Chapter 6
Jeltz grumpily announces that the hitchhikers are not welcome, and adds that the ship is about to jump into hyperspace for a journey to Barnard’s Star.
Arthur grumbles about all this and Ford warns him to prepare for hyperspace. Arthur is about to look up what the Babelfish is all about when it feels like everything is disappearing and he’s falling into his own navel. As they speed through hyperspace the Guide explains about the Babelfish: it absorbs all the brainwave frequencies from those around it and translates to the carrier thought frequencies with nerve signals. The fact that this thing evolved by chance has even been used by some to prove God does not exist.
Arthur groans. They are six light years away from Earth. As for Earth, his brain cannot fathom how it could all be gone. He tries to tell himself about specific places being gone. At one point he sobs for his mother.
After some time passes he asks Ford about his research on Earth. Arthur grabs the Guide and exclaims that Earth does not have an entry. Ford corrects him and points to the tiny description: “Harmless.” Arthur explodes and is not at all mollified when Ford tells him he’d tried to include the word “Mostly” but it was not accepted.
Suddenly Ford shushes Arthur because the sound of steel-tipped boats reaches them. He moans that they are in trouble and the captain might be planning to read him some of his poetry.
Chapter 7
Vogon poetry is the third worst in the universe. Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz looks on his prisoners strapped into their Poetry Appreciation chairs and smiles. There are electrodes on their temples.
Jeltz begins to read and Arthur and Ford scream and writhe in pain. Ford goes limp. Arthur lolls about. Vogon Jeltz asks them to tell him how great his poetry was. To Ford’s surprise, Arthur actually begins to compliment Jeltz. Jeltz is intrigued but it is too little too late. He is annoyed that Arthur suggests he writes poetry because he just wants to be loved; after all, he writes poetry to “throw my mean callous heartless exterior into sharp relief” (68). He announces that he will throw them off the ship anyway.
Arthur cries that he simply cannot go to heaven with a headache. A guard grabs the two and takes them away. Arthur mumbles how he cannot believe his planet blew up and now he’s in an alien spaceship. Ford counsels him not to panic.
The guard silences them with a repeated cry of “Resistance is useless!” Ford tries to reason with him that this is not a good job and he doesn’t even know why he’s doing it. The guard thinks about this, and for a moment it looks like he might let them go. Finally, though, he decides he’s got to shove them into the airlock. He hopes to get promoted to Senior Shouting Officer.
Now inside the airlock, all sound is gone. Ford and Arthur are trapped. Arthur asks what will happen and Ford tells him glumly that they’ll be dropped out into deep space in a moment and asphyxiate.
Arthur bemoans his fate. The hatchway opens and the two are popped out into space.
Chapter 8
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is a remarkable book. It has been compiled by many people, revised multiple times, and has tons of contributions. Its introduction begins by announcing that space is very big and interstellar differences are incomprehensible to the human imagination. A creature can survive for only thirty seconds if it takes a lungful of air once out in space. The chances of being picked up by another ship within the thirty seconds are two to the power of two hundred and seventy-six thousand seven hundred and nine to one against. Interestingly, that number is also the phone number of a girl Arthur liked at a party who went off with another guy.
Twenty-nine seconds after they are dropped into space, Arthur and Ford are rescued.
Chapter 9
A hole appears in the galaxy. Market analysts and fried eggs fall out. Arthur and Ford fall onto hard pavement, their eyes still closed. Ford is pleased he caught a spaceship but Arthur chides him that the chances were astronomical against it.
The men open their eyes, and, in surprise, Arthur comments that it looks like the seafront at South End. They both wonder if they are going mad. They notice the sea is still and the buildings are moving. Suddenly the noise of pipes bursts out and horrid fish come from the sky and the two men make a run for it. They pass through “walls of sound, mountains of archaic thought, valleys of mood music, bad shoes sessions, and footling bats” (82). They hear a voice droning a measurement of probability as bulges appear in the fabric of space-time. Ford turns into a penguin.
A voice welcomes them to the Heart of Gold and tells them they are experiencing some side effects but will be fine. It shuts off. Ford and Arthur find themselves in a pink cubicle. Ford bursts out in delight that they’ve been picked up by a ship with the Infinite Improbability Drive. He’d thought it was only a rumor.
Ford looks over to Arthur, who is valiantly trying to close the door against monkeys trying to get them to look at their script for Hamlet.
Chapter 10
The Drive is a way to cross interstellar distances in a nothingth of a second. It was discovered by a lucky chance, which annoyed respectable physicists. The inventor was a student sweeping up a lab after a party who thought that he only had to figure out how improbable it was, feed the figure into the finite improbability generator, give it a cup of tea, and turn it on. This worked, but an enraged group of respectable physicists lynched him after he won an award.
Chapter 11
The improbability-proof cabin of the Heart of Gold is sparkling clean and new, and very purposeful with its video screens and panels. Zaphod is marching around nervously while Trillian is hunched over equipment. Zaphod is upset about the hitchhikers but Trillian patiently tells him that they would have died if they didn’t get picked up. Besides, she adds, the ship picked them up on its own when they were in Improbability Drive. This is very surprising to Zaphod.
Trillian calls over Marvin, a very depressed and apathetic robot. He is horrified to be given the task to go get the hitchhikers as he hates humanoids of all sorts. Zaphod shouts at him in annoyance but Trillian is gentler. Marvin moves to leave, grumbling about how meaningless life is.
Ford and Arthur are in the embarkation area of the ship. Ford marvels at how new it is, and shows Arthur a brochure that extols the merits of the breakthrough improbability technology. While Ford gushes over the specs Arthur prowls around. Ford mentions the “Genuine People Personalities” and Arthur comments that it sounds ghastly.
Behind them, a voice intones that it is indeed ghastly. The men whirl around and see Marvin, who begins to complain about the cheeriness of the doors in the place. He then says sadly that he is a genius but has been given the task of moving them to the bridge.
As Ford and Arthur follow behind Marvin Ford asks whose government owns this ship. Marvin does not reply. He bemoans being a personality prototype. Ford asks again who owns this ship and Marvin snaps that Zaphod Beeblebrox has stolen it. Ford’s face undergoes at least five expressions in quick succession.
Chapter 12
Zaphod is scrolling through the sub-etha radio waves for news of himself. He finds some but Trillian flips it off and tells him she’s thought of something. He is irritated but she continues, saying they picked up the guys in ZZ9, Plural Z Alpha. This does not seem to mean anything to Zaphod, who is very smart but not all the time (which worries him). Trillian sighs and pulls up a map. She tells him calmly that it is the exact same place he picked her up in.
Zaphod replies that that is certainly wild but doesn’t seem that interested. Trillian persists, and she calls to the computer. It answers in a cheery voice. Zaphod sighs; he hates the computer. He tells it to shut up and he and Trillian compute the figures themselves. It still isn’t clear but when they bring the computer back online it happily mentions telephone numbers and this strikes Trillian. She hits some buttons. She then pulls the guys up on the monitor cameras.
Analysis
One of the (many) notable things about Adams’s work is how blatantly atheist it is, which was not necessarily a common or commonly articulated view in the late 1970s. In the Guide’s description of the Babelfish is the acknowledgment that it put the final nail in the coffin for the theory of God. Later, Arthur finds out that the Earth was commissioned and paid for by mice and it was a supercomputer intended to discover the ultimate Question. There is no acknowledgment of an afterlife or of deities, no sense that there is an omnipotent, omniscient entity that orders and runs the universe; rather, everything is chance or coincidence or improbability.
In these chapters, readers also meet Trillian and Marvin. Initially, Trillian seems to be a minor character intended to be a pawn in the “game” between suitors Arthur and Zaphod/Phil. She is charming and sexually appealing, and it would not be surprising in a literary genre with a dearth of well-defined and autonomous female characters if she remained just those things. However, Trillian very quickly establishes herself as intelligent, measured, rational, and perspicacious. She has since come to see Zaphod’s numerous flaws, and while they may or may not still sleep together, she certainly is not just an object.
As for Marvin, the “paranoid android” (delightfully used by Radiohead for one of their songs) is one of the most beloved characters in the book. As a “personality prototype” Marvin is a brilliant but depressive, dull, and pessimistic creature who continually laments his existence. He is relegated to tasks way beneath his intellect, and when he saves the group from the cops sent to apprehend Zaphod at the end of the novel, it’s only because he plugs into a computer and tells it his view of the world, thus making the computer commit suicide just to end the misery of Marvin. Marvin is just one of several artificial intelligence beings on board, but Adams is less interested in them than he is the various alien races in the galaxy.
Aliens and robots and spaceships and holes in the galaxy and interstellar travel –this is science fiction, yes? Certainly, there’s no doubt that The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is part of this genre; it fits Merriam Webster’s definition of being “fiction dealing principally with the impact of actual or imagined science on society or individuals or having a scientific factor as an essential orienting component.” Nevertheless, Adams is clearly interested in turning some of the genre’s mainstays on their heads (this subject was mentioned briefly in the first Summary and Analysis and will reappear in subsequent ones). First, Adams intersperses terror and hilarity quite often, mitigating the former with the latter. When Ford and Arthur find themselves on the Heart of Gold they have lost their wits but Ford is also, improbably, turning into a penguin. Second, Adams probes the fact that nearly all science fiction novels have large forces of disposable characters that blindly follow the bad guys (Star Wars’ Stormtroopers, the orcs in Lord of the Rings, etc.). Instead of simply allowing the shouting Vogon to carry out his duty of menacing our heroes, Ford tries to reason with him and thus elicits his backstory. It doesn’t work, of course, but it’s an amusing moment nonetheless.
