Resumo de The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy

By the end of the third chapter Arthur Dent's house has been bulldozed to make way for a by-pass, but it doesn't
matter. It doesn't matter because shortly after this event, the Earth is blown up by the 'Vogons' to make way for a hyper-space by-pass. Even this, in some ways, doesn't matter much because just in the nick of time Arthur
Dent - our very reluctant protagonist - is transported 'off-planet' with the help of a friend of his who goes by the name of 'Ford Prefect'. The latter turns out to be just as alien as the Vogon hoards. He's human enough though, to drag Arthur into the nearest pub just before they set off in order to sink a few pints of 'Bitter': on the basis that once the Vogons have finished playing with their destructor rays, there won't be any 'Bitter', 'Mild' or anything else left to sink. So what happens next? That's the problem Douglas Adams sets himself as a story-teller in this first of the epic 'Hitchhiker's Guide' series (originating in a radio play). He solves it in typically Douglas-Adams fashion, by setting himself a much bigger problem: 'If the answer to life, the universe and everything were 42, what would be
the question?' Those of you not familiar at all with the 'Hitchhiker' world are probably wondering by now what on earth (or in space even) I'm talking about. It's a bit intriguing though, isn't it? A computer determines that the answer to 'Life, the Universe and Everything' is 42, but adds, helpfully, that to understand the answer you have to formulate the question more accurately. To do so, it transpires, you must build a much bigger computer. Are any of these issues resolved? Certainly not in this first book: Is it possible for anybody, any being, to encompass the answer to life, the universe and everything, plus an accurate representation of the right question, simultaneously? DO QUESTIONS ALWAYS PRECEDE ANSWERS? Can you wait until the final book to find out? 1? 0? somewhere in between? What is the probability that a bowl of petunias could take any significant part in the history of the
cosmos? The bowl of petunias and the probability thereof, does play a minor role in the unfolding of this narrative. It precedes the discovery of the factory in which the Earth was constructed and the subsequent guided tour of said factory by someone with an unmentionable name who was given an award for his design of the Norwegian fjords.The book ends with Arthur and Ford beating a hasty retreat from the planet which houses this factory. A somewhat shrew-ish pair of
supra-dimensional white mice have offered to buy Arthur's brain from
him, in order to slice it up and scan it. Arthur doesn't think much of the deal. Then the police arrive to arrest Zaphod Beeblebrox (another
of Arthur's companions) not because he has one head too many, nor because he is President of the Galaxy and his record in office is one of spectacular negligence, but because, on the day he was expected to launch the most powerful spaceship ever built, he made off with it instead. Marvin to the rescue! Marvin is an android so intelligent that he can see the point of nothing, so he plugs himself into the police cruiser's on-board
computer and it promptly commits suicide. By the way, there is one femaile involved in all this, she goes by the name of 'Trillion' and is really quite human.

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