Save Yourself: The Best Sci-Fi Space Arks
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Golgafrincham Ark Fleet (Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Series)
The Golgafrincham Ark Fleet wasn’t actually designed to save anyone from anything, regardless of what passengers boarding the B-Ark were told. In fact, they were told one of several fanciful tales of impending doom for their planet, including one involving a “mutant star goat.” In fact, the entire so-called Ark Fleet was just a cunning plan by the other Golgafrincham people to get rid of an entire useless third of their population. This included hairdressers, TV producers, insurance salesmen, personnel officers, security guards, management consultants, telephone sanitizers, and the like. And indeed, those poor saps bought it and set off into the cosmos, leaving their betters to live on in peace. At least until those left behind were all killed by “a virulent disease contracted from a dirty telephone.”
Advantages: The poor schmucks aboard the B-Ark obviously fared better in the long run than the folks who were determined to get rid of them. As Arthur Dent learned during his voyages, the B-Ark crash landed on prehistoric Earth, where the Golgafrinchans soon supplanted the native cave people and became the ancestors of every human on the planet. So it worked out rather well for them, all things considered.
Disadvantages: Well, they put a serious spanner in the spokes of those interdimensional mice who had commissioned the Earth as a giant, living computer designed to compute the Ultimate Question to the Ultimate Answer of Life, the Universe, and Everything. (The answer, of course, is 42, and the Question was eventually revealed to be “What do you get if you multiply six by nine?”) Also, it was bad news if you’re Arthur Dent, as you’re left with no one to talk to except an ark-load of hairdressers, TV producers, insurance salesmen, personnel officers, security guards, management consultants, telephone sanitizers and the like.
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