經典科幻文學:《宇宙盡頭的餐館》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
迄今爲止，故事的發展如下：起初，創造出了宇宙。
這激怒了許多人，被普遍視爲一種惡劣行徑。
許多種族相信宇宙是由某種神所創造的。但是，維爾特沃德爾六號星上的加特拉瓦蒂人卻相信，整個宇宙是在一個叫做“綠色巨怪阿克雷斯艾爾”的生物打噴嚏時，從他的鼻腔裏噴出來的。
加特拉瓦蒂人生活在一種永恆的恐懼中，他們稱之爲“白色大手帕擼鼻子”。加特拉瓦蒂人是一種藍色的小型生物，每個個體都有超過五十隻胳膊，因此成爲宇宙歷史上獨一無二的在發明車輪之前先發明胳肢窩除臭劑的種族。
然而，在維爾特沃德爾六號星之外，“綠色巨怪阿克雷斯艾爾創世論”並沒有得到廣泛承認。像宇宙這麼撲朔迷離的東西，自然會吸引着人們持之以恆地尋找其他解釋。
比如，一個具有超級智慧的泛維度種族就曾建造了一臺巨型超級電腦，被稱爲“沉思”，用來計算關於生命、宇宙以及一切終極問題的答案。
經過七百五十萬年的漫長歲月，沉思計算着、衡量着，最後宣佈，這個問題的答案是42——於是，一臺更大的電腦被建造出來，以尋求對應於這個答案的確切問題究竟是什麼。因爲，只有當確切地知道問題是什麼時，才能理解這個答案的意思……
這臺電腦被稱爲“地球”，它是如此之大，常常被錯當成一顆行星。在它表面遊蕩的那些長得和猿差不多的奇怪生物尤其愛犯這個錯誤，這些傢伙完全沒有意識到他們只不過是一個巨型電腦程序的一部分而已。
如果不是爲了那個大目的，發生在這個叫做地球的玩意兒上的其他所有事情就完全沒有一丁點兒意義了。連這麼簡單明顯的常識都意識不到，實在是太怪了。
不幸的是，就在最後結果即將出來之前的關鍵時刻，地球被沃貢人摧毀了。完全出乎意料。而沃貢人的目的只是爲了騰出地方來修建——沃貢人是這樣宣稱的——一條新的超空間通道。於是，爲生命賦予意義的所有希望永遠落空了。
作者簡介：
道格拉斯·亞當斯（Douglas Noël Adams，1952年3月11日－2001年5月11日）是一位英國廣播劇作家、和音樂家，尤其以《銀河系漫遊指南》系列作品出名。亞當斯自稱爲“極端無神論者”。在去世以前，他是一位非常受歡迎的演講者，尤其是在科技和環保等題材方面。他在49歲時的早逝在科幻和奇幻社羣中引起了極大的哀悼。
