Radio Shows

""You may not instantly see why I bring the subject up, but that is because my mind works so phenomenally fast, and I am at a rough estimate thirty billion times more intelligent than you. Let me give you an example. Think of a number, any number." "Er, five," said the mattress. "Wrong," said Marvin. "You see?" The mattress was much impressed by this and realized that it was in the presence of a not unremarkable mind."

""My capacity for happiness," he added, "you could fit into a matchbox without taking out the matches first." —Marvin"

"Very few things actually get manufactured these days, because in an infinitely large Universe such as, for instance, the one in which we live, most things one could possibly imagine, and a lot of things one would rather not, grow somewhere."

"There is a moment in every dawn when light floats, there is the possibility of magic. Creation holds its breath. The moment passed as it regularly did on Sqornshellous Zeta, without incident."

"Several billion trillion tons of superhot exploding hydrogen nuclei rose slowly above the horizon and managed to look small, cold and slightly damp."

"My doctor says that I have a malformed public-duty gland and a natural deficiency in moral fibre," Ford muttered to himself, "and that I am therefore excused from saving Universes."

"the third non-absolute number is the number on the bill, (and how many people actually have the money to pay it)"

"The second nonabsolute number is the given time of arrival, which is now known to be one of those most bizarre of mathematical concepts, a recipriversexlusion, a number whose existence can only be defined as being anything other than itself. In other words, the given time of arrival is the one moment of time at which it is impossible that any member of the party will arrive."

"The first nonabsolute number is the number of people for whom the table is reserved. This will vary during the course of the first three telephone calls to the restaurant, and then bear no apparent relation to the number of people who actually turn up..."

"For a moment or two the old man didn't reply. He was staring at the instruments with the air of one who is trying to convert Fahrenheit to centigrade in his head while his house is burning down."

""There!" said Ford, shooting out his arm. "There, behind that sofa!" Arthur looked. Much to his surprise, there was a velvet paisley-covered Chesterfield sofa in the field in front of them. He boggled intelligently at it. Shrewd questions sprang into his mind. "Why," he said, "is there a sofa in that field?" "I told you!" shouted Ford, leaping to his feet. "Eddies in the space-time continuum!" "And this is his sofa, is it?" asked Arthur, struggling to his feet and, he hoped, though not very optimistically, to his senses."

"I have detected," he said, "disturbances in the wash." ... "The wash?" said Arthur. "The space-time wash," said Ford. ... Arthur nodded, and then cleared his throat. "Are we talking about," he asked cautiously, "some sort of Vogon laundromat, or what are we talking about?" "Eddies," said Ford, "in the space-time continuum." "Ah," nodded Arthur, "is he? Is he?" He pushed his hands into the pocket of his dressing gown and looked knowledgeably into the distance. "What?" said Ford. "Er, who," said Arthur, "is Eddy, then, exactly, then?"

"He gazed keenly into the distance and looked as if he would quite like the wind to blow his hair back dramatically at that point, but the wind was busy fooling around with some leaves a little way off."

"Africa was very interesting," said Ford, "I behaved very oddly there." ... "I took up being cruel to animals," he said airily. "But only," he added, "as a hobby." "Oh yes," said Arthur, warily. "Yes," Ford assured him. "I won't disturb you with the details because they would—" "What?" "Disturb you. But you may be interested to know that I am singlehandedly responsible for the evolved shape of the animal you came to know in later centuries as a giraffe."

"Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged was - indeed, is - one of the Universe's very small number of immortal beings. [...]"

"The alien ship was already thundering toward the upper reaches of the atmosphere, on its way out into the appalling void that separates the very few things there are in the Universe from one another."

"The regular early morning yell of horror was the sound of Arthur Dent waking up and suddenly remembering where he was."

""If," ["the management consultant"] said tersely, "we could for a moment move on to the subject of fiscal policy..." "Fiscal policy!" whooped Ford Prefect. “Fiscal policy!" The management consultant gave him a look that only a lungfish could have copied. "Fiscal policy..." he repeated, "that is what I said." "How can you have money," demanded Ford, "if none of you actually produces anything? It doesn't grow on trees you know." "If you would allow me to continue.. ." Ford nodded dejectedly. "Thank you. Since we decided a few weeks ago to adopt the leaf as legal tender, we have, of course, all become immensely rich." Ford stared in disbelief at the crowd who were murmuring appreciatively at this and greedily fingering the wads of leaves with which their track suits were stuffed. “But we have also,” continued the management consultant, “run into a small inflation problem on account of the high level of leaf availability, which means that, I gather, the current going rate has something like three deciduous forests buying one ship's peanut." Murmurs of alarm came from the crowd. The management consultant waved them down. "So in order to obviate this problem," he continued, "and effectively revalue the leaf, we are about to embark on a massive defoliation campaign, and...er, burn down all the forests. I think you'll all agree that's a sensible move under the circumstances." The crowd seemed a little uncertain about this for a second or two until someone pointed out how much this would increase the value of the leaves in their pockets whereupon they let out whoops of delight and gave the management consultant a standing ovation. The accountants among them looked forward to a profitable autumn aloft and it got an appreciative round from the crowd."

"Well, you're obviously being totally naive of course", said the girl, "When you've been in marketing as long as I have, you'll know that before any new product can be developed it has to be properly researched. We’ve got to find out what people want from fire, how they relate to it, what sort of image it has for them." The crowd were tense. They were expecting something wonderful from Ford. "Stick it up your nose," he said. "Which is precisely the sort of thing we need to know," insisted the girl, "Do people want fire that can be fitted nasally?" "And the wheel," said the Captain, "What about this wheel thingy? It sounds a terribly interesting project." "Ah," said the marketing girl, "Well, we're having a little difficulty there." "Difficulty?" exclaimed Ford. "Difficulty? What do you mean, difficulty? It's the single simplest machine in the entire Universe!" The marketing girl soured him with a look. "Alright, Mr. Wiseguy," she said, "if you're so clever, you tell us what colour it should be."

"How can I tell," said the man, "that the past isn't a fiction designed to account for the discrepancy between my immediate physical sensations and my state of mind?"

"The major problem—one of the major problems, for there are several—one of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them. To summarise: it is a well known fact that those people who most want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. To summarise the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job. To summarise the summary of the summary: people are a problem."

"The designer of the gun had clearly not been instructed to beat about the bush. "Make it evil," he'd been told. "Make it totally clear that this gun has a right end and a wrong end. Make it totally clear to anyone standing at the wrong end that things are going badly for them. If that means sticking all sort of spikes and prongs and blackened bits all over it then so be it. This is not a gun for hanging over the fireplace or sticking in the umbrella stand, it is a gun for going out and making people miserable with.""

"The trouble with most forms of transport, he thought, is basically one of them not being worth all the bother. On Earth—when there had been an Earth, before it was demolished to make way for a new hyperspace bypass—the problem had been with cars. The disadvantages involved in pulling lots of black sticky slime from out of the ground where it had been safely hidden out of harm's way, turning it into tar to cover the land with, smoke to fill the air with and pouring the rest into the sea, all seemed to outweigh the advantages of being able to get more quickly from one place to another—particularly when the place you arrived at had probably become, as a result of this, very similar to the place you had left, i.e. covered with tar, full of smoke and short of fish."

""I wonder who this ship belongs to anyway," said Arthur. "Me," said Zaphod. "No. Who it really belongs to." "Really me," insisted Zaphod, "look, property is theft, right? Therefore theft is property. Therefore this ship is mine, OK?" "Tell the ship that," said Arthur."

""You mean," said Arthur, "you mean you can see into my mind?" "Yes," said Marvin. Arthur stared in astonishment. "And ...?" Arthur. "It amazes me how you can manage to live in anything that small." "Ah," said Arthur, "abuse." "Yes," confirmed Marvin."

"The ship was rocking and swaying sickeningly as Ford and Zaphod tried to wrest control from the autopilot. The engines howled and whined like tired children in a supermarket."

"It is known that there are an infinite number of worlds, simply because there is an infinite amount of space for them to be in. However, not every one of them is inhabited. Therefore, there must be a finite number of inhabited worlds. Any finite number divided by infinity is as near to nothing as makes no odds, so the average population of all the planets in the Universe can be said to be zero. From this it follows that the population of the whole Universe is also zero, and that any people you may meet from time to time are merely the products of a deranged imagination."

""Er..." [Zarquon] said, "hello. Er, look, I'm sorry I'm a bit late. I've had the most ghastly time, all sorts of things cropping up at the last moment." He seemed nervous of the expectant awed hush. He cleared his throat. "Er, how are we for time?" he said, "have I just got a min—" And so the Universe ended."

"Well, I wish you'd just tell me rather than try to engage my enthusiasm," said Marvin, "because I haven't got one."

"Amazing-looking ship though. Looks like a fish, moves like a fish, steers like a cow."

"The best conversation I had was over forty million years ago," continued Marvin. ..."And that was with a coffee machine."

"The first ten million years were the worst," said Marvin, "and the second ten million years, they were the worst too. The third ten million years I didn't enjoy at all. After that I went into a bit of a decline."

"But I'm quite used to being humiliated," droned Marvin, "I can even go and stick my head in a bucket of water if you like. Would you like me to go and stick my head in a bucket of water? I've got one ready. Wait a minute." "Er, hey, Marvin ..." interrupted Zaphod, but it was too late. Sad little clunks and gurgles came up the line. "What's he saying?" asked Trillian. "Nothing," said Zaphod, "he just phoned to wash his head at us."

"Maybe somebody here tipped off the Galactic Police," said Trillian. "Everyone saw you come in." "You mean they want to arrest me over the phone?" said Zaphod. "Could be. I'm a pretty dangerous dude when I'm cornered." "Yeah," said the voice from under the table, "you go to pieces so fast people get hit by the shrapnel."

""Shee, you guys are so unhip it's a wonder your bums don't fall off." Zaphod"

"I am the main Dish of the Day. May I interest you in parts of my body?"

"Have another drink," said Trillian. "Enjoy yourself." "Which?" said Arthur. "The two are mutually exclusive." "Poor Arthur, you're really not cut out for this life are you?" "You call this life?" "You're starting to sound like Marvin." "Marvin is the clearest thinker I know."

"Most readers [of Dr. Dan Streetmentioner's Time Traveler's Handbook of 1001 Tense Transformations] get as far as the Future Semiconditionally Modified Subinverted Plagal Past Subjunctive Intentional before giving up; and in fact in later editions of the book all pages beyond this point have been left blank to save on printing costs."

"Delay?" [Zaphod] cried. "Have you seen the world outside this ship? It's a wasteland, a desert. Civilization's been and gone, man. There are no lemon-soaked paper napkins on the way from anywhere." "The statistical likelihood," continued the autopilot primly, "is that other civilizations will arise. There will one day be lemon-soaked paper napkins. Till then there will be a short delay. Please return to your seat."

"[Zaphod] had seen the whole universe stretching to infinity around him—everything. And with it had come the clear and extraordinary knowledge that he was the most important thing in it. Having a conceited ego is one thing. Being told by a computer is another."

"[Zaphod] opened the door of the box and stepped in. Inside the box he waited. After five seconds there was a click, and the entire Universe was there in the box with him."

"The Total Perspective Vortex derives its picture of the whole Universe on the principle of extrapolated matter analyses. To explain—since every piece of matter in the Universe is in some way affected by every other piece of matter in the Universe, it is in theory possible to extrapolate the whole of creation—every sun, every planet, their orbits, their composition and their economic and social history from, say, one small piece of fairy cake. The man who invented the Total Perspective Vortex did so basically in order to annoy his wife. Trin Tragula—for that was his name—was a dreamer, a thinker, a speculative philosopher or, as his wife would have it, an idiot. And she would nag him incessantly about the utterly inordinate amount of time he spent staring out into space, or mulling over the mechanics of safety pins, or doing spectrographic analyses of pieces of fairy cake. "Have some sense of proportion!" she would say, sometimes as often as thirty-eight times in a single day. And so he built the Total Perspective Vortex—just to show her. And into one end he plugged the whole of reality as extrapolated from a piece of fairy cake, and into the other end he plugged his wife: so that when he turned it on she saw in one instant the whole infinity of creation and herself in relation to it. To Trin Tragula's horror, the shock completely annihilated her brain; but to his satisfaction he realized that he had proved conclusively that if life is going to exist in a Universe of this size, then the one thing it cannot afford to have is a sense of proportion."

"Modern elevators are strange and complex entities. The ancient electric winch and "maximum-capacity-eight-persons" jobs bear as much relation to a Sirius Cybernetics Corporation Happy Vertical People Transporter as a packet of mixed nuts does to the entire west wing of the Sirian State Mental Hospital. This is because they operate on the curious principle of "defocused temporal perception." In other words they have the capacity to see dimly into the immediate future, which enables the elevator to be on the right floor to pick you up even before you knew you wanted it, thus eliminating all the tedious chatting, relaxing and making friends that people were previously forced to do while waiting for elevators. Not unnaturally, many elevators imbued with intelligence and precognition became terribly frustrated with the mindless business of going up and down, up and down, experimented briefly with the notion of going sideways, as a sort of existential protest, demanded participation in the decision-making process and finally took to squatting in basements sulking. An impoverished hitchhiker visiting any planets in the Sirius star system these days can pick up easy money working as a counselor for neurotic elevators."

"Well," the [elevator's] voice trickled on like honey on biscuits, "there's the basement, the microfiles, the heating system ...er..." It paused. "Nothing particularly exciting," it admitted, "but they are alternatives." "Holy Zarquon," muttered Zaphod, "did I ask for an existential elevator?" He beat his fists against the wall. "What's the matter with the thing?" he spat. "It doesn't want to go up," said Marvin simply. "I think it's afraid." "Afraid?" cried Zaphod. "Of what? Heights? An elevator that's afraid of heights?" "No," said the elevator miserably, "of the future...." "The future?" exclaimed Zaphod. "What does the wretched thing want, a pension plan?"

"Marvin," he said, "just get this elevator to go up, will you? We've got to get to Zarniwoop." "Why?" asked Marvin dolefully. "I don't know," said Zaphod, "but when I find him, he'd better have a very good reason for me wanting to see him."

"So, how are you?" [Zaphod] said aloud. "Oh, fine," said Marvin, "if you happen to like being me, which personally I don't."

"I'm looking for someone." "Who?" hissed the insect. "Zaphod Beeblebrox," said Marvin, "he's over there." The insect shook with rage. It could hardly speak. "Then why did you ask me?" "I just wanted something to talk to," said Marvin. "What!" "Pathetic, isn't it?"

"Mr. Beeblebrox, sir," said the insect in awed wonder, "you're so weird you should be in movies." "Yeah," said Zaphod patting the thing on a glittering pink wing, "and you, baby, should be in real life."

"You are Zaphod Beeblebrox?" [the insect] squeeked. "Yeah," said Zaphod, "but don't shout it out or they'll all want one." "The Zaphod Beeblebrox?" ""No, just a Zaphod Beeblebrox; didn't you hear I come in six packs?"

"Listen, three eyes," he said, "don't you try to outweird me, I get stranger things than you free with my breakfast cereal."