The ingenuity of complete fools (Douglas Adams: Mostly Harmless)

“O Sandwich Maker from Bob!” he pronounced. He paused, furrowed his brow and sighed as he closed his eyes in pious contemplation. “Life,” he said, “will be a very great deal less weird without you!” Arthur was stunned. “Do you know,” he said, “I think that’s the nicest thing anybody’s ever said to me?”

Det er mulig at denne tar prisen for tvilsomste plott i serien (skjønt konkurransen er hard), men den er selvsagt likevel minst like morsom og elskelig som resten av serien. Arthur Dent er herlig både som tilnærmet lykkelig smørbrødmester og desperat tenåringsfar, og så er det fullt av skatter som flyservicesystemet som etter et havari begynner å infisere det lokale dyrelivet, og gjøre det om til «some kind of helpless thrashing service industry, handing out hot towels and drinks to passersby».

Aorist rods (Douglas Adams: Young Zaphod Plays It Safe)

Aorist rods were devices used in a now happily abandoned form of energy production. When the hunt for new sources of energy had at one point got particularly frantic, one bright young chap suddenly spotted that one place which had never used up all its available energy—the past.

Aorist rods! Aorist rods! Her ser vi hva en Cambridge-utdannelse virkelig kan gjøre for deg! 

Inexplicable people (Douglas Adams: So Long and Thanks for All the Fish)

Others may wish to skip on to the last chapter which is a good bit and has Marvin in it.

Men om du gjør det, går du også glipp av regnguden Paul McKenna («Let’s be straight here. If we find something we can’t understand we like to call it something you can’t understand, or indeed pronounce.») og Wonko the Sane/John Watson(!), som ikke kunne leve i et univers med detaljerte bruksanvisninger for tannpirkere. 

Men til og med bortsett fra dem syntes jeg det var romantisk, jeg, og det hadde jeg strengt tatt ikke ventet. 

How I hate the night (Douglas Adams: Life, the Universe and Everything)

“I’m afraid,” he said at last, “that the Question and the Answer are mutually exclusive. Knowledge of one logically precludes knowledge of the other. It is impossible that both can ever be known about the same Universe.”

Så det utsøkt fjompete plottet i fjerde bind bringer oss selvsagt ikke noe nærmere en forståelse av livet, universet og hele greia. Men vi får høre Marvins voggesanger, da, det er vel verdt å lese den bare for det. 

Now the world has gone to bed,
Darkness won’t engulf my head,
I can see by infrared,
How I hate the night.