Happy Birthday, Douglas Adams

[filkertom]

On this date in 1952.

Who are your favorite Hitchhiker's Guide characters, and what are some of your favorite lines?

Comments

[shannachie.livejournal.com]

Beware of the leopard!

[shannachie.livejournal.com]

And:
I am the main dish of today, can I interest you in parts of my body?

[nimitzbrood.livejournal.com]

I seem to be having tremendous difficulty with my lifestyle.

[maiac.livejournal.com]

"...on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much -- the wheel, New York, wars and so on -- whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man -- for precisely the same reasons."

"All it takes to fly is to hurl yourself at the ground... and miss."

"Time is an illusion, lunchtime doubly so."

And, much too appropriate for our time: "Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job."

[hitchkitty.livejournal.com]

"This must be a Tuesday. I never could get the hang of Tuesdays."

"Late, as in 'the late Dent Arthur Dent'. It's sort of a threat, you see. I'm told they can be terribly persuasive, but I've never been very good with them."

"And later, the universe will explode for your entertainment."
"Wow, what kind of drinks do you serve here?!"

The Guide's entries on Vogons, the Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster, and the marketing division of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation.

[jcw-da-dmg.livejournal.com]

I do believe it was Thursdays he could never get the hang of.

[fmh.livejournal.com]

The mere thought hadn't even begun to speculate about the merest possibility of crossing my mind.

Ah...this is obviously some strange usage of the word safe that I wasn't previously aware of. (I've actually had occasion to use this)

I'm so hip I have trouble seeing over my own pelvis.

[ladystarblade.livejournal.com]

My faves tend to come from the actual Guide itself:

It is known that there are an infinite number of worlds, simply because there is an infinite amount of space for them. However, not every one of them is inhabited. Therefore, there must be a finite number of inhabited worlds. Any finite number divided by infinity is as near to nothing as makes no odds, so the average population of all the planets in the Universe can be said to be zero. From this it follows that the population of the whole Universe is also zero, and that any people you may meet from time to time are merely the products of a deranged imagination.

or

Now it is such a bizarrely impossible coincidence that anything so mind-bogglingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as a final and clinching proof of the nonexistence of God. The argument goes something like this:

"I refuse to prove that I exist," says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing."

"But," say Man, "the Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED."

"Oh dear," says God, "I hadn't though of that" and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.

Point, set, and match!

[partiallyclips.livejournal.com]

Quoted from memory so may not be perfect: "Several million, billion tons of superhot exploding hydrogen nuclei rose slowly above the horizon, and managed to look small, cold, and slightly damp."

[valarltd.livejournal.com]

I'm a Ford Prefect fan.

"Ford, you're turning into a penguin. Stop it."

Must be Thursday. I never could get the hang of Thursdays.

"It's unpleasantly like being dunk."
What's unpleasant about being drunk?"
"Ask a glass of water."

[wormquartet.livejournal.com]

Zaphod Zaphod Zaphod, dammit.

I have read the Guide more than any other books, possibly not counting the Roald Dahl stuff I read relentlessly as a kid. Dense as hell with plot, humor, and brilliant observations and ideas, not to mention the best plot device ever invented in the form of the infinite improbability drive. And the Infocom text adventure is a BITCH.

Favorite lines at the moment:
Please do not press this button again.
The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't.
"The plans were on display at the bottom of a locked file cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'beware of the leopard.' Ever thought of going into advertising?"

And the scene from which I got my name (from memory, so forgive me):
Trillian: "He wasn't so much a leopard, more a sort of..."
Arthur: "A sort of what?"
Trillian: "...well, you know. Shoebox."
Arthur: "A shoebox?"
Trillian: "Full of, well, size 9 chuckerboots."
Arthur: "A shoebox of size 9 chuckerboots?"
Zaphod: "Okay, knock it off, Earthman. What do you think this is, dictation?"
Arthur: "I just wondered how she knew they were size 9!"

-=ShoEboX=-

[drzarron.livejournal.com]

I'm fond of Slartibartfast and for some reason I'm always tickled by:

Slartibartfast: Come, or you will be late.
Arthur: Late?
Slartibartfast: What is your name, Human?
Arthur: Dent, Arthur Dent
Slartibartfast: As in the late Dent Arthur Dent. Its meant to be a sort of threat, I'm not very good at them.

[sazettel.livejournal.com]

I stumbled on the Guide because NPR was running a radio play of Star Wars, which I listened to avidly, and then one night, left the radio on just to see what came after.

And I came in on what was about Episode 3 of Hitchhikers, and I sat there and listened, literally with my mouth open. I didn't know what this was, I couldn't wrap my brain around what it was, and then someone said "Ford! You're turning into a penguin. Stop it!" and I about dropped dead with laughter, and I didn't CARE what it was, I wanted more of it.

[the-s-guy.livejournal.com]

"In other words," said Benji, steering his curious little vehicle right over to Arthur, "there's a good chance that the structure of the question is encoded in the structure of your brain - so we want to buy it off you."

"What, the question?" said Arthur.

"Yes," said Ford and Trillian.

"For lots of money," said Zaphod.

"No, no," said Frankie, "it's the brain we want to buy."

"What!"

"I thought you said you could just read his brain electronically," protested Ford.

"Oh yes," said Frankie, "but we'd have to get it out first. It's got to be prepared."

"Treated," said Benji.

"Diced."

"Thank you," shouted Arthur, tipping up his chair and backing away from the table in horror.

"It could always be replaced," said Benji reasonably, "if you think it's important."

"Yes, an electronic brain," said Frankie, "a simple one would suffice."

"A simple one!" wailed Arthur.

"Yeah," said Zaphod with a sudden evil grin, "you'd just have to program it to say What? and I don't understand and Where's the tea? - who'd know the difference?"

"What?" cried Arthur, backing away still further.

"See what I mean?" said Zaphod and howled with pain because of something that Trillian did at that moment.

[bald-ruminant.livejournal.com]

Quotes:
"Is there any tea on this spaceship?"

"I think you ought to know I'm feeling particularly depressed today."

"He's spending a year dead for tax reasons."

"Because in space travel, all the numbers are awful."

"The regular early morning yell of horror was the sound of Arthur Dent waking up and suddenly remembering where he was."

"Those who are born immortal instinctively know how to cope with it, but Wowbagger was not one of them. Indeed he had come to hate them, the load of serene bastards. He had had his immortality thrust upon him by an unfortunate accident with an irrational particle accelerator, a liquid lunch and a pair of rubber bands. The precise details of the accident are not important because no one has ever managed to duplicate the exact circumstances under which it happened, and many people have ended up looking very silly, or dead, or both, trying."

"So long, and thanks for all the fish."

Characters:
Agrajag, Marvin, Arthur, and Deep Thought.

[shsilver.livejournal.com]

I posted essentially the same a few days ago to mark the 30th anniversary of the first episode of the radio show.

Well, there's the unattributed line

[capplor.livejournal.com]

from a Doctor Who episode. As soon as I heard it, I said, "That's Douglas Adams", although his name appears nowhere. He was credited as script editor during that period (but not on that episode)

"When the [force generator?] goes off, run as if something very nasty were chasing you, because something very nasty will be chasing you"

[wildcard9.livejournal.com]

This is going to be an inaccurate quote, I don't have the books or radio plays handy to get the wording exactly right:

Improbability at a factor of one to one. Normalcy has been achieved. If you are still having problems, they are strictly your own.

It has been way too long since I read the books, so I am sure that I am forgetting some other good ones (the "must be Thursday" quote and the "time is an illusion" quote have already been said here). I think the first two books were best for quotes (or was it first three? As I said, it has been too long since I last read them).

[darrenzieger.livejournal.com]

...We have normality. I repeat, we have normality. Anything you still can't cope with is therefore your own problem." :)

[ashkitty.livejournal.com]

The line I began my university entrance essays with:

There is a trick, or rather a knack, to flying. The knack lies in learning to throw yourself at the ground and miss.

[hitchkitty.livejournal.com]

Okay, I have to ask: What was the theme of your essay?

[armb.livejournal.com]

"I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by."

(Not a Hitchhiker line, but a Douglas Adams quote.)

[susan-the-rogue.livejournal.com]

"Don't panic." This tends to be the one I quote most often. And 42 is officially my favorite number (although it did lead to possibly one of the most idiotic arguments I've ever had. I made the mistake of telling an ex-boyfriend that 42 is the answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything, and he promptly retorted with "No it's not, the answer is Jesus!" Oy vey.)

[hitchkitty.livejournal.com]

Reminds me of the flap that some televangelist tried to raise about He-Man's blasphemous claim to be "Master of the Universe".

[liddle-oldman.livejournal.com]

"Would it save everyone time if I just went mad now?"

[samildanach.livejournal.com]

Roughly, from memory:

"... whereas the only thing that went through the mind of the bowl of petunias was, 'Oh no, not again.'"

Pretty much my philosophy in a nutshell...

[unclelumpy.livejournal.com]

"Life? Don't talk to me about life."

[house-elf.livejournal.com]

Favorite Character: Trillian, I think.
Favorite line: "So long and thanks for all the fish."

[darrenzieger.livejournal.com]

"It was the product of a mind that was not merely twisted, but actually sprained"

Re: the Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster: "...the effect of which is like having your brain smashed out by a slice of lemon wrapped around a large gold brick"

"They hung in the air precisely the way that bricks don't."

perhaps my all time favorite -- the Guide on Sirius Cybernetics products:

"...it is very easy to be blinded to the essential uselessness of them by the sense of achievement you get from getting them to work at all. In other words, -- and this is the rock-solid principle on which the whole of the Corporation's Galaxywide success is founded -- their fundamental design flaws are completely hidden by their superficial design flaws."

[hitchkitty.livejournal.com]

The Marketing Division of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation defines "robot" as "Your plastic pal who's fun to be with."
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy defines the Marketing Division of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation as "a bunch of mindless jerks who'll be first against the wall when the revolution comes", with a footnote to the effect that applications for the post of "robotics correspondent" would be welcomed.
Curiously, a future edition of the Encyclopedia Galactica which had the fortune to fall through a time warp defined the Marketing Division of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation as "a bunch of mindless jerks who were first against the wall when the revolution came".

[faxpaladin.livejournal.com]

"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 poing 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."

Incidentally: There exists a basketball coach named Skip Prosser. I know almost nothing else about him, except that his name makes me think of a fidgety bureaucrat wondering why a thousand hairy horsemen are shouting at him in his head...

[dan-ad-nauseam.livejournal.com]

Sadly, deceased 2007.