It is one of the most remarkable, certainly the most successful, books ever to come out of the great publishing corporations of Ursa Minor – more popular than Life Begins at Five Hundred and Fifty, better selling than The Big Bang Theory – A Personal View by Eccentrica Gallumbits (the triple breasted whore of Eroticon Six) and more controversial than Oolon Colluphid’s latest blockbusting title Everything You Never Wanted To Know About Sex But Have Been Forced To Find Out.
(And in many of the more relaxed civilizations on the Outer Eastern Rim of the Galaxy, it has long surplanted the great Encyclopaedia Galactica as the standard repository of all knowledge and wisdom, for though it has many omissions and contains much that is apocryphal, or at least wildly inaccurate, it scores over the older and more pedestrian work in two important respects. First, it is slightly cheaper, and secondly it has the words Don’t Panic printed in large friendly letters on its cover.)
It is of course that invaluable companion for all those who want to see the marvels of the known Universe for less than thirty Altairan Dollars a day – The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
If you stood with your back to the main entrance lobby of the Guide offices (assuming you had landed by now and freshened up with a quick dip and shower) and then walked east, you would pass along the leafy shade of Life Boulevard, be amazed by the pale golden colour of the beaches stretching away to your left, astounded by the mind-surfers floating carelessly along two feet above the waves as if it was nothing special, surprised and eventually slightly irritated by the giant palm trees that hum toneless nothings throughout the daylight hours, in other words continuously.
If you then walked to the end of Life Boulevard you would enter the Lalamatine district of shops, bolonut trees and pavement cafes where the UM-Betans come to relax after a hard afternoon’s relaxation on the beach. The Lalamatine district is one of those very few areas which doesn’t enjoy a perpetual Saturday afternoon – it enjoys instead the cool of a perpetual early Saturday evening. Behind it lie the night clubs.
If, on this particular day, afternoon, stretch of eveningtime – call it what you will – you had approached the second pavement cafe on the right you would have seen the usual crowd of UM-Betans chatting, drinking, looking very relaxed, and casually glancing at each other’s watches to see how expensive they were.
You would also have seen a couple of rather dishevelled looking hitch-hikers from Algol who had recently arrived on an Arcturan Megafreighter aboard which they had been roughing it for a few days. They were angry and bewildered to discover that here, within sight of the Hitch Hiker’s Guide building itself, a simple glass of fruit juice cost the equivalent of over sixty Altairan dollars.
“Sell out,” one of them said, bitterly.
If at that moment you had then looked at the next table but one you would have seen Zaphod Beeblebrox sitting and looking very startled and confused.
The reason for his confusion was that five seconds earlier he had been sitting on the bridge of the starship Heart of Gold.
“Absolute sell out,” said the voice again.