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The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Difference between revisions
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (view source)
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The books, in order, are:
* ''[[The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy/The
* ''[[The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy/The Restaurant At The End of The Universe|The Restaurant At The End of The Universe]]''
* ''[[The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy/Life, The Universe And Everything|Life The Universe And Everything]]''
* ''[[The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy/So Long, And Thanks For All The Fish|So Long And Thanks For All The Fish]]''
* ''[[Young Zaphod Plays It Safe]]'' (short story)
* ''[[The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy/Mostly Harmless|Mostly Harmless]]''
* ''[[The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy/And Another Thing|And Another Thing]]''
A six-episode TV series version was shown on [[The BBC]], ''[[The
There was an [[Interactive Fiction]] game, ''[[The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (video game)|The Hitchhikers Guide to The Galaxy]]'', that was also largely written by Adams. It's known for being [[Unwinnable|fiendishly difficult]], yet a classic of the genre. A fully playable Java version of the original exists on Adams' own website, and can be found [http://www.douglasadams.com/creations/infocomjava.html here], while the BBC website has two different illustrated 20th Anniversary Editions available on their website, [http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/hitchhikers/game.shtml here]. The games have less plot than any of the other tellings, ending when you first set foot on Magrathea. A sequel was planned but never made.
In 2005, a big-budget Hollywood movie version, ''[[The
The series has also been adapted into stage shows, albums, comic books, and even a version printed on [[In Joke|a towel]]. There is also a website, created by Adams himself and originally run by the BBC, called [http://www.h2g2.com H2G2].
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* [[Absolute Xenophobe]]: The Krikkiters, who on becoming aware that there was a universe outside their dust cloud decided that it all had to go.
* [[The Ace]]: Zaphod, [[Zig-Zagging Trope]].
* [[Achievements in Ignorance]]: Invoked. To fly, one must aim at the ground and miss. To miss you have to distract yourself at the last moment. Then once you've achieved flight, you have to avoid thinking about how this is impossible or gravity will notice you, hard.
* [[Added Alliterative Appeal]]: Big Bang Burger Bar
** Except it's called The Big Bang Burger Chef in the radio series.
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* [[Arc Number]]: 42. See also [[Memetic Number]] below.
* [[The Artifact]]: Zaphod, at least if his absence in the last two Hitchhiker's novels Adams wrote is any guide; either Adams grew weary of the character or simply found him too difficult to write for. Every subsequent adaptation, including the radio versions made after Adams died has restored him to prominence.
* [[Ass Pull]] Subverted.
** At one point, the main characters {{spoiler|escape being blown up by nuclear warheads only by the Improbability Drive turning the missiles into a sperm whale and a bowl of petunias}}.
*** This was even subverted later when it was revealed that the bowl of petunias was a fairly important character.
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* [[Author Existence Failure]]: [[Trope Namer]], almost; the third book mentions a "total existence failure". Later, of course, succumbed to the trope when Adams died while working on the sixth book; his last published collection of pieces, ''The Salmon of Doubt'', contains an early draft of a [[Dirk Gently]] novel that Adams was hoping to rework into a Hitchhiker book.
* [[Ax Crazy]]: Random.
* [[Bad Guy Bar]]: The Old Pink Dog used to have a sign that read "Please don't ask for credit because having your throat torn out by a savage bird while a disembodied hand smashes your head against the bar often offends". The bar's reputation eventually made the sign unnecessary.
* [[Bathos]]: Used ''constantly'' for surreal humor. The page quote is just one of many, many examples.
* [[Batman Gambit]]: In ''Life, The Universe and Everything {{spoiler|Hactar takes advantage of his apparent failure to trick the people of Krikkit into destroying the universe to instead plant the real supernova bomb on Arthur and manipulate him into nearly doing so.}}
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* [[Blessed with Suck]]/[[Cursed with Awesome]]: Marvin the Paranoid Android embodies both. He's a robot who exists entirely in a state of near suicidal depression, so being [[Nigh Invulnerable]] must be a horrible burden. It's just one more example of the myriad ways the universe keeps kicking him in the plums. If robots have plums of course.
** Give him the POV Gun and he can make a small army of Vogons collapse from depression, unable to fight. Of course, that will not make Marvin himself feel any more significant.
** He does the same thing to the Krikkit robots in ''Life, The Universe, and Everything'' when the Masters of Krikkit salvage him and put his massive intellect to work coordinating their military strategy. The result was war robots who would go off and sulk and start doing quadratic equations instead of their job.
*** They harnessed Marvin's immense intellect to the Central Intelligence Core of the Krikkit War Computer. He didn't enjoy it. And neither did the Central Intelligence Core of the Krikkit War Computer.
** And earlier in the series he drives an AI to suicide just by trying to talk to it.
* [[The Blind Leading the Blind]]: Ford trying to teach Arthur about advanced scientific principles, most notably [[Time Travel]] in ''The Restaurant at the End of the Universe''.
* [[Bolivian Army Ending]]: ''Mostly Harmless''.
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* [[Cool Starship]]: The Heart of Gold, the Starship Bistromath and several others.
* [[Corrupt Politician]]: Played for laughs. Many galactic presidents are arrested on election, on general principal.
* [[Corrupt Corporate Executive]] The executives of insurance companies are implied to be this in general, since Trillian mentions that the death penalty has been instated for them, an when Arthur asks for wich offense she merely responds "What do you mean, offense?"
* [[Crapsack World]]: No one seems to mind blowing up a planet and the legal system seems broken. [[Played for Laughs]].
* [[Creator Breakdown]]: Regarding the [[Downer Ending]] of ''Mostly Harmless'' and the mixed-to-negative reaction from fans, Adams conceded, "I just had a thoroughly miserable year, and I was trying to write a book against that background." He intended a sixth book to give the series a better conclusion, but succumbed to [[Author Existence Failure]] first.
* [[Cross Cultural Kerfuffle]]: A minor, comical example. During the section explaining how scientists view of the Babel Fish has allowed for the final proof of the non-existence of God, it is said how one can then go on to prove black is white and promptly get run over at the next zebra crossing. In Britain and many other countries, black-and-white stripped "Zebra Crossings" are the equivalent of the (often yellow or parallel lined) American "Crosswalk". Americans, when reading the joke, usually imagine the term as an equivalent to a "Deer Crossing" (that is to say, a place where ''zebras'' cross) which makes for an equally humorous, though widely different joke.
** There's an in-story example, where a casual throwaway remark Arthur makes regarding his lifestyle leads to an interstellar war of gargantuan proportions <ref>from the perspective of the participants; both sides ultimately invade Earth and their forces are swallowed by a small dog</ref> breaking out.
** The Ford Prefect was a small car Ford manufactured and sold in England, but not America. Adams regularly commented on how Americans were completely unaware of a joke they weren't getting.
*** Other countries that did translate it had to find ways of getting around the problem. Usually by renaming him "Ford Escort".
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* [[Earn Your Happy Ending|Earn Your Happy Entire Book]]: Arthur was due the huge break life gave him in ''So Long''. Too bad it didn't stick. (Though it does in the radio version.)
* [[Earth Is the Center of the Universe]]: Averted at the beginning of the first book, then played straight for the rest of the series.
** An odd example of this trope. While the Earth is important to the mices' plans, what ''are'' those plans? To go on the talk show circuit and get rich. The only version of the Ultimate Question we learn is nonsense. When another character learned universal Truth by another method, it [[Go Mad From the Revelation|drives some people mad]], but has more to do with frogs than universal epiphanies and isn't mentioned again in any of the following books. There is a Ruler of the Universe, and he doesn't live on Earth. All things considered, Earth is more important to the universe in this series than it seems in [[Real Life]], but it's still an absurd, farcical, nearly [[Crapsack World|crapsack]] universe full of [[Shaggy Dog Story|Shaggy Dog Stories]], so nothing is all that important.
* [[The Eeyore]]: Marvin.
* [[Electric Instant Gratification]]: In the radio series and in ''Mostly Harmless.''
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* [[How Do I Shot Web?]]: Arthur learning to fly in the third book.
* [[Huge Rider, Tiny Mount]]: The Vogons and their gazelle-like creatures.
** In this case the poor unfortunate gazelle-like creatures are used more as furniture than transport, as they were too fragile to support a full-grown Vogon and their backs would snap instantly under the strain.
* [[Human Aliens]]
* [[Humans Are Morons]]: Arthur Dent, the only human left alive (except for Trillian), is constantly being referred to as an ape or otherwise put down as a moron (mainly by Zaphod, though he isn't exactly bright himself.)
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** The print version pretty much portray Zaphod this way as well. It's even more obvious when you know that when Douglas Adams wrote the original radio play, he based the character of Zaphod on similar characters played by actor Mark Wing-Davey, who played Zaphod in the radio show and television series. [[Large Ham]] is a quintessential part of Zaphod's nature.
** Valentine Dyall's portrayal Deep Thought. A multi dimensional super-computer is able to take hamminess to levels that are not normally physically possible.
* [[Law of Conservation of Detail]]: Subverted to hell and back, probably deliberately. The narrative throws in references to bizarre alien places and things via the Guide frequently. A few of them pop up later in the same book or radio show, a few of them become [[Brick Joke|Brick Jokes]] when a later book or show makes a [[Call Back]] to them, and some quite clearly were random jokes that no one ever fleshed out or ever intended to.
* [[Left Hanging]]: Partly because Douglas Adams is now, you know, [[Author Existence Failure|living-impaired]])
* [[Life Imitates Art]]: Smartphones and tablets with access to Wikipedia mimic the capability and functions of the Guide with uncanny accuracy.
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* [[Multi Boobage]]: Eccentrica Gallumbits, the Triple-Breasted Whore of Eroticon VI.
* [[Nobody Poops]]: Lampshaded in the new radio series adaptation of Life, The Universe, and Everything. "You know, in all this time I have never once [[Sound Effect Bleep|''flush'']]".
* [[Non-Indicative Name]]: Marvin is known as "The Paranoid Android," but he's not remotely paranoid. He's depressed, nihilistic, sarcastic, pessimistic, and a few other adjectives, but never paranoid.
** He's also not manically depressed, despite multiple people (including himself) referring to him as a "manically depressed robot".
* [[Noodle Implements]]: Twice in the book series: Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged became that way due to an accident involving a particle accelerator, a liquid lunch, and a pair of rubber bands. The other was due to an incident with a time machine and a contraceptive, maybe
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* [[Omnicidal Maniac]]: {{spoiler|Hactar. And because of him, also}} the people of Krikkit.
* [[Once For Yes, Twice For No]]: Zaphod makes Eddie do this after gagging him.
* [[Only Known by Their Nickname]]: The name Ford Prefect was born with is long since lost in the mists of time. Apparently he couldn't pronounce his own given name, causing his father to die of shame. Before he adopted the Ford Prefect moniker, he was known by the nickname Ix.
** Which means [[Translation: "Yes"|"boy who cannot sufficiently explain what a Hrung is, nor why it should choose to collapse on Betelgeuse Seven."]]
* [[Only Sane Man]]: After being convinced the entire universe is insane, Wonko the Sane built an inside-out house and named it "Outside the Asylum". If the outside of the house is on the "inside", then everything on the outside is also on the "inside" and thus safely contained. (If you know topology, this makes absolutely perfect sense -- see, he told you he was sane.)
* [[Outsourcing Fate]]: To the real President of the Galaxy, a little old man in a shed in the middle of nowhere. All he's interested in is feeding his cat, but occasionally people stop round and ask him what he thinks about certain things.
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* [[Seen It All]]: Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged.
* [[Self-Deprecation]]: "Any people you may meet are merely the products of a deranged imagination." All the people are, of course, the product of Douglas' imagination.
* [[Shiny-Looking Spaceships]]: The Heart Of Gold, which makes sense because Zaphod steals it just as it is being christened.
{{quote|Ford: I think this ship is brand new!
Arthur: Why? Do you have some kind of alien technology for measuring the age of metal?
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* [[Unusual Euphemism]]: Belgium!
** To a lesser extent, Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish.
* [[Utility Belt]]: Always know where your towel is.
** Other hitchhikers had seen fit to modify their towels in exotic ways, weaving all kinds of esoteric tools and utilities and even computer equipment in their fabric.
* [[Video Inside, Film Outside]]: The TV series.
* [[The Wall Around the World]]: Wonko the Sane constructs a wall around his home to fence in the world, which he calls "the Asylum."
* [[Warrior Poet]]: The Vogons, in a depressingly literal fashion.
* [[Watching the Sunset]]
* [[Weapons Grade Vocabulary]]: Vogon poetry, which makes the listeners seriously ill or worse. It is advised to take some other option than that.
** Marvin's seen it. It's rubbish.
* [[Weirdness Censor]]: The "Somebody Else's Problem" field, which makes people dismiss anything unusual as "somebody else's problem". Much easier (and more power-efficient) that real [[Invisibility]].
* [[Weirdness Magnet]]: The luckless Arthur; more literally, the Infinite Improbability Drive, which ''creates'' weirdness.
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