經典科幻文學:《銀河系漫遊指南》第15章

Far back in the mists of ancient time, in the great and glorious days of the former Galactic Empire, life was wild, rich and largely tax free. Mighty starships plied their way between exotic suns, seeking adventure and reward amongst the furthest reaches of Galactic space. In those days spirits were brave, the stakes were high, men were real men, women were real women, and small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were real small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri. And all dared to brave unknown terrors, to do mighty deeds, to boldly split infinitives that no man had split before — and thus was the Empire forged.
Many men of course became extremely rich, but this was perfectly natural and nothing to be ashamed of because no one was really poor — at least no one worth speaking of. And for all the richest and most successful merchants life inevitably became rather dull and niggly, and they began to imagine that this was therefore the fault of the worlds they'd settled on — none of them was entirely satisfactory: either the climate wasn't quite right in the later part of the afternoon, or the day was half an hour too long, or the sea was exactly the wrong shade of pink.
And thus were created the conditions for a staggering new form of specialist industry: custom-made luxury planet building. The home of this industry was the planet Magrathea, where hyperspatial engineers sucked matter through white holes in space to form it into dream planets — gold planets, platinum planets, soft rubber planets with lots of earthquakes — all lovingly made to meet the exacting standards that the Galaxy's richest men naturally came to expect.
But so successful was this venture that Magrathea itself soon became the richest planet of all time and the rest of the Galaxy was reduced to abject poverty. And so the system broke down, the Empire collapsed, and a long sullen silence settled over a billion worlds, disturbed only by the pen scratchings of scholars as they laboured into the night over smug little treaties on the value of a planned political economy.
Magrathea itself disappeared and its memory soon passed into the obscurity of legend.
In these enlightened days of course, no one believes a word of it.

退回到遠古的迷霧中，在前一個銀河帝國那些偉大而光榮的日子裏，生活如火如茶，無比富足，幾平沒有賦稅。大功率星際飛船穿梭於異星之間，在整個銀河系最深遠的地方追求着冒險和財富。在那些日子裏，精神是勇敢的，賭注是高昂的，男人是真正的男人，女人是真正的女人，來自半人馬座主星的毛茸茸的小生物是真正的來自半人馬座主星的毛茸茸的小生物。所有的人都敢於面對未知的風險，追求偉大的功業，開墾此前沒有任何人涉足過的充滿不確定因素的領域——這些構成了帝國的堅實基礎。
許多人當然也因此變得非常富有，但這是再正常不過的事了，沒有任何值得羞愧之處，因爲並沒有人是真正貧窮的——最起碼值得一提的人沒有一個是真正貧窮的。到了後來，所有這些最富裕和最成功的商人的生活不可避免地變得相當枯燥和瑣碎，於是他們開始認爲這全怪他們所居住的這個世界。他們中沒有一個人是完全心滿意足的：或者是嫌下午的後半段時間內天氣不是大好，或者是嫌一天多了半個小時，又或者是嫌海水呈現出不正常的粉紅色。
於是，一種全新的特種工業應運而生：定製奢侈行星。這種產業的故鄉就是曼格拉斯行星。在那裏，超空間工程師通過太空中的白洞吸取物質，用來構造夢幻般的行星——黃金星、鉑金星、地震頻繁的柔軟的橡膠星——所有這些行星都是嚴格按照銀河系中那些最有錢的闊佬們的要求定製的。
這項投資的成功達到這樣一個地步：曼格拉斯自身很快變成了有史以來最富裕的行星，而銀河系剩下的區域則變得一貧如洗。於是整個體系宣告解體。帝國崩潰了，漫長的沉寂籠罩着十億個飢餓的世界，只有當學者們深夜撰寫那些自嗚得意的政治經濟學論文時，他們揮舞的大筆纔會擾動一下這份沉寂。
曼格拉斯則消失了，關於它的記憶也很快成爲隱晦的傳說。
當然，在現今這個經過啓蒙的時代，沒有人相信這樣的傳說。