other Earthling left alive was Tricia McMillan, or Trillian to use her cool, spacey name, a fiercely ambitious astrophysicist cum fledgling reporter who had always believed that there was more to life than life on Earth. In spite of this conviction, Trillian had nevertheless been amazed when she was whisked off to the stars by Zaphod Beeblebrox, the maverick two-headed Galactic President.
What can one say of President Beeblebrox that he has not already had printed on T-shirts and circulated throughout the Galaxy free with every uBid purchase? ZAPHOD SAYS YES TO ZAPHOD was probably the most famous T-shirt slogan, though not even his team of psychiatrists understood what it actually meant. Second favourite was probably: BEEBLEBROX. JUST BE GLAD HE’S OUT THERE.
It is a universal maxim that if someone goes to the trouble of printing something on a T-shirt then it is almost definitely not a hundred per cent untrue, which is to say that it is more than likely fairly definitely not altogether false. Consequentially, when Zaphod Beeblebrox arrived on a planet, people invariably said ‘yes’ to whatever questions he asked and when he left they were glad he was out there.
These less than traditional heroes were improbably drawn to each other and embarked on a series of adventures, which mostly involved gadding around through space and time, sitting on quantum sofas, chatting with gaseous computers and generally failing to find meaning or fulfilment in any corner of the Universe.
Arthur Dent eventually returned to the hole in space where the Earth used to be and discovered that the hole had been filled by an Earth-sized planet that looked and behaved remarkably like Earth. In fact this planet was an Earth, just not Arthur’s. Not this Arthur’s, at any rate. Because his home planet was at the centre of a Plural zone, the Arthur we are concerned with had found himself shuffled along the dimensional axis to an Earth that had never been destroyed by Vogons. This rather made our Arthur’s day, and his usually pessimistic mood was further improved when he encountered Fenchurch, his soulmate. Luckily this idyllic period was not cut short by bumping into any alternate Universe Arthurs who may have been wandering around, possibly in Los Angeles working for the BBC.
Arthur and his true love travelled the stars together until Fenchurch vanished in mid-conversation during a hyperspace jump. Arthur searched the Universe for her, paying his way by exchanging bodily fluids for first-class tickets. Eventually he was stranded on the planet Lamuella and made a life for himself there as sandwich maker for a primitive tribe who believed that sandwiches were pretty hot stuff.
His tranquillity was disturbed by the arrival of a couriered box from Ford Prefect, which contained The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Mk II in the form of a smarmy pan-dimensional black bird. Trillian, who was now a successful newswoman, had a delivery of her own for Arthur in the shape of Random Dent, the daughter conceived with the donated price of seat 2D on the Alpha Centauri red-eye.
Arthur reluctantly took on the role of parent, but was completely out of his depth with the truculent teenager. Random stole the Guide Mk II and set a course for Earth, where she believed she could finally feel at home. Arthur and Ford followed, to find Trillian already on the planet.
Only then is the Mk II’s objective revealed. The Vogons, irritated by the Earth’s refusal to stay ka-boomed, had engineered the bird to lure the escapees back to the planet before they destroy it in every dimension, thus fulfilling their original order.
Arthur and Ford rushed at semi-breakneck speed to London’s Club Beta, pausing only to purchase foie gras and blue suede shoes. Thanks to the old dimensional axis/ Plural zone thing, they found Trillian and Tricia McMillan co-existing in the same space-time, both being screamed at by an emotional Random.
Confused? Arthur was, but not for long. Once he noticed the green death rays pulsating through the lower atmosphere, all of the day’s other niggling problems seemed to lose their nigglyness – after all, confusion was not likely to slice him into a million seared pieces.
The Vogon Prostetnic had done his job well. Not only had he lured Arthur, Ford and Trillian back to the planet Earth, but he’d also managed to trick a Grebulon captain into destroying the Earth for him, thus saving the crew several hundred Vog hours’ paperwork with the munitions office.
Arthur and his friends sit powerless in London’s Club Beta and can