Arthur Philip Dent is one of the last two survivors of the Planet Earth. Earth was destroyed by the Vogons, ostensibly to make way for a Hyperspace Bypass. In actuality it was destroyed because a consortium of rogue psychiatrists had discovered that the planets was in fact a gigantic computer designed to uncover the Ultimate Question of Life, The Universe, and Everything (the Answer to which is 42). This computer, part of the matrix of which included the entire Human race, had been built by hyperintelligent pangalactic entities (whose intrusions into our space appear to be white mice) who now wish to acquire his brain in order to retrieve the Question. He often travels with Ford Prefect; Ford's semicousin, renegade Galactic President Zaphod Beeblebrox; Trillian, an unemployed astrophysicist who is the only other survivor of the Earth; and a manically-depressed paranoid android named Marvin. They travelled in the Heart Of Gold, an Infinite Improbability Drive starship.
Arthur Dent travelled aboard the Heart Of Gold to Magrathea where he found out that the Earth was actually a planet-sized computer running a ten million year programme as described above. He subsequently travelled to the Restaurant at the End of The Universe, a nightclub in a temporal bubble at the Heat Death of the universe. Leaving with Zaphod and Ford, who had stolen the command vessel for an interstellar invasion fleet which was temporally navigating back from the end of the universe. Trillian and Marvin were along as well. The fleet admiral was asleep aboard the black ship, and woke up. He was a Haggunenon from Vicissitus III, a rapid-evolutionary shapeshifter who attacked them all, and Arthur fled with Ford in an escape pod.
The escape pod landed in the cargo bay of a Golgafrincham starship which then crashed on the prehistoric Earth, 2 million years ago. After five years living in a limestons cave in what would be Islington 2 million years later, he and Ford reunited when a sofa appeared and transported them to Lord's Cricket Grounds the day before the Vogons demolished the planet. When a group of alien robots from the planet Kikkit, they were recruited by Slartibartfast, a Magrathean planet designer prevent the Krikkit robots from releasing the planet Krikkit from temporal stasis after 10 billion years. They failed, but Trillian managed to negotiate with the High Council of Krikkit and subsequently Hactar, a malevolent supercomputer. The day was eventually saved by Arthur's complete lack of skill at the game of Cricket.
A periodic update to the Guide alerted Arthur to the fact that the Earth had mysteriously reappeared so he went to check it out. The Earth was in fact there, and Arthur attempted to settle back into his old life. He met and fell in love with a troubled young lady named Fenchurch who had found his lost copy of the Guide. They left Earth together with Ford and travelled to see God‘s Final Message To His Creation, said to be written in fire in letters thirty feet high on the far side of the Quentulus Quazgar Mountains in the land of Sevorbeupstry on the planet of Preliumtarn, which orbits the star Zarss, which is located in the Grey Binding Fiefdoms of Saxaquine. Once they had seen it and having laid Marvin to his final rest, they embarked on a whirlwind round of interstellar travel, only to have her disappear during a routine hyperspace jump, being from Sector ZZ9-PluralZ-Alpha, a galactic plural zone.
Arthur spent a considerable amount of timetrying to replicate the circumstances of Fenchurch's disappearance in the desperate hope that she would reappear. His ship had a massive accident and crashed on the planet Lamuella. He was rescued by the natives and became a valued member of their society as their sandwich maker. After a few years, Trillian (now Trillian Astra, a sub-etha journalist) landed on Lamuella to drop off her daughter (conceived with Arthur's donations to sperm banks to fund his trials), Random Frequent-Flyer Dent. Soon thereafter Ford sent a parcel to himself care of Arthur, containing the prototype of the Hitch Hikers Guide MkII, a monstrous bird-like cyber-terror with multidimensional powers, constructed by the Vogons as a ploy to get Arthur, Trillian and Ford together on Earth. When Ford landed to collect the parcel, the "bird" convinced Random to steal his ship and go to Earth.
This left Arthur and Ford stranded on a primitive iron age planet with no transport. Fortunately, On Lamuella there was a peculiar phenomenon where a stampede of what the village elder Old Thrashbarg dubbed perfectly normal beasts suddenly appeared before traversing the plain and disappearing, only to reverse the procedure months later. Thrashbarg assisted them to mount one of the beasts and ride through the transition point and come out in a distant stellar location where they found the Domain of the King, a diner right out 1950's Earth history run by Elvis Presley who had faked his own death before leaving Earth. Ford traded a restaurant review in the Guide for a spaceship and followed Random to Earth. When they arrived there they met Random, Trillian Astra and Tricia MacMillan (that Earth's incarnation of Trillian), just as the Vogons' plot to destroy Earth in all its dimensions once and for all.
At that point, a-little-known property of the Babel Fish came into play. At the moment of fatal disaster, Babel Fish and their hosts are immediately transported to a safe dimension. In the case of this Arthur, he wound up on the Heart of Gold with Lintilla and Marvin, having left Zaphod, Ford, and Zarniwoop van Harl stranded with the Ruler of the Universe and his cat, he taking the surviving Lintilla with him.
Appearance and Personality:
Height: 1.85m
Mass: 70kg
Complexion: light
Hair: brown
Eyes: brown
Arthur is a fairly normal example of the semi-evolved simians inhabiting the Earth, now known to be descended from an exiled group of Golgafrincham middlemen. He is perpetually confused, and is still dealing with the fact that his home planet has been destroyed. He is six feet (1.85m) tall, with tousled brown hair, wearing a tattered bathrobe over pyjamas and dressing slippers. He carries a rabbit-skin bag in which he has a towel, a copy of the electronic book The Hitch-Hikers' Guide to the Galaxy (Mk.I) and a pocket Scrabble® set. He also has a Babel Fish in his left ear, which acts as a Universal Translator. He is addicted to a noxious substance known as "tea" which consists of dried leaves boiled in water.
