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Point of view gun hhg

The Point of View Gun is a weapon that causes its target to see things from the point of view of the weapon's holder. It was designed by the supercomputer Deep Thought shortly after his calculation of the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything, on a commission from the Intergalactic Consortium of Angry Housewives, who were tired of ending every argument with their husbands with the phrase "You just don't get it, do you?" Prior to this, the Consortium had inadvertently sparked off the Great Gender War on planet Amazonia and it now sought a more peaceful means to accomplish its aims.

Deep Thought created the first Point of View Gun before the Consortium put in a last-minute request to make it work only on men. Its members had realized that the consequences could be disastrous if a man were to get ahold of it and persuade the female population to put their feet up and forget the housework. However, the original gun has little effect on women anyway, as their empathy levels are on average too high already for the gun's circuitry to modify. Deep Thought created six more guns and delivered them to his clients with a warning: it can be very dangerous to see things from somebody else's point of view without the proper training.

The fate of the six delivered guns is unknown. The one that remained with Deep Thought, however, passed into spacefarer legend for generations. However, like the planet Magrathea where this whole thing had taken place, it was soon believed to be only a myth. No one went after it until Humma Kavula, a priest of the Great Green Arkleseizure, sought to convert more people to his religion and forced his rival Zaphod Beeblebrox to retrieve it. Tricia Marie "Trillian" McMillan, who was with Zaphod when he did so, used the gun on him to make him understand how horrible she felt about him signing the order for Earth's destruction. His attempt to use the gun on her in turn had no effect, as she explained to him, "I'm already a woman."

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