Douglas Adams (Pan Books 1979)
“There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.” – Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
I had thought of getting away from the existential throes of mind, brain, consciousness, et al with a light hearted foray into the purported sci-fi of ‘Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy’, but Help! There’s no escape from its insidiously absurd thrall: “then why do you do it? … Or do you just find that coming to terms with the mindless tedium of it all presents an interesting challenge?”
It all begins with the paradox that this book I’ve read was never published on earth (whose destruction it predicts) and then the plot rushes on to three dramatic revelations, of which, the first two are reduced to mere anticlimaxes by the enormity of the third. First, Arthur Dent found out that the Council was going to demolish his house to build a bypass. Second, his best friend Ford Prefect confided that he was an alien from a planet near Betelgeuse and then, climactically, the earth ceased to exist to make way for a hyperspatial express route! That is also the point where everyday reality ends and the surreal takes over with unexpectedly improbable distortions of time-space. So, no spoiler alerts after all. Reading this book took me through universal absurdity at the speed of light, and yet I made enough sense of it to actually enjoy reading on to the end.
Magrathea’s history has a lesson in it somewhere, barring the obvious, which eludes me. Dent and Prefect and two super mice are thrown out into deep space by the Vogon bureaucrats but inadvertently saved by Zaphod Beeblebrox, President of the Imperial Galactic Government, in his stolen spacecraft called Heart of Gold with the latest Infinite Improbability Drive technology. The plot proceeds in a string of meaningless coincidences which are also intense parodies of human achievement to find the Ultimate Question “Of Life, the Universe and Everything”, the question to the ultimate answer that philosophers have searched for throughout human history.
This question was concealed in the best supercomputer of the universe, “of such subtle complexity that organic life itself shall form part of its operational matrix” and “which can calculate the Question to the Ultimate Answer” called – The Earth!
The finale has this quotation from the book-within-the-book, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to The Galaxy: “The history of every major galactic civilisation tends to pass through three distinct and recognisable phases, those of Survival, Enquiry and Sophistication, otherwise known as the How, Why and Where phases.” At this parodic climax of absurdity, the narrative ends abruptly, leaving one with the impression that life itself contains the unfathomable meaning of the universe.
I suppose, the irony is in my discovery that the existential is the matrix of all thought!