Phrases from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a comic science fiction series created by Douglas Adams that has become popular among fans of the genre and members of the scientific community.
Many writers on popular science, such as Fred Alan Wolf, Paul Davies, and Michio Kaku, have used quotations in their books to illustrate facts about cosmology or philosophy.
[1][2][3] In the radio series and the first novel, a group of hyper-intelligent pan-dimensional beings demand to learn the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, The Universe, and Everything from the supercomputer Deep Thought, specially built for this purpose.
The computer is revealed as being the planet Earth, with its pan-dimensional creators assuming the form of white lab mice to observe its running.
In The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, this reason is revealed to have been a ruse: the Vogons had been hired to destroy the Earth by a consortium of psychiatrists, led by Gag Halfrunt, who feared for the loss of their careers when the Ultimate Question became known.
[5] Lacking a real question, the mice (pan-dimensional beings) decide not to go through the whole process again and instead settle for the out-of-thin-air suggestion "How many roads must a man walk down?
He attempts to discover The Ultimate Question by extracting it from his brainwave patterns, as abusively[6] suggested by Ford Prefect, when a Scrabble-playing caveman spells out "forty two".
[5] Quoting Fit the Seventh of the radio series, on Christmas Eve, 1978: Narrator: 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.
[9] Though the question is never found, 42 is the table number at which Arthur and his friends sit when they arrive at Milliways at the end of the radio series.
Cleese needed a funny number for the punchline to a sketch involving a bank teller (himself) and a customer (Tim Brooke-Taylor).
on the radio show Book Club, Adams explained that he was "on his way to work one morning, whilst still writing the scene, and was thinking about what the actual answer should be.
In an interview at the Sydney Opera House in 2010, two minutes before the end of the show,[15] Fry appears to be ready to reveal the answer, but remains inaudible due to an apparent failure of the microphone.
[20] The 42 Puzzle is a game devised by Douglas Adams in 1994 for the United States series of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy books.
"Life, the universe, and everything" is a common name for the off-topic section of an Internet forum, and the phrase is invoked in similar ways to mean "anything at all".
Google Calculator will give the result to "the answer to life the universe and everything" as 42, as will Wolfram's Computational Knowledge Engine.
It is devoted to this concept in the book series, and several attempts at recreating Milliways, the Restaurant at the End of the Universe, were made.
The OpenSUSE team decided the next version will be based on SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop and named "Leap 42".
[43] "It is said that despite its many glaring (and occasionally fatal) inaccuracies, the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy itself has outsold the Encyclopedia Galactica because it is slightly cheaper, and because it has the words 'DON'T PANIC' in large, friendly letters on the cover.
[44] British rock band Coldplay's debut album Parachutes contains a song called "Don't Panic" in reference to the series.
[citation needed] On 6 February 2018 SpaceX launched the Falcon Heavy rocket, carrying Elon Musk's Tesla Roadster which had "DON'T PANIC!"
[45] Within the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy universe, towels are regarded as indispensable equipment for experienced travellers, since they can be put to a wide variety of uses.
Low-scoring players in the multiplayer version of the game Perfect Dark and GoldenEye 007 are awarded with the designation "mostly harmless".
[48] In chapter 17 of the novel The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Arthur Dent tries to get a Nutrimatic drinks dispenser to produce a cup of tea.
The Sirius Cybernetics Corporation tends to produce inherently faulty goods, which renders the statement ironic since few people would want to "Share and Enjoy" something that was defective.
The Guide relates that the words "Share and Enjoy" were displayed in illuminated letters three miles high near the Sirius Cybernetics Complaints Division, until their weight caused them to collapse through the underground offices of many young executives.
The upper half of the sign that now protrudes translates in the local tongue as "Go stick your head in a pig", and is lit up only for special celebrations.
Furthermore, Fit the Twenty-First of the radio series, the last episode in the adaptation of the novel So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish, features a polyphonic ringtone version of the tune.
The "Share and Enjoy" tune also is used in the TV series as the backing for a Sirius Cybernetics Corporation robot commercial (slogan: "Your plastic pal who's fun to be with!
The dolphins had long known of the impending demolition of Earth and had made many attempts to alert mankind to the danger...The last ever dolphins message was misinterpreted as a surprisingly sophisticated attempt to do a double backward somersault through a hoop whilst whistling "The Star-Spangled Banner", but in fact the message was this: "So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish."
[citation needed] The phrase was also spoofed for the All Time Low track "So Long, and Thanks for All the Booze", from the appropriately-titled album Don't Panic.
