Speaking of Coast to Coast

[ulthar]

I was listening to George Norry last night as he was discussing space travel and trips to Mars and the like.

What was cool was they talked to the folks on ISS, live apparently.  That was a pretty cool discussion.

Later in the show, a dude called in to ask George if he ever read the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (George has not).  The funny part is that the guy was quoting from HGttG as if it were a serious scientific reference book dealing with the theories of space exploration.  If you've never read HGttG, you would probably go buy it thinking it was serious sci fi more in the lines of Asimov or Bradbury based on this guy's description.

He said  HGttG was basically based on the theory that the earth essentially existed inside a giant computer set to compute the ultimate answers (a la The Matrix, sorta??), and when it failed to compute these answers, the earth was destroyed.   Ummm, I thought the Vorgons destroyed the earth to make a right-of-way.

There is no way my lame description of this call can do it justice, and I was straining to hear if the caller was being serious or toungue-in-cheek.  It sounded serious to me.

Or, maybe I have been misinterpreting HGttG for lo these past 20 years.

[FearlessFreep]

Close, the Earth is the computer with life itself as part of the programming.

It was destroyed by the Vogans a few minutes before th question was ready

Of course, when Arthur and Ford went back in time they realized a) humans weren't part of the original code and b) the question sorta  doesn't match the answer

I was straining to hear if the caller was being serious or toungue-in-cheek. It sounded serious to me.

wish I'd heard that..

[Flangepart]

Hoo, boy.
That must have been a pip!
The Vogons were paid, according to the radio show, to prevent the Earth from delivering the answer, as, all the prognosticators and deep thinksrs could go on forever, arguing about what the ultimate question might actualy be.
Helloooo, Broomfundle and Magikthies!
Corse....as Arther is actualy decended from the Golgofrigians....their arrival; cocked up the whole program! So the computer ended up "B-arking" up the wrong tree.
"In the beginning, the whole universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry, and been widely regarded as a bad move..."

[NC]

My dad listens to Coast To Coast every night so I'll have to ask him about this.