So… given what is said about knowing both the answer & the question in the same universe, maybe the ultimate question to life, the universe, & everything is Doctor Who? After all, it was said that that is the first question, & must never be answered. What better answer to it than 1 the ultimate answer, which must never be questioned?

I know this feed is filled with real geniuses , this is doable. Someone make a text reader that uses the "guide" voice to read Wikipedia to you that has a user interface that resembles the guide. Also you could add the music accompanyment and little sound effects. Life kind loves having stuff read to it . AAannnndddd GO.

https://preview.redd.it/mwnzf6zy9ywd1.jpg?width=600&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=31e5d1f50af72c93ded51cca37177ff4397033f8

The book says only six people in the entire universe understood the real job of the president. Was ZB one of those six?

Psst! The Douglas Adams: Explaining the World kickstarter campaign ends in 48 hours.

I always thought that the ‘sorry for the inconvenience’ was actually what Marvin saw when he looked through the telescope as it was broken, only upon re-reading the book around 20 years later do I now realise my mistake. Did anyone else think this on a first read through? Would have been quite in keeping with Adams and his humour so I can understand my younger self’s mistake.

So small story first. I went to a gaming convention and found a "Don't Panic" pin in the iconic text. I had it pinned to my backpack on the way home. Somewhere in the airport or on the plane, it had come off and I didn't notice until I got home.

I told my friends and my brother (who went with me to the con) and they all said "Just Don't Panic."

That is all.

I'm currently reading the 42nd anniversary addition of the novels. I am half way through Life, The Universe and Everything and I have noticed the second typo of this series so far.

I bought them as a box set on Amazon for just under £20 which is considerably less than high street stores sell them for so I am not discounting the possibility that these are counterfeits.

The first typo was small. It was near the start of either Restaurant at the end of the Universe or Life, The Universe and Everything and it was just a single word missing, a simple connector like "is" I believe. I checked the audiobook version to make sure I wasn't reading it incorrectly and Martin Freeman says the word "is". But I am now half way through Book 3 and at the start of chapter 19 (page 117 in my copy) it says the following

"Let's be blunt, it's a nasty game (says the Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy) but then anyone who has been to £any [sic] of the higher dimensions..."

There's a pound sign at the start of the word! Again I check the audiobook, this time the Douglas Adams version, and he doesn't say the pound sign so it wasn't intentional, clearly.

Have I bought counterfeit prints of the book, or is this present in all printings? Are typos common in this series? For being the 42 anniversary edition, I would have expected it to have been through multiple rounds of editing and formatting and surely this would have been spotted? Any insight and comparisons to others would be helpful! I have an image but I'm struggling to upload it from mobile. I'll attempt to attach it later.

Hello and welcome to my paper on “the great question” and its potential meaning in Hichhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Hopefully I won’t discover exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, so it won’t instantly disappear and be replaced by something more bizarre and inexplicable.

The TLDR of it: >!The question is, “How do we fix it?” Where IT refers to the broken timeline caused by our reluctant hero….Let me explain.!<

Obviously MASSIVE spoilers below, you really need to have read the entire series to read this, because if you haven’t finished, I will absolutely be talking about, and spoiling the ending, so go read that before this. By continuing I will be assuming that you have read it through at least once, so I’m not going to be explaining every little detail of the scene, just the parts that are relevant. You have been warned! Also, this doesn’t include any part of “And Another Thing” only the five originals.

So to begin, the things we know that will attribute to my conclusion are:

1. the conversation with Agrajag where he explains that Arthur will live at least until he accidentally kills Agrajag at ***Stravo Mueller - Beta*** which we later learn is actually a night club called Beta, (owned by Stravo Mueller) located at number 42 on an undisclosed street.

2. The Starbix Cereal Company who was sued by a later edition of The Guide after the company sent one back in time to predate Starbix, and completely alter the brand so it was known as Star Biks. The relevancy here is that time-travel is being used to a serious extent that reality could be changed on a whim.

2.5) Milliways turns into a Diner at the Beginning of the Universe (I couldn’t find the exact name of the Restaurant and have already spent too long flipping back and forth through my book) which means that time-travel is to the point that it is a tourism feature, giving almost anyone control.

3. The Vogons have an unyielding focus on the task at hand and will complete it no matter what. To the extent that they have traveled across dimensions, destroying every version of Earth that they can find. At the end of the last book, in the last few paragraphs, they complete that goal by successfully destroy Earth and everyone on it….including Arthur Dent. Upon the completion of that act, marked the job as done and moved on; so if the Vogons consider it done, it is DONE.

4. Deep Thought created the need for Earth to exist, thus allowing (and *causing*) Arthur Dent to exist, but without Arthur Dent’s existence there would be no need for the Earth.

5. The Guide 2 (also known as “the Bird”) has demonstrated IMMENSE power. It can create anything the user (or potentially simply itself) desires, not by creating it, but by manipulating time and living beings to cause the desired effect to happen. The example used was (roughly): if you need a spaceship, it won’t build you one, but it will cause a spaceship to have a reason to pass by you and give you the opportunity to have it. This is a terrifying concept as it implies that the Bird can seemingly rewrite reality. ----The Bird is not directly responsible for the problems of the Universe, but the power that it wields shows that it is possible to have anything happen by a long string of events that brings all the elements together in the proper moment. This is an important concept.

5.5) The elements in the finale are Arthur Dent, the people that know him, the Vogons, Agrajag and the owner of Club Beta, Stravos Mueller.

OKAY with all of those refreshers out of the way, this is how I came to the conclusion that the Question, the Ultimate Question, of Life, the Universe, and EVERYTHING…is 

**“How do we fix it?”**

 It’s a simple question but it covers the “EVERYTHINGNESS” because it’s not specifically “how do we fix the timeline, or how do we fix the universe, or how do we achieve what we are meant to achieve?” because it is all of that, it is an informal question, because by the time the last book is in full swing, reality has been royally screwed due to all the time traveling mentioned above. Arthur Dent has been to the end and beginning, and almost every point in time in his journey. He has had more hands in history than most other creatures, except for Bowerick Wowbagger The Infinitely Prolonged, solely because of his immortality. Arthur Dent may not be directly responsible for the problems of the world, but rather, his mere existence in these places does. 

He is not meant to be there, anywhere in space, he was meant to be destroyed on Earth by the Vogons, but Ford Prefect altered that timeline. Earth became an unstable reality zone that not only killed Fenchurch, but UN-EXISTED her entirely. And that is because the timeline that should’ve included Arthur’s death no longer exists, so other Earths keep popping up to allow him to get there at the same time as the Vogons who keep going through dimensions and destroying them. Remember, that Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz only considered the job fully done in the last paragraphs, and THAT was the Earth that had Arthur on it.

To the point that it’s not just Arthur that needs to be destroyed but the very IDEA of Arthur. As I mentioned in point 5, the Bird showed that it was possible to manipulate time and beings to achieve a desired outpoint, by getting all of the elements to align into the right formation. In point 5.5 I remind the reader that EVERY SINGLE CHARACTER (mostly human) that knew him, were at the club, Ford, Trillian, Random, the Tricia that Arthur knew at the party, etc. (I can’t remember if Zaphod was there, (I feel like he wasn’t) but that still aligns with my “humans that know him” point.) This is because not only Arthur but those who knew him most must be destroyed. It wasn’t Earth that needed to be wiped out, it was him, and it needed to be done by any means.

Deep Thought knew enough of the Universe to predict the potential problems and knew that it could be solved, but only if all of the elements align, and 42 is the shorthand for: “So we’re gonna build a planet that will be populated by creatures and ONE of those creatures needs to be sacrificed so that way life, the universe, and everything could be fixed without it needing to be reset into something even more bizarre and inexplicable.” That is less of an answer and more of an instruction manual that will need to be expanded into paragraphs, pages, or volumes to truly be an answer. 

So instead Deep Thought provided a single location, an address on the most advanced computer that it told everyone to build, that COULD provide the question. The answer to the question of “How do we fix it?” is a simple building that will provide the location for the elements to collide; a place for Arthur Dent to die. Which in itself is a difficult thing because Arthur needed to exist in order for him to need to be destroyed. They needed to create the problem before the solution could make sense, and due to the time-travel aspect, it doesn’t matter when they do it, because Arthur will have always existed, because without him, the universe HAS no meaning. What needs to be “fixed” however, is that Arthur should NEVER have left his house, he should have NEVER gone out into the galaxy. The quiet life, and an even quieter death would’ve kept the Universe from ever needing a fix. They just need to take him out of the equation, and the Vogons were kinda the righteous ones in this story.

Beyond that, much of the story is just what it is at face value  and doesn’t add to this theory, but I never ceased to be amazed at my ability to flip open the book to a random page and somehow find a passage that speaks to the truth of life. There are so many great and powerful lessons in this series that I have lived parts of my life by it (I embraced the life and love of a sandwich maker at one point in my life, it was beautiful!), it all contributes to the conclusion but some parts in less ways. I believe these five points really prove the conclusion I have come to and I would love to hear your thoughts on it.

Thank you froods for being so hoopy and I hope you all leave your handbags behind.

Hi everyone, I need a few opinions on the chapters of THGTTG. While I wish to read the entire book soon, I need to submit a book review on it as a part of my course and do not have the time to do so before the due date (😅).

I wanted to ask if yall could suggest certain important chapters from the book which hold value. They may not necessarily hold value over other chapters, but things that I could read and understand the gist of the book. Around 5 - 6 chapters would do great, and if more feel fit, then that works as well. (But I would put a cap on 10, cause under a time constraint :") ).

Thank you so much!