|
Random was the name of Arthur Dent's daughter in the 5th part of the Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy trilogy (!?). Hmm, there's that law of fives again. ANyway, in the story, Arthur Dent is one of only 2 survivors of the Earth's destruction to make way for a hyperspace bypass (in order to preserve the livelihood of psychiatrists everywhere, for reasons too improbable to go into here). Wandering about the Galaxy with an assortment of misfit acquaintances, and wearing only a dressing gown, he is often forced to sell genetic material to scrape together enough cash for interstellar flights. The other survivor is a girl, Trillian, who has a degree in mathematics and another in astrophysics and left the Earth in the company of the former President of the Galaxy, Zaphod Beeblebrox, because it was either that or the dole queue again on Monday morning. She decides to have a daughter and visits a sperm bank, where of course, the only compatible sperm belongs to none other than Arthur Dent. There was a point to this story, but it has temporarily slipped the chronicler's mind. Just read the book. You'll have a far better picture of what random is all about after that, particularly the first book in the trilogy, the plot of which was genuinely and totally random, with each episode dreamed up as the author, the late great Douglas Adams, went along. I am not joking! This, in part, accounts for the genius of some of the ideas, in that he was forced to come up with far out ideas in order to get his characters out of the death-defying scrapes they invariably find themselves in at the end of each chapter. So there.
|
