The Guide (character)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a fictional electronic guide book in the multimedia humor series of the same name. Entries from the guidebook are used as comic narration to bridge events and provide background information in every version of the story.
In the original radio scripts, the narration from the Guide was called "Narrator" and in the 2004-2005 series, "The Voice."[1][2] For all of the radio series and the 1981 TV series, the role was credited as "The Book", though this was changed to "Narrator/The Guide" for the 2005 movie.
In the first two phases of the radio series, the LP album adaptations of the first radio series and in the television series, the Guide was voiced by British actor Peter Jones. During the 2004-2005 radio series, The Guide was voiced by William Franklyn. In the film version, it was voiced by Stephen Fry.
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[edit] Description
From the first novel:
| “ | "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" is a wholly remarkable book. Perhaps the most remarkable, certainly the most successful book ever to come out of the great publishing corporations of Ursa Minor. More popular than the Celestial Home Care Omnibus, better selling than Fifty-Three More Things to do in Zero Gravity, and more controversial than Oolon Colluphid's trilogy of philosophical blockbusters Where God Went Wrong, Some More of God's Greatest Mistakes and Who is this God Person Anyway? It's already supplanted the Encyclopedia Galactica as the standard repository of all knowledge and wisdom, for two important reasons. First, it's slightly cheaper; and secondly it has the words DON'T PANIC printed in large friendly letters on its cover. | ” |
[edit] Entries
The Guide's various entries can be found throughout the various adaptations of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. These fictional entries are supposedly provided by various contributors, though most were written by Douglas Adams. The most famous of these contributors in the series is Ford Prefect, who spent fifteen years on the planet Earth, writing an entry about it. Ford's fictional contribution was supposedly edited down to "Mostly Harmless", which became a catch phrase of fans of the series.
On the Guide's outdated and typo filled entries (some of which could cause serious injury or death), Adams wrote, "...though it cannot hope to be useful or informative on all matters, it does make the reassuring claim that where it is inaccurate, it is at least definitively inaccurate. In cases of major discrepancy it was always reality that's got it wrong."[3]
The Guide can receive updates to its data base via Sub-Etha. Field researchers (like Ford Prefect) can also use the Guide to edit entries and transmit these back to the publisher.
The original text appears to have been copied from facts found on the back of breakfast cereal packs, but was later "proven" that the cereal producer had obtained the data from an edition which had been caught in a time wormhole and thus was copied prior to having been published.
[edit] Publisher
Within the series, the Guide was said to have been originally published by Megadodo Publications, "one of the greatest publication houses on Ursa Minor Beta". The first publication of the book was a huge success, beating bestsellers like Oolon Colluphid's philosophical trilogy Where God Went Wrong, Some More of God's Greatest Mistakes, and Who is This God Person Anyway?. The series describes the book's success based on two factors: that it is cheaper and more compact than the Encyclopaedia Galactica and that it has the words Don't Panic! written in large friendly letters on its cover.
When Megadodo was bought out by Infinidim Enterprises in Mostly Harmless, the new editor in chief, Vann Harl, changed the Guide's demographic from penniless hitchhikers to families in billions of billions of alternate worlds, thus altering the Guide's original purpose. Ford Prefect, in resistance of this, knocked out Vann Harl, stole his Ident-I-Eze card to increase all limits on Ford's own Dine-O-Charge card. Ford was thus able to use his Dine-O-Charge to buy a pink spaceship, all the foie gras in London, and The London Zoo, in addition to buying the hotel he was staying at for the concierge, all charged to the Guide and Infinidim Enterprises, hoping to "bankrupt the buggers."
[edit] Connection to Arthur Dent
In the novels, the Guide seems to have a symbiotic connection with one of the main characters, Arthur Dent. From the first time Dent sees a copy of the book, (the first Earthling ever to do so, after the destruction of Earth), the Guide follows Dent wherever he goes. Ford Prefect first shows Arthur the book while the two are trapped on a Vogon Constructor Ship. This copy, along with the protagonists, travels through time and space to Magrathea, Milliways, and eventually to a prehistoric version of Earth. After that, the copy of the Guide winds up on the Starship Bistromath, and eventually the Planet Krikkit. Sometime between the third and fourth novels, Arthur acquires his own copy, which Fenchurch discovers after it has been left in her brother's automobile. Finally, after dealing with the Guide Mark II in Mostly Harmless, the book seals the doom of itself and Arthur Dent at the club BETA (owned by Stavro Müller), thus sealing the fact that the two beings are connected.
[edit] Physical description
The Guide was always presented as a sort of electronic book, though with a limited capacity. Ford Prefect mentions its limitations when describing the entry on Earth in the first and fourth novels. The TV series prop was made to look like a large calculator (as was the computer game illustration). A video screen in the top half of the TV series prop was meant to illustrate the Guide's entries (though in reality it used rear-projection). The movie prop folded out and filled the available space, to provide more of a widescreen format.
It is presumably of robust construction, able to withstand falling through time/space wormholes and being thrown into swamps, being rescued, and still operating.
[edit] References
- ^ Adams, Douglas (2003). in Geoffrey Perkins (ed.), additional Material by M. J. Simpson.: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: The Original Radio Scripts, 25th Anniversary Edition, Pan Books. ISBN 0-330-41957-9.
- ^ Adams, Douglas. (2005). in Dirk Maggs, dramatisations and editor.: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Radio Scripts: The Tertiary, Quandary and Quintessential Phases. Pan Books. ISBN 0-330-43510-8.
- ^ Original radio series, Fit the Tenth.
[edit] External links
A Slate article by Paul Boutin that contends that the Guide has found a real-life equivalent in Wikipedia. However, the BBC's H2G2 sub-site makes similar claims for itself.
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