|
The Total Perspective Vortex, in the fictional world of Douglas Adams's The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, is the most horrible torture device to which a sentient being can be subjected. Located on Frogstar World B, it shows its victim the entire unimaginable infinity of the universe with a very tiny marker that says "You Are Here" which points to a microscopic dot on a microscopic dot. A fictional universe is a cohesive fictional world that serves as the setting or backdrop for one or (more commonly) multiple works of fiction. ...
Douglas Noël Adams (March 11, 1952 – May 11, 2001) was a cult British comic radio dramatist, amateur musician and author, most notably of the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy series (HHGG or H2G2). ...
The cover of the first novel in the Hitchhikers series, from a late 1990s printing. ...
Torture is any act by which severe pain, whether physical or psychological, is intentionally inflicted on a person as a means of intimidation, a deterrent, revenge, a punishment, or as a method for the extraction of information or confessions (i. ...
This is a list of places featured in The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. ...
The machine was originally invented by one Trin Tragula in order to annoy his wife. Because she was forever nagging him for having no sense of proportion, he decided to invent something that would show her what having a sense of proportion really meant. Unfortunately the shock of being placed in the Vortex destroyed her brain, but Trin Tragula's grief was tempered by the knowledge that he had been right and she had been wrong. The Total Perspective Vortex had proved that in an infinite universe the one thing sentient life cannot afford to have is a sense of proportion. Comparative brain sizes In animals, the brain, or encephalon (Greek for in the head), is the control center of the central nervous system. ...
The machine produces a virtual reality model of the entire universe by means of the axiom that any piece of matter is affected by all other matter. The Vortex reconstructs the universe through computer processing of a high-resolution scan of a small object. In the words of the Hitchhiker's Guide, Virtual Reality (VR) is an environment that is simulated by a computer. ...
An abstract model (or conceptual model) is a theoretical construct that represents physical, biological or social processes, with a set of variables and a set of logical and quantitative relationships between them. ...
An axiom is a sentence or proposition that is taken for granted as true, and serves as a starting point for deducing other truths. ...
Matter is commonly defined as the substance of which physical objects are composed. ...
A computer is a machine designed for manipulating data according to a list of instructions known as a program. ...
The terms scan and scanning have several meanings: Wiktionary has related dictionary definitions, such as: scan The term scan has the following meanings: To examine sequentially, part by part. ...
- "...since every piece of matter in the Universe is in someway affected by every other piece of matter in the Universe, it is in theory possible to extrapolate the whole of creation - every Galaxy, every sun, every planet, their orbits, their composition, and their economic and social history from, say, one small piece of fairy cake."
Only Zaphod Beeblebrox is reported to have survived the Vortex unscathed (and to then have eaten the small piece of fairy cake). When it showed him the "You Are Here" marker, Zaphod interpreted the Vortex as simply telling him that he was the most important being in the universe. This is due to the fact that the Vortex he entered was in fact in an artificial universe, which had been specially created for his benefit (thus making him the most important being in it) - though some have noted the possibility that he has an ego the size of the universe. Cupcake - Wikipedia /**/ @import /skins/monobook/IE50Fixes. ...
Mark Wing-Davey as Zaphod Beeblebrox, from the TV adaptation. ...
The Quintessential Phase of the BBC radio series combines the ideas behind the Total Perspective Vortex and the Guide Mark II to combine story lines from all of the radio episodes. This allows many of the plotlines from the divergent versions of the story to be wrapped up by the radio series' conclusion. The terms Tertiary Phase, Quandary Phase and Quintessential Phase describe the radio adaptations of the books Life, the Universe and Everything, So Long, and Thanks For All the Fish and Mostly Harmless recorded in 2003 and 2004 by Above the Title Productions for BBC Radio 4. ...
|
Feeds |
Contact