E.1. Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency
This book comes first because it often requires more explanation than all of Douglas Adams' other books... put together. The producers and adaptor of the novel for the stage production Dirk have found similar problems and resorted to resolving some of the trickier parts of the novel by simply ignoring them... see C.5. for details.
In our reality, Coleridge claimed to have composed Kubla Khan in
its entirety while on a laudanaum trip (and not in his sleep as previously stated in this FAQ), and was in the process of writing it down
when a local interrupted him. When Coleridge returned to his work, he
found that he could not remember the rest of the poem. Hence, there
never was a second part of the poem. Yet, at the end of Chapter 6 when
The Director Of English Studies is reading Kubla Khan the book
states 'The voice (that of the director of english studies) continues,
reading the second, and altogether strange part of the poem.'
In the book, Kubla Khan has a second part. The book is not
actually set in our existence. It is set in an existence in which the
second part of Kubla Khan exists. This second part of the poem
tells the ghost about the existence of the time machine and how to
travel back and stop the ship from exploding. As we well know the
explosion of the ship is what caused life to begin on this miserable
little planet of ours. When Dirk and Reg realised this they simply went
forward in time to when Coleridge was writing the second part of
Kubla Khan and stopped him. Dirk just interrupted him and talked
so much that Coleridge forgot what the second part was going to be about
and therefore could not finish it! This change of history sent reality
back into our perspective and the human race lived on (Yay, yippee!).
Quite simple really.
In an interview in a back issue of Mostly Harmless (see section Z), Douglas mentioned that he had made this pattern of 42 squares into a puzzle that depicted the number '42' in ten different ways. Here are six of the solutions:
1. There are 6 rows of 7 spheres, making a grand total of 42.
It's a crock, actually. What happened is that the original 6 episodes
were 35 minutes long in the original BBC run. When they came to the
States, in the interests of American advertising they were edited and
cut, giving birth to a 'legendary' seventh episode.
Why was Pink Floyd's music taken out of the radio series? Well, from the
man himself:
"That's a very good question, and quite an instructive answer (I
think!). The BBC Clearing the Use of Seventies Rock Music in Comedy
Science Fiction Stories Department tried to clear the use of this snatch
of music. They didn't ask me about it and had no idea that I knew any of
the band. In fact there's no reason why they should ask me P if I had
every detail of every obscure copyright negotiation referred back to me
it would be a full time job. The BBC department in question would have
been dealing with PF's lawyers, and exactly the same applies.
So we were all locked in a legal battle without any of the principals
having the remotest idea. Another point is that I think that the actual
piece was probably copyrighted at least in part to Roger Waters, whom I
don't know at all. In fact, being a friend of Dave and Nick would
probably have weighed against me in that case..."
Anyway, to sum it up: Copyright Law. 'nuff said.
Okay, this is the footnote from the original radio scripts, and clears
up all this speculation and questioning of how it is everyone calls
Ford by his Earth name, and not by his Betelgeusian one.
[Douglas Adams, Original Radio Series Scripts, p50]
Paul Neil Milne Johnstone is a real person, who wrote some appalling poetry. Douglas Adams used his name, but was force to retract it for the books and later recordings of the radio series. Hence the original programmes have Paul Neil Milne Johnstone, whereas the later works have Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings.
Either way, the poetry still sucks. Check it out here.
The bit about monkeys was a reference to a probability theory that if you were to put an infinite number of monkeys at typewriters, pressing keys randomly at a steady rate, eventually one will bash out the script to Shakespeare's Hamlet.
For brief details on where to find this Hitch Hiker's Guide short story by Douglas Adams, see X.1..
The big questions surrounding this story seems to be about the escaped
robot, and his/her identity. So who/what exactly is this? Good question.
The reference to the shining city on a hill is probably a reference to
Matthew 5:14. Some people also assume the "mystery person" in question is
Jesus Christ. As YZPIS was originally published in the Comic Relief
Christmas special book, that would make sense.
However, Douglas Adams himself now claims that the mystery person is, in fact, Ronald Reagan. A short piece by Douglas in the compilation book The Wizards of Odd (which also features the entire story) quotes parts of the story as evidence to support this, so it seems even more feasible than any other explanation you might care to come up with.
E.1.1. The ending
E.2. The Hitch Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy
E.2.1. The Illustrated Guide picture puzzle
2. One of the globes has a bar code- 4 of the lines have no thick line next to them, 2 of them do. The barcode is 42.
3. If a red-tint filter is used so that red, purple, 'dark yellow' and black become black (binary 1) and the rest become white (binary 0) then the lines of the diagram become 0101010, which is 42 in binary.
4. Similarly, using a blue-tint filter shows the number '42' in quite big letters.
5. Using a yellow-tint filter shows up 'XLII' across the top of the page, which is forty-two in Roman numerals.
6. The Earth is the forty-second sphere (this may sound tenuous but this was admitted by Douglas Adams himself...)
E.2.2. The disappearing 7th TV episode
E.2.3. Marvin singing Pink Floyd
E.2.4. Ford's name
"Ford meeting Zaphod"
Not that we want to encourage discussions about this, but one thing that's not explained is how Arthur can read the words "Don't Panic" written on the Hitch Hiker's Guide that he is given by Ford. Go figure that (silently).
Many people have asked me angrily why it is that Zaphod Beeblebrox
instantly greets Ford as Ford when I had stated quite clearly that he
had only changed his name to Ford Prefect when he came to Earth. It was very simple. Just before arriving he registered his new name officially at the Galactic Nomenclaturoid Office, where they had the technology to unpick his old name from the fabric of space/time and thread the new one in its place, so that to all intents and purposes his name had always been and would always be Ford Prefect. I included a footnote explaining this in the first Hitch-Hiker book, but it was cut because it was so dull.E.2.5. Paul Neil Milne Jonhstone / Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings
E.2.6. Why monkeys and why Hamlet?
E.3. Young Zaphod Plays It Safe
E.4. Life, the Universe and Everything