks within the confines of restaurants do not follow the same mathematical laws as numbers written on any other pieces of paper in any other parts of the Universe. This single statement took the scientific world by storm. So many mathematical conferences got held in such good restaurants that many of the finest minds of a generation died of obesity and heart failure, and the science of mathematics was put back by years.

Nothing travels faster than the speed of light, with the possible exception of bad news, which obeys its own set of laws.

Bypasses are devices that allow some people to dash from point A to point B very fast while other people dash from point B to point A very fast. People living at point C, being a point directly in between, are often given to wonder what's so great about point A that so many people from point B are so keen to get there and what's so great about point B that so many people from point A are so keen to get there.

They often wish that people would just once and for all work out where the hell they wanted to be.

Bistromathics is simply a revolutionary new way of understanding the behavior of numbers. Just as Einstein observed that space was not an absolute, but depended on the observer's movement in space, and that time was not an absolute, but depended on the observer's movement in time, so it is now realized that numbers are not absolute, but depend on the observer's movement in restaurants.

Chapter 1
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.

It looked like something resembling white marble, which was probably what it was: something resembling white marble.

Obviously the subject of death was in the air, but more as something to be avoided than harped upon.
Possibly the horror that Zaphod experienced at the prospect of being reunited with his deceased relatives led on to the thought that they might just feel the same way about him and, what's more, be able to do something about helping to postpone this reunion.

This planet has -- or rather had -- a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.

Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea ...

The first nonabsolute number is the number of people for whom the table is reserved. This will vary during the course of the first three telephone calls to the restaurant, and then bear no apparent relation to the number of people who actually turn up, or to the number of people who subsequently join them after the show/match/party/gig, or to the number of people who leave when they see who else has turned up.

There is a theory which 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.

What I like about deadlines is the lovely whooshing sound they make as they rush past.

Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the drug store, but that's just peanuts to space.