'Well that about wraps it up for God'

Magisterarbeit von Katharina Günther

Introduction:

The story of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is the story of Life, the Universe and Everything. Initially broadcasted as a radio series on BBC Radio 4 in 1978 it was such a success that its author, Douglas Adams, eventually ended up not only publishing the story with a slightly modified plot in book form but also creating four sequels until 1992. The story was taken up by other media which resulted in the creation of a TV series in 1981, stage shows, a movie in 2005, a computer game, comics, towels and a lot more. Today the ‘H2G2’ has reached a cult status that few other Science Fiction works boast.

The plot of the HG is mostly confusing and full of curious ideas wherefore a complete summary is not possible at this point. However, the following paragraph will give the unacquainted readers an idea of the story.

„There are of course many problems connected with life, of which some of the most popular are: Why are people born? Why do they die? Why do they want to spend so much of the intervening time wearing digital watches?” The Trilogy in Five Parts is the story of Arthur Dent and his quest for the answers to these problems. After the destruction of Earth the only surviving Englishman Dent hitchhikes through the width of time and space, finds out the answer to the ultimate question, dines at the Restaurant at the End of the Universe, saves the world, falls in love with a woman whose feet cannot touch the ground, is worshipped by birds and sandwich-lovers, is enlightened by God’s final message to His Creation and finally meets his fate on STAVROMULABETA. The ape-descendent Dent is accompanied by Ford Prefect, owner of a copy of the most remarkable book ever to come out of the Great Publishing Houses of Ursa Minor Beta: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – an encyclopaedia that sells so well mainly because it has the words DON’T PANIC written in large friendly letters on the cover. Other companions are Marvin, the paranoid android, Trillian, the sole surviving woman from Earth and Zaphod Beeblebrox, the former Galactic President.

The author of this humorous work of Science Fiction was born as Douglas Noel Adams on March 11th 1952 in Cambridge, UK, and died on May 11th 2001 in Santa Barbara, California. Whilst studying English in Cambridge he joined the Footlights Society, a comedy group which is also closely connected to Monty Python. Adams’ initial career aspiration was to become a comedian yet he seemingly never displayed a great talent as an actor so his plans to follow the paths of Monty Python’s members had to be changed. Before the breakthrough with the HG he worked for the BBC where he created, among others, some episodes of Doctor Who. After his first success he worked as freelance writer and published besides the HG series the Dirk Gently-series and non-Science Fiction works like The meaning of Liff; The Deeper Meaning of Liff and Last Chance to See.

Since this thesis will analyse spiritual themes in his work, it is useful to point out Adams’ attitude towards religion. Adams was brought up as a Christian. His father was even „(…) studying for a postgraduate degree in theology with a view to taking holy orders (…)”but gave up eventually. As an adolescent Adams was Sacristan for some months and received a special Prize for Service in chapel. His interest in religion continued and „[…] on the strength of an essay on the revival of religious poetry, he won an exhibition to study English at Cambridge”. However, after he finished school, Adams turned away from religion and became a radical Atheist: „If it turned out that there was a god, I would feel I’d been the victim of a monumental confidence trick, I’d feel that the universe was playing silly buggers. I’ll wait and see but I won’t lose any sleep over it” (Adams quoted in Simpson: 243). In Winter 1998/99 Adams gave an interview to The American Atheist on the subject of religion. An extract will leave no question concerning Adams’ personal ideas about the subject:

I really do not believe that there is a god. I am a radical Atheist, just to signal that I really mean it, have thought about it a great deal, and that it’s an opinion I hold seriously. I don’t accept the currently fashionable assertion that any view is automatically as worthy of respect as any equal and opposite view. There is such a thing as the burden of proof, and in the case of god, as in the case of the composition of the moon, this has shifted radically. (However), I am fascinated by religion. (That’s a completely different thing from believing in it!) It has had such an incalculably huge effect on human affairs. What is it? What does it represent? Why have we invented it? How does it keep going? What will become of it? I love to keep poking and prodding at it.

This suggests that in contrast to other Science Fiction works there will not be any attempts to convert the readers of Adams’ work to Christianity or any other religion but that there will be reflections on religious themes in the HG.

It is the aim of this thesis to analyse appearances of religious motives, ideas or traditions in the five novels that belong to the HG-trilogy and to interpret their function in the works.

In order to provide a base for an evaluation, the volumes have to be classified in terms of belonging to a literary genre. Adams’ works will be included in the literary category of Science Fiction (SF), which will be essential for the functional interpretation in the subsequent analysis as well as for the comparison with other SF novels.

Since religion is a popular subject among SF authors, the presentation of certain themes will be split into four categories which will recur in the analytical part. First of all, the question of the existence of a god will be treated, followed by the representation of creation myths. Thirdly, there are different versions of eschatological ideas to be considered and finally, the quest for the meaning of life will be looked upon.

Subsequent to the theoretical part, religious motives in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy will be studied according to the mentioned categories. Eventually, the results of this analysis will be summarized in a conclusion.

There may be a remote chance, that the attentive reader of this thesis will „‘[n]ever again wake up in the morning and think: Who am I? What is my purpose in life? Does it really, cosmically speaking, matter if I don’t get up and go to work? For today we will finally learn once and for all the plain and simple answer to all these nagging little problems of Life, the Universe and Everything’”.

Table of Contents:

1.	Introduction	4
2.	Classification of The HG	7
2.1	A Short Introduction to Science Fiction as a Literary Genre	7
2.2	The HG as (Mock-) Science Fiction	8
3.	Religious Themes in Science Fiction	13
3.1	The (Non-) Existence of God in Science Fiction	14
3.2	Creation of the World and Mankind in Science Fiction	19
3.3	Eschatology and Death in Science Fiction	21
3.4	The Meaning of Life in Science Fiction	26
4.	For Zarquon’s Sake or The HG and Religion	29
5.	Does it Look as if the Universe is in Very Good Hands? or God in the HG	31
5.1	The (Non-) Existence of God	31
5.2	Humanoid Supreme Beings	34
5.3	Machines as Gods	37
5.4	The Guide as Holy Book and God	42
5.5	False Gods	44
5.6	God’s Final Message to His Creation	45
6.	The Great Green Arkleseizure or Creation in the HG	48
6.1	The Creation of Life	49
6.2	The Making of Earth	50
6.3	The Creation of Mankind by Ancient Astronauts	51
6.4	Artificial Universes	54
7.	The Restaurant at the End of the Universe or	56

Eschatology & Afterlife in the HG

7.1	The Restaurant at the End of the Universe	57
7.2	The End of the Earth(s)	59
7.3	Afterlife	59
7.4	Immortality	62
7.5	Reincarnation	64
7.6	The Death of Arthur Dent	66
8.	42 or The Meaning of Life	69
8.1	The Meaning of Life in the Five major Religions	69
8.2	Insignificance of Man	71
8.3	Everybody’s Quest for Answers	75
8.4	Aliens – Bringers of Knowledge?	76
8.5	The Quest of Arthur Dent	79
8.6	Answers	85
8.7	The Dangers of Knowledge	88
9.	Conclusion	90
10.	Bibliography	94

Text Sample:

Kapitel 3.4, The Meaning of Life in Science Fiction:

So far it has been looked upon the motives of the origin and the end of all life, and the question of the existence of a god which are all imbedded in a greater theme: the quest for the meaning of life. This search for purpose is also one of the reasons why many people turn to religion, since answers to this crucial question are offered there. (An overview of the meaning of life in the five major religions is given in chapter 8.

In Science Fiction this inner quest is often represented by a real journey. Voyages, mainly through space, form a major part of the mega-text of SF and are certainly one of the most important icons (see chapter 2.2.). For a long time man has considered the celestial sphere as a place that would supply answers, if one could only travel there. One major reason for this is certainly that, in many religions, the sky is perceived as the dwelling of gods. One of the oldest literary versions of a journey into the realms of gods was written by Parmenides of Elea (*ca. 515 BC).

(His poem On Nature) opens with Parmenides representing himself as borne on a chariot and attended by the Sunmaidens who have quitted the Halls of Night to guide him on his journey. (Eventually) they come to the Gate of Night and Day, which is locked and barred. They pass in through the gate and are now, of course, in the realms of Day. The goal of the journey is the palace of a goddess who welcomes Parmenides and instructs him in the two ways, that of Truth and the deceptive way of Belief, in which is no truth at all.

When Parmenides has travelled from night to day he has also walked from error to truth. If one asks about the purpose of life, it is also important to consider man’s position in the world. As long as the Ptolemaic and Aristotelian geocentric model of the universe persisted, man’s position in it was more or less obvious. The planet earth was the centre of the world and the hereafter was the realm of the gods. Everything was centred around mankind and even the gods, despite having their own lives and quarrels, existed mainly to guide (or punish) man. Although the earliest suspicions of a heliocentric universe are mentioned in Vedic Sanskrit texts from the ninth century BC, the idea did not mark a turning point in the world picture until Nicolaus Copernicus published his astronomical findings in De Revolutionibus in 1543.

It gave rise to the problem of dissociating the fundamental Christian conviction of the dignity of man from the idea of earth’s physical centrality. To assert that the Earth was not central but peripheral to the universe was startlingly felt as a negation of human worth. Moreover, the gigantic distances of space conveyed to persons a feeling of their smallness and insignificance.

In the centuries since Copernicus, the picture of the cosmos has become clearer but at the same time more unimaginable and until today, although scientific findings have told us a lot about the universe we are situated in, man just cannot derive an idea of the seize and nature of the universe from his every day experience. Thus man’s position in the world became blurred and answers about ‘Life, the Universe and Everything’ moved into remote distance. As a result of the notion of the anthropic principle, man is again put more into the centre of the universe but mankind is still far away from understanding the cosmos we are living in. Thus, Science Fiction provides vast opportunities of imagining worlds that could exist. In searching other worlds, dimensions or universes, man is ultimately always searching for himself. Thus, the outer journey is often a metaphor for the interior one.

Olaf Stapledon’s Star Maker is a prime example for the theme of the inner, often religious quest in SF. The hero/narrator of the novel has no name which makes him a kind of everyman that everybody is able to identify with and moreover denotes „ him as a generalized representative of humankind” (Bossay: 4). Such a voyage can be made by everyone since it is his mind that is travelling. The worlds the mind is visiting are „ distinct from our own and from each other. But at bottom, there is an identity among them which the questing hero has either forgotten or has not yet learned” (Bossay: 3). Since the original mind merges with other minds from those worlds the quest becomes a more universal search for the " cosmic center of mind” (Bossay: 5). Mankind loses its uniqueness and is only „ ein unbedeutender Fleck in einer Abfolge von Universen, die von belebten Nebeln und gallertartigen Wolken mit Gruppenbewusstsein bevölkert sind”. The quest is successful and after the encounter with the Star Maker, the terrestrial mind can return home with an altered sight in order to change his world.

Carpentier, the hero of Niven and Pournelle’s Inferno, is undergoing a major change in his attitudes. For him it is necessary to see all the parts of hell until he is able to believe in god. At the end of his journey he is free to leave but decides to return to Hell and do service there. Instead of him his guide Benito is allowed to leave the underworld. This decision is a product „ not of empiricism but of immense spiritual growth”. For Carpentier the quest ends in faith in god and in the will to change his attitudes.

Apart from the journey through space, there is another icon of SF that sheds light on how man situates himself in the universe: the encounter with aliens. Since real contacts have not yet taken place, the fictional encounter does not provide any information about aliens but a lot about mankind itself. Whilst speculating about other intelligent life forms in the universe, the question arises of how important human life would be considered by alien life.

In Clarke’s Rendezvous with Rama (1973) the fear is expressed, that „(t)hey would probably never even know that the human race existed; such monumental indifference was worse than any deliberate insult” (quoted in Guthke: 35). The same happens in Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land (1961), where the Martians consider humans only with mild interest and are still to decide if the earth should be destroyed or not. A different aspect is the hope, that the extraterrestrials would act like die Engel der christlichen Mythologie: als machtvolle Beschützer wie der Regent in Jüngers Heliopolis (1949), als Boten der Erlösung oder ‚Geburtshelfer’ der Höherentwicklung zu unfaßbarem kollektiven Bewußtseinsstand, ja: zu einer ‚Apotheose’ der Menschheit wie in Clarkes Childhood’s End (1953) oder als überlegene, aber wohlwollendhilfsbereite Nachbarn wie in 2001. A Space Odyssey (1968).

One problem that could arise from the suppositious encounter with the superior knowledge of the aliens is the loss of human ambition to look for answers.

George Wald, Nobelpreisträger für Biochemie, hat die Befürchtung ausgesprochen (daß) durch die unvermutete Erbschaft der Antworten auf alle Fragen jedes menschliche Streben gelähmt und damit jeder Begriff von der Würde des Menschen und dem Sinn seiner Existenz hoffnungslos desorientiert (werde).

However, as long as mankind does not encounter aliens who have the answers to all questions, man will go on searching for the meaning of life and his position in the universe.

Many have found solutions to the pressing problems of the human existence in Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker Trilogy. The following chapters will provide an insight into the work’s attitude towards these issues.