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Arthur Dent is - so far - the only survivor from Earth, demolished to make way for a by-pass. He survived thanks to his friend, Ford Prefect (who hails not from Guildford, but somewhere near Betelgeuse), a writer for the Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, "the most successful book ever to have come out of the great publishing corporations of Ursa Minor". Both are now at the mercy of the Vogon Captain, and even worse, powerless in the face of his poetry.