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hhgttg.summarized.txt

Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy 1-5
summarized with Open Text Summarizer at ratio of 1%

http://libots.sourceforge.net/

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I

   Mr Prosser's mouth opened and closed a couple of times while his mind was for a
moment filled with inexplicable but terribly attractive visions of Arthur Dent's
house being consumed with fire and Arthur himself running screaming from the
blazing ruin with at least three hefty spears protruding from his back. it was
Mr Prosser's accepted role to tackle Arthur with the occasional new ploy such as
the For the Public Good talk, the March of Progress talk, the They Knocked My
House Down Once You Know, Never Looked Back talk and various other cajoleries
and threats;

   Ford stared at Arthur, and Arthur was astonished to find that his will was
beginning to weaken. said Arthur, but Ford nudged him with his shoe to be quiet.
Ford Prefect knew that it didn't matter a pair of dingo's kidneys whether
Arthur's house got knocked down or not now. Ford ignored him and stared out of
the window, so the barman looked instead at Arthur who shrugged helplessly and
said nothing. said Ford Prefect suddenly to Arthur.

   Arthur began to feel that Ford was enjoying making life difficult for him.
asked Arthur, rather politely he thought. Ford and Arthur popped into outer
space like corks from a toy gun. Ford and Arthur found themselves in the
embarkation area of the ship. "And Arthur," he said, "this is my semi-cousin
Zaphod Beeb..." He looked backwards and forwards between Arthur and Zaphod.

   Zaphod looked about him, at Ford, at Arthur, and then at Trillian. Most of
the time he was able to put this thought aside and not worry about it, but it
had been re-awakened by the sudden inexplicable arrival of Ford Prefect and
Arthur Dent. His face was still illuminated from somewhere, and when Arthur 
looked for the source of the light he saw that a few yards away stood a small
craft of some kind - a small hovercraft, Arthur guessed. Arthur Dent," said
Arthur. Arthur's companion seemed sunk in his own thoughts, and when Arthur
tried on a couple of occasions to engage him in conversation again he would
simply reply by asking if he was comfortable enough, and then left it at that.
With a tiny whining shriek their two glass transports lifted themselves off the
table, and swung through the air towards Arthur, who stumbled further backwards
into a blind corner, utterly unable to cope or think of anything.

   Trillian grabbed him desperately by the arm and tried to drag him towards the
door, which Ford and Zaphod were struggling to open, but Arthur was dead weight
- he seemed hypnotized by the airborne rodents swooping towards him.

   So - Arthur was about to have his head cut open, Trillian was unable to help
him, and Ford and Zaphod were about to be set upon by several thugs a great deal
heavier and more sharply armed than they were. and Arthur took to his bed to
flip through Ford's copy of The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

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II

   Tricia McMillian - or Trillian - had skipped the planet six months earlier
with Zaphod Beeblebrox, the then President of the Galaxy. Arthur asked as he
walked on to the bridge, and instantly began to wonder why Trillian was yelling
at the computer to talk to her, Ford was thumping it and Zaphod was kicking it,
and also why there was a nasty yellow lump on the vision screen. Listen, I'm
Zaphod Beeblebrox, my father was Zaphod Beeblebrox the Second, my grandfather
Zaphod Beeblebrox the Third ..." Zaphod felt strangely powerless to take charge
of this conversation, and Ford's heavy breathing at his side told him that the
seconds were ticking away fast.

   "No, you listen to me, you see-through old bat," said Zaphod leaping out of
his chair, "A - thanks for stopping time and all that, great, terrific,
wonderful, but B - no thanks for the homily, right? That man, or being, or
something, you must find - the man who controls this Galaxy, and - we suspect -
others. said Ford to Zaphod as the smoke began to clear. said Ford, "Where's
Zaphod?"

   The man tugged at Zaphod's arm, and Zaphod followed him off down the
corridor. It seemed to Zaphod as he lay there panting with fear and exhaustion
that Marvin seemed a mite more cheerful than usual.

   "Hey, I'm Zaphod Beeblebrox, man, you know," muttered Zaphod trying to flap
the last remnants of his ego. The large main building still seemed reasonably
solid, and Zaphod turned off to see if it might provide him with ... bawled
Zaphod, "How do you think ..."

   He smiled the smile that Zaphod had wanted to hit and this time Zaphod hit
it. said Zaphod, "Ford?"

   In the centre sits the gigantic golden dome, almost a complete globe, and it
was into this area that Zaphod, Ford, Arthur and Trillian now passed.

   Zaphod lurched into Ford, who lurched back into Zaphod.

   Ford staggered back to the table where Zaphod, Arthur and Trillian were
sitting waiting for the fun to begin. and I've just come straight from the very
very other end of time, where I've been hosting a show at the Big Bang Burger
Bar - where I can tell you we had a very exciting evening ladies and gentlemen
- and I will be with you right through this historic occasion, the End of
History itself!"

   Its gaze was met by looks of startled bewilderment from Arthur and Trillian,
a resigned shrug from Ford Prefect and naked hunger from Zaphod Beeblebrox.
Zaphod and Ford wolfed straight into them without a second's hesitation. Here he
operated the remote control system which activated the autopilot in the black
ship lying next to the limo, thus causing great relief to Zaphod Beeblebrox who
had been trying to start the thing for over ten minutes.

   Zaphod left the controls for Ford to figure out, and lurched over to Arthur.
called Arthur nervously, "Zaphod?" To Arthur this was exactly what spaceships
were traditionally supposed to look like, and to Ford it looked thoroughly
antiquated: it confirmed his suspicions that Disaster Area's stuntship had taken
them back at least a million, if not two million, years before their own time.
Arthur suspected a streak of masochism in Ford Prefect - the increasing
difficulty of the journey seemed to give him a sense of purpose that was
otherwise lacking.

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III

   He waited for a reaction from Arthur, but Arthur knew better than that. Ford
swept on before Arthur could turn the foolish look into a foolish remark. He
closed his eyes and greedily inhaled the steam from his tea as if it was - well,
as far as Arthur was concerned, as if it was tea, which it was. It beamed on
Ford and Arthur as they emerged blinking from the refreshment tent and surveyed
the scene around them. Suddenly Arthur remembered that the Earth was going to be
demolished again in two days' time, and just this once didn't feel too bad about
it. The apparition wobbled in front of Arthur's eyes, though the truth of the
matter is probably that Arthur's eyes were wobbling in front of the apparition.
repeated Arthur, and punctuated each wobble with a prod at Ford Prefect's back.
These last were extraordinary because they appeared to contain jets which
allowed these curiously civilized robots to fly down from their hovering
spaceship and start to kill people, which is what they did

   "Hello," said Arthur, "something seems to be happening." He looked at Arthur
who was singing quietly to himself. said Arthur, giving gaunt looks, at the
lashed together pipework and wiring which festooned the cramped interior of the
ship. The freshly puzzled looks clambering across Arthur's face told him that it
wasn't.

   "The point is," he said, "that people like you and me, Slartibartfast, and
Arthur  -  particularly and especially Arthur - are just dilletantes,
eccentrics, layabouts, fartarounds if you like." He wanted to explain that he
had been in fact very fond of the bag and had looked after it very well and had
taken it with him wherever he went, but that somehow every time he travelled
anywhere he seemed inexplicably to end up with the wrong bag and that, curiously
enough, even as they stood there he was just noticing for the first time that
the bag he had with him at the moment appeared to be made out of rather nasty
fake leopard skin, and wasn't the one he'd had a few moments ago before he
arrived in this whatever place it was, and wasn't one he would have chosen
himself and heaven knew what would be in it as it wasn't his, and he would much
rather have his original bag back, except that he was of course terribly sorry
for having so peremptorily removed it, or rather its component parts, i.e. Any
world, any body, any time, I'm just getting settled down, along comes Arthur
Dent - pow, he kills me. Arthur looked into it in much the same way that a mouse
looks into a dark dog-kennel. So, for instance, the name of a cow which had been
slaughtered and of which Arthur Dent had happened to eat a fillet steak would
have the plainest engraving, whereas the name of a fish which Arthur had himself
caught and then decided he didn't like and left on the side of the plate had a
double underlining,  three sets of asterisks and a bleeding dagger added as
decoration, just to make the point. And looking out of a port on this flashy-
looking spaceship was a smug-looking Arthur Dent. Behind it on the screen were
the figures of Ford, Arthur and Slartibartfast who appeared astonished and
bewildered by the whole thing. I have fulfilled my function ...'"

   "I think we should take these back," said Arthur holding up the bag
containing the Ashes.

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IV

   To be fair to him - though Arthur didn't see any necessity for this beyond
the sheer mental exercise of it - he, Arthur, was looking pretty grim himself. A
man can't cross a hundred thousand light years, mostly in other people's baggage
compartments, without beginning to fray a little, and Arthur had frayed a lot.
It belonged to an advertising friend of his, and was called Know-Nothing-Bozo
because the way its hair stood up on its head it reminded people of the
President of the United States, and the dog knew Arthur, or at least should do.
It was a stupid dog, could not even read an autocue, which way why some people
had protested about its name, but it should at least have been able to recognize
Arthur instead of standing there, hackles raised, as if Arthur was the most
fearful apparition ever to intrude upon its feeble-witted life.

   Will Smithers, like most of the overpaid and under-scrupulous bastards Arthur
knew in advertising made a point of changing his car every August so that he
could tell people his accountant made him do it, though the truth was that his
accountant was trying like hell to stop him, what with all the alimony he had to
pay, and so on - and this was the same car Arthur remembered him having before.
What was once a half-eaten sandwich had now half-turned into something that
Arthur entirely didn't want to know about. Arthur knew this because his opening,
unprovoked remark had been, "I'm a lorry driver.

   "Just supposing," he said, "just supposing" - he didn't know what was coming
next, so he thought he'd just sit back and listen - "that there was some
extraordinary way in which you were very important to me, and that, though you
didn't know it, I was very important to you, but it all went for nothing because
we only had five miles and I was a stupid idiot at knowing how to say something
very important to someone I've only just met and not crash into lorries at the
same time, what would you say ..." "This Arthur Dent," comes the cry from the
furthest reaches of the galaxy, and has even now been found inscribed on a
mysterious deep space probe thought to originate from an alien galaxy at a
distance too hideous to contemplate, "what is he, man or mouse?

   Fenchurch tried some little swoops, daringly, and found that if she judged
herself just right against a body of wind she could pull off some really quite
dazzling ones with a little pirouette at the end, followed by a little drop
which made her dress billow around her, and this is where readers who are keen
to know what Marvin and Ford Prefect have been up to all this while should look
ahead to later chapters, because Arthur now could wait no longer and helped her
take it off. He happened to be the only journalist that Arthur knew, so Arthur
phoned him anyway. He staggered into Arthur's sitting room, waving aside all
offers of support, which was an error, because the effort caused him to lose his
balance altogether and Arthur had eventually to drag him to the sofa.

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V

   Every time he thought he saw someone he recognised in the distance, and
hurried along to say hello, it would turn out to be someone else, with an
altogether neater hairstyle and a much more thrusting, purposeful look than,
well, than anybody Ford knew. The people of Bartledan were remarkably like human
beings to look at, but when you said `Good evening' to one, he would tend to
look around with a slight sense of surprise, sniff the air and say that, yes, he
supposed that it probably was a goodish evening now that Arthur came to mention
it. `I'm just expressing the hope that...'

   `Hope?'

   `Yes.'

   `What is hope?'

   Good question, thought Arthur to himself, and retreated back to his room to
think about things. One moment it was a perfectly ordinary late afternoon in the
early autumn - the leaves were just beginning to turn red and gold, the river
was beginning to swell again with the rains from the mountains in the north, the
plumage of the pikka birds was begin- ning to thicken in anticipation of the
coming winter frosts, any day now the Perfectly Normal Beasts would start their
thunderous migration across the plains, and Old Thrashbarg was beginning to
mutter to himself as he hobbled his way around the village, a muttering which
meant that he was rehearsing and elaborating the stories that he would tell of
the past year once the evenings had drawn in and people had no choice but to
gather round the fire and listen to him and grumble and say that that wasn't how
they remembered it - and the next moment there was a spaceship sitting there,
gleaming in the warm autumn sun. How did you find me?'

   `Well, as you may or may not know, I now work for one of the big Sub-Etha
broadcasting networks that -'

   `I did know that,' said Arthur, suddenly remembering.

   `What do you mean, offence?'

   `I see.'

   Trillian gave Arthur a long look, and then, in a new tone of voice, said,
`It's time for you to take responsibility, Arthur.'

   Arthur tried to understand this remark. I must say, though, it seems you were
quite a frequent flyer.'

   Arthur had stared wide-eyed at the unhappy looking girl who was slouching
awkwardly in the door-frame looking at him. Thrashbarg looked at him stonily,
and then pointed in the one direction that Arthur had dreaded, and had therefore
instinctively known was the way she would have gone. It was impossible for
Arthur to know this, but he just went ahead and knew it anyway.

   `Say that one more time.'

   `I said,' said Arthur huffily, `the woman is my daughter.'

   `I didn't know,' said Ford, `that you had a daughter.'

   `Well, there's probably a lot you don't know about me,' said Arthur. I could
be in serious trouble and so could she.'

   `What did she say?'

   `She hit me on the head with the rock again.'

   `I think I can confirm that that was my daughter.'

   `Sweet kid.'

   `You have to get to know her,' said Arthur. `Now you may work them with the
towel!'

   Arthur advanced with Ford's towel, moving the way the hunter-matadors did,
with a kind of elegant strut that did not come at all naturally to him. Old
Thrashbarg switched the bird, the Beast looked up, tossed its head, and then,
just as its head was coming down again, Arthur flourished the towel in the
Beast's line of sight. Go!' He performed some elaborate sign and ritual
handshake which Arthur couldn't quite get the hang of because Old Thrashbarg had
obviously made it up on the spur of the moment, then he pushed Arthur forward.
Ride it, ride it!'

   Ford shouted in Arthur's ear, `Where did he say we were going?'

   `He said something about a King,' shouted Arthur in return, holding on
desperately. er...'

   Ford let Arthur get on with thinking things out for himself while he got out
his old edition of the Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy.