User:Dr. Skullthumper/The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a small and yet incredibly useful data-book that details everything one needs to know to survive in the Galaxy and, hopefully, have a good time while doing so. It is widely known for its flexibility, continuous updates, and less errors than any other data-book on the market.

History of the Guide

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy has this to say on the subject of its creation:

“ The Guide was first thought up by a man named Jungfred Pettyjammer, who made it a point to visit a small reddish-type planet at least once a year for several reasons. Firstly, the culture was interesting — the majority of its inhabitants were so frightened that their local god might smite them that they made a point of deceiving it in any way possible. Lightning rods and decoys littered the streets, as well as giant pleading messages that directed the great god of the sky to have mercy. And secondly, they had the Galaxy's best fish recipe.

Jungfred once paid a visit to one of the inhabitants' households. Obeying carefully as many manners as he could remember from The Proper Way to Send a "Sorry You're Dead" Note and 1,000 Other Useful Things You Ought to Know, he bowed upon entry, said the word "curry" three times in rapid succession, and wiped his feet on the carpet.

He was chased off of the planet soon afterwards, and it was only years later upon asking one of those random know-it-all chaps you find in shady areas did he discover the reason why. As it turns out, most people on that particular planet think that rugs are actually quite nice pets, albeit vicious ones that are known to swallow up unsuspecting walkers in the dead of night. Jungfred scratched his head and wondered why there wasn't a book full of things that were so bloody useful as that bit of information, and decided to make one. It would be that sort of "shady area" smartass that you could carry around in your pocket. And so The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was born.

”

Technical bit

The Guide currently encompasses thirteen billion factidiums. Factidums are a measurement of knowledge, where one factidium is knowing how to make fire, five factidums are knowing how to recognize an idiot, and an average of eighty is acquiring the knowledge that you, yourself, are an idiot. At thirteen billion, it is roughly the equivalent of taking two planets' populations, extracting their brains, dumping the knowledge out of them, and putting it in a vat the size of three moons. As one can imagine, this is an awful lot of knowledge.

In order to fit all these factidiums into the Guide without forcing the user to lug it around in a separate spaceship, the Guide makes use of a relatively new technology.