Arthur Dent, a man whose planet has been blown up, has been having a remarkable effect on the Universe. And the most remarkable thing about this is that the only remarkable thing about him as a person is that he is remarkably unremarkable - in all respects other than having had his planet blown up.

And, this, of course, is the nub of the matter, because most of the things which stir the Universe up in anyway are caused by dispossessed people. There are two ways of accounting for this. One is to say that if everyone just sat at home nothing would ever happen. This is very simple.

The other is to say - as Oolon Colluphid has at great length in his book "Everything you wanted to know about guilt, but were too afraid too ask" - that every being in the Universe is tied to his birthplace by tiny invisible force tendrils composed of little quantum packets of guilt. If you travel far from your birthplace, these tendrils get stretched and distorted.

This compares with an ancient Arcturan proverb. However fast the body travels, the soul travels at the speed of an Arcturan Megacamel. This would mean, in these days of hyperspace and Improbability Drive that most people's souls are wandering unprotected in deep space in a state of some confusion, and this would account for a lot of things.

Similarly, if your birthplace is actually destroyed - or in Arthur Dent's case demolished, ostensibly to make way for a new hyperspace bypass - then these tendrils are severed and flap about at random: there are no people to be fed or whales to be saved, there is no washing up to be done.

And these flapping tendrils of guilt can seriously disturb the space time continuum. You may already have seen how Arthur Dent inadvertently caused war beyween the G'Gugvunts and the Vl'Hurgs. You shall shortly see how it is directly attributable to this thoroughly unremarkable Earthman that the Heart of Gold, escaping from the Vogons on Improbability Drive, has now materialised in a highly mysterious cave, on the even more mysterious planet Brontitall.