The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Amazon.de Join Douglas Adams's hapless hero Arthur Dent as he travels the galaxy with his intrepid pal Ford Prefect, getting into horrible messes and generally wreaking hilarious havoc. Dent is grabbed from Earth moments before a cosmic construction team obliterates the planet to build a freeway. You'll never read funnier science fiction; Adams is a master of intelligent satire, barbed wit, and comedic dialogue. The Hitchhiker's Guide is rich in comedic detail and thought-provoking situations and stands up to multiple reads. Required reading for science fiction fans, this book (and its follow-ups) is also sure to please fans of Monty Python, Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, and British sitcoms. Pressestimmen “Extremely funny . . . inspired lunacy . . . [and] over much too soon.”—The Washington Post Book World "The feckless protagonist, Arthur Dent, is reminiscent of Vonnegut heroes, and his travels afford a wild satire of present institutions."—Chicago Tribune "Very simply, the book is one of the funniest SF spoofs ever written, with hyperbolic ideas folding in on themselves."—School Library Journal “[A] whimsical odyssey . . . Characters frolic through the galaxy with infectious joy.”—Publishers Weekly Klappentext "IRRESISTIBLE!"--The Boston GlobeSeconds before the Earth is demolished to make way for a galactic freeway, Arthur Dent is plucked off the planet by his friend Ford Prefect, a researcher for the revised edition of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy who, for the last fifteen years, has been posing as an out-of-work actor.Together this dynamic pair begin a journey through space aided by quotes from The Hitchhiker's Guide ("A towel is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have") and a galaxy-full of fellow travelers: Zaphod Beeblebrox--the two-headed, three-armed ex-hippie and totally out-to-lunch president of the galaxy; Trillian, Zaphod's girlfriend (formally Tricia McMillan), whom Arthur tried to pick up at a cocktail party once upon a time zone; Marvin, a paranoid, brilliant, and chronically depressed robot; Veet Voojagig, a former graduate student who is obsessed with the disappearance of all the ballpoint pens he bought over the years. Where are these pens? Why are we born? Why do we die? Why do we spend so much time between wearing digital watches? For all the answers stick your thumb to the stars. And don't forget to bring a towel!"[A] WHIMSICAL ODYSSEY...Characters frolic through the galaxy with infectious joy."--Publishers Weekly Über den Autor und weitere Mitwirkende Douglas Adams was born in Cambridge in March 1952 and was educated at Brentwood School, Essex, before attending St. John’s College, Cambridge, where he received a B.A. and later an M.A. in English literature. A writer for radio, television, and theater, he was the creator of all the various manifestations of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Galaxy, which started as a radio show and then became a series of novels, a TV show, an album, a computer game, and several stage adaptations. Adams died on May 11, 2001. Leseprobe. Abdruck erfolgt mit freundlicher Genehmigung der Rechteinhaber. Alle Rechte vorbehalten. Chapter One The house stood on a slight rise just on the edge of thevillage. It stood on its own and looked out over a broadspread of West Country farmland. Not a remarkable houseby any means—it was about thirty years old, squattish, squarish, made of brick, and had four windows set in the front of a size and proportion which more or less exactly failed to please the eye.The only person for whom the house was in any way special was Arthur Dent, and that was only because it happened to be the one he lived in. He had lived in it for about three years, ever since he had moved out of London because it made him nervous and irritable. He was about thirty as well, tall, dark-haired and never quite at ease with himself. The thing that used to worry him most was the fact that people always used to ask him what he was looking so worried about. He worked in local radio which he always used to tell his friends was a lot more interesting than they probably thought. It was, too—most of his friends worked in advertising.On Wednesday night it had rained very heavily, the lane was wet and muddy, but the Thursday morning sun was bright and clear as it shone on Arthur Dent’s house for what was to be the last time.It hadn’t properly registered yet with Arthur that the council wanted to knock it down and build a bypass instead.* * *At eight o’clock on Thursday morning Arthur didn’t feel very good. He woke up blearily, got up, wandered blearily round his room, opened a window, saw a bulldozer, found his slippers, and stomped off to the bathroom to wash.Toothpaste on the brush—so. Scrub.Shaving mirror—pointing at the ceiling. He adjusted it. For a moment it reflected a second bulldozer through the bathroom window. Properly adjusted, it reflected Arthur Dent’s bristles. He shaved them off, washed, dried and stomped off to the kitchen to find something pleasant to put in his mouth.Kettle, plug, fridge, milk, coffee. Yawn.The word bulldozer wandered through his mind for a moment in search of something to connect with.The bulldozer outside the kitchen window was quite a big one.He stared at it.“Yellow,” he thought, and stomped off back to his bedroom to get dressed.Passing the bathroom he stopped to drink a large glass of water, and another. He began to suspect that he was hung over. Why was he hung over? Had he been drinking the night be- fore? He supposed that he must have been. He caught a glint in the shaving mirror. “Yellow,” he thought, and stomped on to the bedroom.He stood and thought. The pub, he thought. Oh dear, the pub. He vaguely remembered being angry, angry about something that seemed important. He’d been telling people about it, telling people about it at great length, he rather suspected: his clearest visual recollection was of glazed looks on other people’s faces. Something about a new bypass he’d just found out about. It had been in the pipeline for months only no one seemed to have known about it. Ridiculous. He took a swig of water. It would sort itself out, he’d decided, no one wanted a bypass, the council didn’t have a leg to stand on. It would sort itself out.God, what a terrible hangover it had earned him though. He looked at himself in the wardrobe mirror. He stuck out his tongue. “Yellow,” he thought. The word yellow wandered through his mind in search of something to connect with.Fifteen seconds later he was out of the house and lying in front of a big yellow bulldozer that was advancing up his garden path.Mr. L. Prosser was, as they say, only human. In other words he was a carbon-based bipedal life form descended from an ape. More specifically he was forty, fat and shabby and worked for the local council. Curiously enough, though he didn’t know it, he was also a direct male-line descendant of Genghis Khan, though intervening generations and racial mixing had so juggled his genes that he had no discernible Mongoloid characteristics, and the only vestiges left in Mr. L. Prosser of his mighty ancestry were a pronounced stoutness about the tum and a predilection for little fur hats.He was by no means a great warrior; in fact he was a nervous, worried man. Today he was particularly nervous and worried because something had gone seriously wrong with his job, which was to see that Arthur Dent’s house got cleared out of the way before the day was out.“Come off it, Mr. Dent,” he said, “you can’t win, you know. You can’t lie in front of the bulldozer indefinitely.” He tried to make his eyes blaze fiercely but they just wouldn’t do it.Arthur lay in the mud and squelched at him.“I’m game,” he said, “we’ll see who rusts first.”“I’m afraid you’re going to have to accept it,” said Mr. Prosser, gripping his fur hat and rolling it round the top of his head; “this bypass has got to be built and it’s going to be built!”“First I’ve heard of it,” said Arthur, “why’s it got to be built?”Mr. Prosser shook his finger at him for a bit, then stopped and put it away again.“What do you mean, why’s it got to be built?” he said. “It’s a bypass. You’ve got to build bypasses.”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 point 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.Mr. Prosser wanted to be at point D. Point D wasn’t anywhere in particular, it was just any convenient point a very long way from points A, B and C. He would have a nice little cottage at point D, with axes over the door, and spend a pleasant amount of time at point E, which would be the nearest pub to point D. His wife of course wanted climbing roses, but he wanted axes. He didn’t know why—he just liked axes. He flushed hotly under the derisive grins of the bulldozer drivers.He shifted his weight from foot to foot, but it was equally uncomfortable on each. Obviously somebody had been appallingly incompetent and he hoped to God it wasn’t him.Mr. Prosser said, “You were quite entitled to make any suggestions or protests at the appropriate time, you know.”“Appropriate time?” hooted Arthur. “Appropriate time? The first I knew about it was when a workman arrived at my home yesterday. I asked him if he’d come to clean the windows and he said no, he’d come to demolish the house. He didn’t tell me straight away of course. Oh no. First he wiped a couple of windows and charged me a fiver. Then he told me.”“But Mr. Dent, the plans have been available in the local planning office for the last nine months.”“Oh yes, well, as soon as I heard I went straight round to see them, yesterday afternoon. You hadn’t exactly gone out of your way to call attention to them, had you? I mean, like actually telling anybody or anything.”“But the plans were on display . . .”“On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.”“That’s the display department.”“With a...
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