Chapter 23
The narrator explains that things aren't always as they seem, for man always thought he was smarter than dolphins. Dolphins, for their part, knew they were smarter than man. In fact, they knew about the imminent destruction of Earth and tried to warn man, to no avail. They left Earth by their own means before the Vogons came; their last (mistranslated) message was “So long, and thanks for all the fish.” The only creature smarter than dolphins is white mice, though man would never guess that.
Chapter 24
Slartibartfast says nothing as the aircar moves through the darkness. It plunges into a tunnel, and eventually, Arthur can see a large circle of volatile light. The old man looks at Arthur and intones a welcome to Magrathea. He adds that things will become clear soon, and that they must pass into hyperspace so they can get to a chamber that does not really exist.
When this happens, Arthur has a sense of infinity, though not exactly since the chamber’s dimensions are finite. There is a wall, though, of staggering vastness and sheerness. The wall is the curved inside of a hollow sphere and is flooded with light; it is three million miles across.
Arthur is speechless and asks if they are back in the business of making planets. Slartibartfast exclaims of course not, but they have one client left with an extraordinary commission. Arthur stares at the man’s pointed finger. It takes a moment for him to realize what he is looking at, and Slartibartfast cheerfully confirms it is Earth Mark Two. They are building from the original blueprints.
Arthur’s shock continues and he asks if they built the Earth. Slartibartfast confirms this and says he was upset to hear of its destruction. He adds that the mice were particularly upset, as they paid for it. Arthur’s brain can barely handle this, but Slartibartfast tells him bluntly that mice commissioned, paid for, and ran the planet Earth. In fact, they were experimenting on men.
This is too much for Arthur. He exclaims that humans experimented on the mice. Slartibartfast shakes his head in admiration of the mice’s disguise of their real natures and just how they are “clever hyperintelligent pandimensional beings” (164). He tells Arthur he’ll tell him the whole story if he has time. Arthur replies meekly that time isn’t one of his current problems.
Chapter 25
Many many years ago a race of brilliant pandimensional beings decided that they simply had to know the meaning of life so they built an incredibly powerful supercomputer the size of a small city.
On the day of the Great On-Turning two programmers named Lunkwill and Fook arrived, aware of the immense honor of their task. They switched on the machine and a rich and deep voice asked what was the great task for which it was called into existence. After a few moments of the computer, known as Deep Thought, denouncing other machines, Lunkwill and Fook finally said they want “The Answer”—that is, the answer to life, the universe, and everything. The computer considered their request and said it can do it.
Suddenly two men burst in and announced themselves as Vroomfondel and Majikthise, the Philosophers. They did not want the computer to give an answer because they would be out of a job; they wanted to keep vagueness and ill-defined borders. Deep Thought volunteered an idea: since it will take over seven million years for it to find out the answer, the philosophers could enjoy their time figuring out what that answer is. The men were not only mollified, but also elated.
Chapter 26
When the old man pauses, Arthur says that he does not understand how this story has anything to do with anything else. The old man says he is going to show him what actually happened by using Sens-O-Tape records.
Chapter 27
In Slartibartfast’s messy office he finds two wires and gives them to Arthur. Suddenly Arthur is transported to a scene of a roaring crowd. A man on a dais proclaimed that the time of Waiting was over and it was now the day of the Answer. Everyone cheered.
Two men, Loonquawl and Phouchg, appeared in the same room as the original programmers were in. They spoke to Deep Thought and reverently asked their question again. Deep Thought replied that indeed there was an answer, which stunned and excited the two men. Deep Thought warned them that they might not like it, but they eagerly told him to proceed.
Slowly and majestically, Deep Thought announced that the answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything is...forty-two.
Chapter 28
The programmers were stunned into silence and then began to wail in protest. When one says that this was supposed to be The Question, Deep Thought asked them what actually was the question? They were quiet again. Loonquawl asked if it can tell them and it said no. The two men were dismayed. Deep Thought continued, though, and said that someday he would design a new computer, a computer powerful enough to find the Question to the Ultimate Answer.
Deep Thought again paused for effect, and said the computer will be “Earth.” The two programmers looked at each other, thinking that was a very boring name.
The tape ends.
Chapter 29
Ford and Trillian try to wake up Zaphod, who with his two windpipes got a double dose of the gas. The ground is hard and cold, and as Zaphod revives he sees that it is gold—gold that is sleek and smooth and endless in every direction. Zaphod becomes excited but the other two tell him it’s merely an illusion from the Sens-O-Tape. In fact, the last planet, Trillian adds, was all fish.
Other planet prototypes appear in their vision. An advertisement for Magrathea proclaims it can cater to anyone’s taste.
The three sit for a moment and Zaphod muses on what he had been saying before they passed out. He knows that what he did to his minds must have been done so he wouldn’t know himself, and so the Government screening tests couldn’t pick it up. It must be a profound secret. He then explains that he had decided to run for President after the death of President Yooden Vrant, a man whom both the young Zaphod and Ford had encountered and liked very much. Vrant had come to Zaphod before he died and told Zaphod he ought to steal the Heart of Gold and the only time to do it was the launching ceremony. He really, then, only became President so he could steal the ship but he does not know why. Ford is amused at this.
The last images of the planet catalog fade away and suddenly they are sitting in a waiting room. A tall Magrathean man announces that the mice will see them now.
Chapter 30
Slartibartfast sighs to Arthur that the Vogons destroyed ten million years of work and planning in an instant. He is working on the new Earth but he has been assigned Africa and he is more of an expert in fjords as in Norway.
A little light flashes and Slartibartfast tells him to come along, for he is going to meet the mice. This is, he adds, the third most improbable event in the history of the Universe. Curious, Arthur asks what the other two were and Slartibartfast shrugs apathetically and says probably just coincidences.
Arthur notices his dirty clothes and mutters, “I seem to be having tremendous difficulty with my life-style” (194).
Chapter 31
When Arthur makes that comment, a freak wormhole opens up in the fabric of the space-time continuum and his words go way back in time to a dispute between two groups of strange and warlike beings. The words are mistranslated as an insult, and war ensues for centuries.
Once the truth of the words becomes clear the beings rampage across space and prepare to attack earth. However, the whole fleet is swallowed by a small dog; they’d miscalculated proportions.
Arthur enters the waiting room and his friends greet him excitedly. They are stuffing their faces with food. A tiny voice welcomes the “Earthman” and Arthur shouts in surprise that there are mice on the table. An awkward silence falls.
Trillian introduces Benjy mouse and Frankie mouse, their hosts and the mice she brought from Earth.
Slartibartfast coughs and the mice dismiss him. They cavalierly throw out that they no longer need the new Earth, which distresses Slartibartfast because he’d worked so hard on it.
After Slartibartfast leaves, the mice explain that they’re very tired of seeking the Question and have spent far too long doing so. Nevertheless, Magrathea is the portal back to their home and they need to bring something with them, and something that sounds good.
Ford and Zaphod suggest Arthur might have some answers because his “brain was an organic part of the penultimate configuration of the computer program” (201). Arthur is doubtful. The mice are excited and say they’re prepared to buy his brain. It will have to be extracted, of course, but they can put in a replacement electronic brain.
Ford and Zaphod cry out that this was not the agreement and Arthur is horrified. The mice in their little glass transports fling themselves aggressively toward Arthur. Trillian tries to grab Arthur and Zaphod and Ford attempt to pry open the door. Things do not look good, but suddenly every alarm on the planet sounds.
Chapter 32
The alarms warn of a hostile ship on the planet. Arthur and friends run away while the mice rue the fuss made over Arthur’s brain. They decide they’ll have to make up a Question.
Arthur, Ford, Trillian, and Zaphod rush up and down corridors looking for a way out. Two armored policemen begin to fire energy bolts on them and they take cover. Ford tries to reason with the cops, who explain that they’re actually liberal and sensitive and friendly men but have this job to do. They continue to fire and the computer bank the group is hiding behind melts further and further away. Again, it looks as if the end is near.
Chapter 33
Suddenly, there is silence and two thuds. Ford decides to have a look, though he wishes his friends would talk him out of it. He sees the two dead bodies. Clearly, the tiny life-support system computers on their backpacks blew up, but how?
Zaphod grabs one of the cops’ Kill-O-Zap guns and blasts open the corridor. He almost hits Slartibartfast’s aircar, which is waiting for them with a note pinned to the instrument panel telling them which is probably the best button to push.
Chapter 34
The aircar flies through the corridors up out into the open air of the planet and to the Heart of Gold. The Blagulon Kappa spaceship, which houses the cops, is also there but looks just as dead and silent as its former inhabitants. Ford is shocked at how a ship and two policemen could go spontaneously dead.
He sees Marvin lying in the dust and asks how he is. Marvin says he is depressed and is lying in the dirt to be wretched. Anyone he talks to begin to hate him, it seems. He points to the ship and says it hated him. Excitedly Ford asks what he means. Marvin shrugs that he plugged into the computer and told it his view of the Universe and it committed suicide.
Chapter 35
The Heart of Gold zooms away from the Horsehead Nebula. Zaphod drinks excessively while Ford and Trillian talk. Arthur peruses the Guide, something he figures he ought to do now that this is his home.
The ship’s intercom buzzes to him and Zaphod asks if he is hungry. Arthur assents. Zaphod says they will head toward the Restaurant at the End of the Universe.
Analysis
And so the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy comes to a close, if not anticlimactically at least somewhat...quasi-climactically. Sure, the characters almost die a couple of times and Arthur learns the Answer to the meaning of Life, the Universe, and Everything, but we are still left with the following questions: 1)What was Zaphod trying to hide in his brain? 2)What about Magrathea’s awakening? 3)What is the Question the mice make up? 4)Is Earth Mark Two really not going forward? 5)What is 42? We do learn a couple of things, including that dolphins are smarter than man and escaped Earth’s destruction and that mice commissioned and paid for Earth and that Earth was a supercomputer intended to find a Question for that inscrutable Answer of 42 and that Slartibartfast is really good at designing fjords, but generally Adams frustrates readers’ desires for concrete resolutions. There are more books in the series, of course, but even they do not offer such resolutions.
In these last few chapters, Adams continues to cheekily pull the rug out from his readers. If learning that mice were the real force behind the Earth's creation and were actually experimenting on men rather than the reverse and that the answer to the meaning of life, the universe, and everything is 42 isn’t flummoxing enough, there is also the hilarious undercutting of Philosophy, which is here rendered as a spurious profession and metaphysical chicanery more than an intellectual calling. Similarly, chance and irony dominate the remaining chapters. The arrival of the policemen looking for Zaphod is the only way the group is saved from the mice, and Marvin’s melancholy worldview -not heroism -is what then saves the group from the policemen. The dolphins knew that the Earth was going to be destroyed and did indeed warn humans, but the language barrier meant that humans were merely amused by the squeaks and squeals.
By the end of the novel, there is very little discernible character development. What is apparent is that Arthur is at least resigned to his new life as a space traveler, thinking “since he was going to have to live in the place, he reasoned, he’d better start finding out something about it” (215). Zaphod knows nothing more about his motivations and machinations, and Trillian and Ford aren’t really any different either.
Adams’s novel, then, is notable for how it deviates from traditional narrative conventions -particularly those in the science fiction genre. Critic Carl F. Kropf deems the work “mock science fiction” and begins his article by stating that this type of work “[reverses] most of the paradigmatic expectations readers have learned to bring to the genre” and “[reverses] its entire ideological function;” the work then “becomes reflexive, commenting on the bankruptcy of the genre’s paradigms.”
Kropf compares the mock SF novel to the mock epic, most notably exemplified by Alexander Pope’s Dunciad. Both Adams and Pope depict nature as “disordered and morally chaotic.” Arthur Dent is “bungling” and an “unlikely hero” and even though he and Trillian are the only humans left, there is no love story there. The novel is a “chronicle of aborted endings and inconclusive conclusions in the course of which the author does everything possible to pitrage verisimilitude.” Adams presents dramatic situations like missiles heading toward Magrathea but then undercuts the tension by telling readers is advance that everyone is unharmed. He suggests that it is important to seek the answer to the question, but what answer? What question? He denies closure and his works do not confirm that the universe “implies a meaning or purpose [but rather] they affirm its meaninglessness” and “offers no detectable, rational pattern.” overall, Kropf concludes, the novels “are an instance of art imitating nature where nature has no order and where God and his counterpart, the creating artist, both must apologize for the mess things are in.”
