經典科幻文學:《宇宙盡頭的餐館》第19章1
One of the major selling point of that wholly remarkable travel book, The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, apart from its relative cheapness and the fact that it has the words Don’t Panic written in large friendly letters on its cover, is its compendious and occasionally accurate glossary. The statistics relating to the geo-social nature of the Universe, for instance, are deftly set out between pages nine hundred and thirty-eight thousand and twenty-four and nine hundred and thirty-eight thousand and twenty-six; and the simplistic style in which they are written is partly explained by the fact that the editors, having to meet a publishing deadline, copied the information off the back of a packet of breakfast cereal, hastily embroidering it with a few footnoted in order to avoid prosecution under the incomprehensibly tortuous Galactic Copyright laws.
It is interesting to note that a later and wilier editor sent the book backwards in time through a temporal warp, and then successfully sued the breakfast cereal company for infringement of the same laws.
Here is a sample:
The Universe some information to help you live in it.
1 Area: Infinite.
The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy offers this definition of the word “Infinite”.
Infinite: Bigger than the biggest thing ever and then some. much bigger than that in fact, really amazingly immense, a totally stunning size, “wow, that’s big”, time. Infinity is just so big that by comparison, bigness itself looks really titchy. Gigantic multiplied by colossal multiplied by staggeringly huge is the sort of concept we’re trying to get across here.
2 Imports: None.
It is impossible to import things into an infinite area, there being no outside to import things in from.
那本非凡的旅行書——《銀河系漫酢指南》——的主要賣點之一，除了它相對而言比較便宜的價格，以及封面上以大而友善的字體寫着“不要恐慌”這句話以外，就要數它那簡明扼要並且偶爾也還算準確的術語、數據表了，比如那些和宇宙的地理、社會狀況相關的統計數據（列於第九十萬八千七百二十四頁到第九千三百二十六頁之間）。至於它們過分簡化的風格，則部分歸咎於這樣的事實：編輯有截稿時間，只能從自己的早餐麥片的包裝上抄錄一些信息，再匆匆忙忙改頭換面一番簡直令人無法理解的銀河系版權法規。
還有一件趣事：後來出現了一位足智多謀的編輯，他通過時空跳躍的辦法將這本書送到了過去，從而以違反版權法爲由，成功地起訴了那家早餐麥片公司。
以下是一個例子：
宇宙（在此提供一些相關信忠，以方便讀者在其中生活）。
1、宇宙的區域：無限
《銀河系漫遊指南》對“無限“這個詞作出瞭如下定義：
無限：比最大的東西還大。實際上，比鄢還要大很多，寬廣得讓人吃驚，一個足以把人嚇暈過去的尺度，真正當得起。“哇，真大”這句感嘆。無限是如此之大，以至於相比之下，“大”本身看上去實在太小了。巨大乘以龐大再乘以大得驚人，這就是我們試圍在這裏使讀者瞭解的概念。
2、字宙的進口貿易：無
進口東西到一個無限的區域內是不可能的，因爲不存在把東西進口進來的“外部”。
