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enthusiast
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"Good morning", said Deep Thought at last. "Er... good morning, O Deep Thought", said Loonquawl nervously, " do you have... er, that is..." " An Answer for you?" Deep Thought interrupted majestically. " Yes. I have." The two men shivered with expectancy. Their waiting had not been in vain. " There really is one?" breathed Phouchg. " there really is one", confimed Deep Thought. "To Everthing? To the great Question of Life, The Universe, and Everything?" Yes." Both of the men had been trained for this moment, their lives had been a preperation for it, they had been selected at birth as those who would witness the Answer, but even so they found thenselves gasping and squirming like excited children. " And you're ready to give it to us?" urged Loonquawl. " I am" "Now?" "Now," said Deep Thought. They both licked their dry lips. "Though I don't think," added Deep Thought, "That you're going to like it." "Doesn't matter!" said Phouchg. "We must know it! Now!" " Now?" inquired Deep Thought. "Yes! Now..." "All right" said the computer, and settled into silence again. The two men fidgeted.The tension was unbearable."You're really not going to like it" observed Deep Thought. "Tell us!" "All right," said Deep Thought. "The Answer to the Great Question..." "Yes...!" "Of Life, the Universe, and Everything..." said Deep Thought. "Yes...!" "Is..." said Deep Thought, and paused. "Yes...!" "Is..." "Yes...!...?" "Forty-two" said Deep Thought, with infinite majesty and calm.
Who agrees with me that Adams should have been Knighted, since his name doesn't look as though he was.
jimthedog
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old hand
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Hate to stick a fish in your ear, but Encyclopaedia Galactica was actually stolen from Asimov... Foundation series. Parodying other extant SF, indeed!
BTW, I didn't know this. My roommate did. Just passing it along to set the record straight...
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Hate to stick a fish in your ear, but Encyclopaedia Galactica was actually stolen from Asimov... Foundation series. Parodying other extant SF, indeed!Different publisher. Hari Seldon's was authoritative. The HHGTTG's was ... it just was/is/will be/will-on be/will have future been ...  There was one point in the book when it was predicted that the executives of the Syrius Cybernetics Corporation's Complaints Department (which covered the land masses of three medium-sized planets) would be the first against the wall when the revolution came. A copy of the Encyclopaedia Britannica which fell through a time warp from the 25th century confirmed that they were, indeed, the first against the wall when the revolution came. [I think this is right, but I didn't LIU -e]
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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Two of his books which I haven't seen mentioned are, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency and The Long, Dark Tea Time of the Soul. Both of which I found funnier than the later books in the 6-book Hitchhiker's trilogy. Despite, the humour, they had some very useful advice. One such passage was on the Zen art of driving. If you are lost, you follow someone that you are pretty sure is going where you want to go. I have used this technique without fail a few times (god forbid I ask for directions!)
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Both of which I found funnier than the later books in the 6-book Hitchhiker's trilogy
Agreed. I thought that the last two books in the Guide series were rather disjointed, a little like poor hybrids of The Guide and Dirk Gently, as if he wasn't sure which series he was writing sequels for.
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Yes, "So Long and Thanks for All The Fish" starts out okay - slagging Rickmansworth is always a starter for ten - but degenerates fairly quickly. The first book - and parts of the second and third - were, however, timelessly hilarious.*
* The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, CK Edition, has this to say about timeless hilarity: 'Timeless hilarity is that state in which the diaphragm of someone laughing has contracted against the lungs in so semi-permanent a manner as to render the sufferer unable to (a) breath, or (b) remember what the dickens it was that he or she was laughing about. This is because the minute or so it takes for normal breathing to resume seems like hours, and sufferers often see what they perceive to be their entire incredibly drab and boring lives rushing before their eyes. (It is a curious coincidence that the majority of people who report this side-effect are staring out of an express train window at the exact minute it strikes.) This takes all of the fun out of the situation, every time.
'There are other, more extreme forms of timeless hilarity. cf "laughing till it hurts" and "laughing yourself to death".
'The Slannerdalath of Myxonas VIII were known to be prone to the timeless hilarity ailment, but rubbed along well enough until Zaphod Beeblebrox, then President of the Entire Galaxy, gave a lunch time speech on democracy. The entire population immediately succumbed to terminal timeless hilarity, and Beeblebrox had genocide added to his already incredibly long rap sheet.
'Timeless hilarity is therefore, ipso facto, not at all a laughing matter.'
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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old hand
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I too enjoyed the HHGG series and herewith salut Mr. Adams. For a great java game version of HHGG try this link. It's quite hard: http://www.douglasadams.com/creations/infocomjava.htmlSo long and thanks for all the laughs, Doug.
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It's quite hard:That's like saying that Vogom poetry is mildly unpleasant!  I have played that game often, having managed to track down an emulatior that enables me to play it offline. I still can't get past the pathway in front of the buldozer!  
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I was playing the (pirated) Infocom game reprised here back in the 1980s. Except in those days the coffee was on the desk, not on the screen. Most of the time. I think a nice graphical version of it would be much less insane. No, no, it would drive me much less insane. Or something. And I don't think I ever got past the bulldozer, either. 
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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