Plot Summary
The book begins with contractors arriving at Arthur Dent's house, in order to demolish it to make way for a bypass. His friend, Ford Prefect, arrives while Arthur is lying in front of the bulldozers, to keep them from demolishing it. He tries to explain to Arthur that the Earth is about to be demolished. The Vogons, an alien race, intend to destroy Earth to make way for a hyperspace bypass.
The two escape by hitching a lift on one of the Vogon demolition ships. This is, however, against Vogon regulations, and when the pair are discovered, they are tortured with hearing Vogon poetry, the third worst in the known Universe, and then thrown into space. They are, very improbably, picked up by the Heart of Gold, a ship powered by an infinite improbability drive, which has been stolen by Ford's semi-cousin and President of the Galaxy, Zaphod Beeblebrox. Zaphod, accompanied by Trillian and the chronically depressed robot Marvin, is searching for the legendary planet of Magrathea, which is rumoured to have manufactured luxury planets. Ford is initially skeptical, but they do, in fact, find Magrathea.
There, Arthur, after being separated from the rest of the group, is taken into the interior of the planet by a native, Slartibartfast. The others are kidnapped. Slartibartfast explains to Arthur that the Earth was actually a supercomputer commissioned and paid for by a race of "hyper-intelligent," "pan-dimensional" beings. These creatures had earlier built a supercomputer called Deep Thought to calculate the Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything. This computer, after seven and a half million years of calculation, had announced that the Answer is in fact 42. Being unsatisfied with the Answer, they set about finding the Question which would give the Answer meaning, whereupon Deep Thought designed the Earth, to calculate it. However, ten million years later, and just five minutes before the completion of the program Earth was designed to execute, the Earth is demolished by the Vogons. Two of these beings, Frankie Mouse and Benjy Mouse, had arrived on Magrathea on the Heart of Gold, in the form of Trillian's pet mice.
The mice realize that a latent version of the question, or something very like it, must exist in Arthur's brain since he is a late-generation organic product of the computer, and offer to buy his brain from him. Arthur declines, and a fight ensues. The mice are about to cut Arthur's head open when klaxons all over the planet are activated, creating a diversion during which Arthur, Ford, Zaphod and Trillian are able to escape. The galactic police arrive on the planet to arrest Zaphod and the group is attacked by two officers who abruptly die when the life support systems in their spacesuits fail: Marvin had been talking to their ship, which was linked to their suits, and as a result it had become so depressed that it committed suicide.
The group decides to go to The Restaurant at the End of the Universe for lunch.
Read more about this topic: The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy (novel)
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