经典科幻文学:《宇宙尽头的餐馆》第1章1
Chapter 1
The story so far:
In the beginning the Universe was created.
This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.
Many races believe that it was created by some sort of God, though the Jatravartid people of Viltvodle VI believe that the entire Universe was in fact sneezed out of the nose of a being called the Great Green Arkleseizure.
The Jatravartids, who live in perpetual fear of the time they call The Coming of The Great White Handkerchief, are small blue creatures with more than fifty arms each, who are therefore unique in being the only race in history to have invented the aerosol deodorant before the wheel.
However, the Great Green Arkleseizure Theory is not widely accepted outside Viltvodle VI and so, the Universe being the puzzling place it is, other explanations are constantly being sought.
For instance, a race of hyperintelligent pan-dimensional beings once built themselves a gigantic supercomputer called Deep Thought to calculate once and for all the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything.
For seven and a half million years, Deep Thought computed and calculated, and in the end announced that the answer was in fact Forty-two – and so another, even bigger, computer had to be built to find out what the actual question was.
And this computer, which was called the Earth, was so large that it was frequently mistaken for a planet – especially by the strange ape-like beings who roamed its surface, totally unaware that they were simply part of a gigantic computer program.
And this is very odd, because without that fairly simple and obvious piece of knowledge, nothing that ever happened on the Earth could possibly make the slightest bit of sense.
Sadly however, just before the critical moment of readout, the Earth was unexpectedly demolished by the Vogons to make way – so they claimed – for a new hyperspace bypass, and so all hope of discovering a meaning for life was lost for ever.
第一章
迄今为止，故事的发展如下：起初，创造出了宇宙。
这激怒了许多人，被普遍视为一种恶劣行径。
许多种族相信宇宙是由某种神所创造的。但是，维尔特沃德尔六号星上的加特拉瓦蒂人却相信，整个宇宙是在一个叫做“绿色巨怪阿克雷斯艾尔”的生物打喷嚏时，从他的鼻腔里喷出来的。
加特拉瓦蒂人生活在一种永恒的恐惧中，他们称之为“白色大手帕撸鼻子”。加特拉瓦蒂人是一种蓝色的小型生物，每个个体都有超过五十只胳膊，因此成为宇宙历史上独一无二的在发明车轮之前先发明胳肢窝除臭剂的种族。
然而，在维尔特沃德尔六号星之外，“绿色巨怪阿克雷斯艾尔创世论”并没有得到广泛承认。像宇宙这么扑朔迷离的东西，自然会吸引着人们持之以恒地寻找其他解释。
比如，一个具有超级智慧的泛维度种族就曾建造了一台巨型超级电脑，被称为“沉思”，用来计算关于生命、宇宙以及一切终极问题的答案。
经过七百五十万年的漫长岁月，沉思计算着、衡量着，最后宣布，这个问题的答案是42——于是，一台更大的电脑被建造出来，以寻求对应于这个答案的确切问题究竟是什么。因为，只有当确切地知道问题是什么时，才能理解这个答案的意思……
这台电脑被称为“地球”，它是如此之大，常常被错当成一颗行星。在它表面游荡的那些长得和猿差不多的奇怪生物尤其爱犯这个错误，这些家伙完全没有意识到他们只不过是一个巨型电脑程序的一部分而已。
如果不是为了那个大目的，发生在这个叫做地球的玩意儿上的其他所有事情就完全没有一丁点儿意义了。连这么简单明显的常识都意识不到，实在是太怪了。
不幸的是，就在最后结果即将出来之前的关键时刻，地球被沃贡人摧毁了。完全出乎意料。而沃贡人的目的只是为了腾出地方来修建——沃贡人是这样宣称的——一条新的超空间通道。于是，为生命赋予意义的所有希望永远落空了。
作者简介：
道格拉斯·亚当斯（Douglas Noël Adams，1952年3月11日－2001年5月11日）是一位英国广播剧作家、和音乐家，尤其以《银河系漫游指南》系列作品出名。亚当斯自称为“极端无神论者”。在去世以前，他是一位非常受欢迎的演讲者，尤其是在科技和环保等题材方面。他在49岁时的早逝在科幻和奇幻社群中引起了极大的哀悼。
