Important Health Warning:
If you have not yet finished Mostly Harmless, the fifth book in The Hitch-Hikers' Guide to the Galaxy trilogy, you are advised to leave this node immediately as it will completely ruin the plot and negate the mind-screwing effects of the book. Thank you for listening.
In
Mostly Harmless, Stavro Mueller Beta is the name of a
club in
London in which someone tries to
shoot Arthur Dent, but he ducks and the
bullet instead hits and
kills Agradjag, who for some reason is unendingly killed by
Arthur Dent every time he is
resurrected.
The significance of this is that in
Life, the Universe, and Everything, the third
book in the
trilogy, Agradjag tries to get
revenge on
Arthur Dent but cannot because he has not been to Stavro Mueller Beta and thus must in future be there in order to
indirectly
kill Agradjag. Therefore,
Arthur Dent's life is assured until he reaches this place, and constantly asks about its
location so that he can avoid it.
However, because he has only heard the
name spoken out loud, he cannot look it up, and reaches this club believing it to be some
planet somewhere. When he gets shot at there, and ducks leaving the shot to kill someone else, he finally
realises and goes into shock, just in time to see the
Earth getting blown up (again).
This also explains why the
bowl of petunias says "
Oh no not again" in
book one.