Flexible and imaginative, Hactar was the first computer whose individual components reflected the pattern of the whole. Hactar is assembled and programmed by the Silastic Armourfiends, who then order him to assemble an "Ultimate Weapon." Hactar, receiving no other guidance from the Amourfiends, takes the request literally and builds a supernova bomb which would connect every major sun in the universe through hyperspace, thus causing every star to go supernova. Deciding that he could find no circumstance where such a bomb would be justified, Hactar builds a small defect into it. After discovering the defect, the Armourfiends pulverize Hactar.
Rather than being destroyed, Hactar is merely crippled. He can still manipulate matter, but even a simple item takes millennia to manufacture. Over æons Hactar moves and recombines to become a dark cloud surrounding Krikkit, isolating the inhabitants. Deciding that the decision not to destroy the universe was not his to make, he uses his influence to make them build their first space ship and discover the universe; he then manipulates them into the same rage which the Armourfiends possessed, urging that they destroy all other life; Hactar has reassembled the supernova bomb, this time in working condition.
After an incredibly long and bloody galactic war, Judiciary Pag banishes Krikkit to an envelope of "Slo-Time" to be released after the rest of the universe ends. At the end of the novel Life, the Universe and Everything, after his scheme fails, Hactar slips the cricket-ball-shaped supernova bomb to Arthur Dent, who then accidentally saves the Universe again by being an abysmal cricket bowler.
Appears in:
- the novel Life, the Universe and Everything
He is played on radio first by Geoffrey McGivern, in a flashback for which McGivern is not credited during fit the seventeenth of the radio series. He is then voiced by Leslie Phillips, appearing again in fit the eighteenth of the radio series.
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