What The Photon?

Zany is how I would describe Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I read the first installment a long time ago, but recently found the “trilogy of five” at the library. I think this is also known as the Omnibus version. The cover features what I think is the large head of Marvin the Android Paranoid and there’s also a “Don’t Panic” button.

The original Hitchhiker is the first part (#1) of five. The following four parts, in order, are:

·      #2 The Restaurant at the End of the World

·      #3 Life, the Universe, and Everything

·      #4 So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

·      #5 Mostly Harmless

I’m about two-thirds through the book, and #1 is the best by far. #2 is still quite good. #3 couldn’t hold my attention and I gave up partway; I thought it was poor, #4 seems mediocre so far, but I’ve only just started. Hard to say. And we’ll see if #5 is mostly harmless or if I simply give up.

What makes Hitchhiker (#1) work? It’s a nutty, crazy, roller-coaster of a story, throwing one thing after another at you, the reader. The premise begins with a seemingly ordinary Englishman, one Arthur Dent, suddenly finding out that his home is about to be bulldozed to make way for a highway bypass. Very improbably, the same fate is about to befall Planet Earth. But it so happens that Arthur Dent has a friend named Ford Prefect, a strange friend with a rather improbable sounding name. Ford (not his real name) turns out to be from Betelgeuse and helps write entries for a Universal bestseller named The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Ford will help Arthur hitchhike his way through zany adventures with far-fetched elements thrown together in what seems like a ridiculous mix.

Again, what makes the story work? The key feature, in my opinion, is that the story hinges on improbability. A spaceship will appear partway through, equipped with an Improbability Drive that smashes previous technology for travel exceeding the speed of light. How much better to explore the far-flung galaxy! But using the improbability drive requires improbable events, and maybe vice-versa, and maybe there’s an improbably explanation to how it all really works in the story. Sure, there are ridiculous parts; but there are also very clever parts in the story. Improbable, perhaps, but clever. And that’s what gives #1 it’s charm!

One clever invention is the Babel fish. You can even order T-shirts with the design shown below (from teepublic.com). The Babel fish is a universal translator; perhaps it should be called the Anti-Babel because it reverses the breakdown in communication from people speaking different languages while trying to construct the Tower of Babel (see The Bible, Genesis chapter 11). I vaguely remember using babel-1.0 in a Unix environment to ensure language interoperability between C and Fortran; that was some twenty years ago. In today’s world with Google Translate and the latest apps, your cellphone performs almost the same functions as the Babel fish. Our tech is not perfectly streamlined but at least you don’t have to put a fish-like organism into your ear.

Eeeeks! Put a fish in your ear? According to Hitchhiker: “The Babel fish is small, yellow, leech-like, and probably the oddest thing in the Universe. It feeds on brainwave energy received not from its own carrier, but from those around it. It absorbs all unconscious mental frequencies from this brainwave energy to nourish itself with. It then excretes into the mind of its carrier a telepathic matrix formed by combining the conscious thought frequencies with nerve signals picked up from the speech centres of the brain which has supplied them. The practical upshot of all this is that if you stick a Babel fish in your ear you can instantly understand anything said to you in any form of language. The speech patterns you actually hear decode the brainwave matrix which has been fed into your mind by your Babel fish.”

Many folks who haven’t read Hitchhiker, have experienced being annoyed by references to the Meaning of Life. What is the meaning of life? Apparently the answer is 42, at least according to a super-duper computer which took millions of years to crank through its calculations. This doesn’t resolve anything because apparently the question was ill-posed. Thus another gizmo was created to figure out what the question should be. Asking the right questions seems to be universally important.

And like any stereotypical sci-fi today, time-travel must be involved. It allows one to enjoy the spectacle that is #2, the Restaurant at the End of the Universe. When you first read the title, you’re thinking space instead of time. You’re thinking of going to the edge of the universe, to some far-flung outpost, to enjoy some rare (and hopefully amazing) food. But the End here is about time. The restaurant in question is an extravaganza experience that allows diners to view the end of the universe – the Big Crunch’s closure to the Big Bang’s opener – fireworks and all. You’ll need to time-travel forward to have a sumptuous meal and drinks while you watch the spectacle. Then time-travel your way back. Expensive Excursion completed!

Your legitimate response to all this zany improbability might be “Egad!” if you were an Englishman like Arthur Dent. Or perhaps “Riddikulus! It’s all just an illusion.” Less charitably, you might quote initials such as “W.T.F.” but in universal hitchhiker faster-than-light-speed travel, you would appropriately respond “What The Photon?” Yes, even those who have seen almost everything in the galaxy can still be surprised. But Don’t Panic. New light is shed. Photons show up. What the Photon? Indeed.

P.S. For a different kind of zany, elements of time-travel included, there’s the Jasper Fforde Thursday Next series.