The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy (2002) - Plot & Excerpts
This review is for the first two books only.I have a confession to make: I am allergic to sci-fi. The kind that has as its hero a humanoid who lives in 23345 AD on a dystopian red planet, where he must fight slimy insectoid aliens whose sole purpose in life is to lay and hatch their filthy eggs on human bodies. The guy is barely human anyway, with half his face swathed in shiny robotic gear with glowing red eyes that look like the battery-powered tip of my 10 year old’s toy laser gun. Or instead of being half-android, he is half Vulcan or Neptune or whatever and thus has the emotional life of a plant. He would speak in pseudo-scientific jargon, something like, “ I must get the quark-photon-intercellular battery on my jet-propulsion pack to work so that I can get back to my Hyper Drive Interstellar Pod and shoot off to Alpha Centauri XYZ2345 in 10,000 times the warp speed along the space-time continuum”. I could feel my brain slowly turn to mush after barely ONE page of dialogue like that. He would have a robotic sidekick that looks like my Brabantia Dome Lid Waste Container with a string of blinking Christmas light around it, except that it can also speak in a metallic voice that somehow sounds like my mother-in-law in one of her bad days. Oh, and there will be other more sympathetic alien life forms that look like the misbegotten offspring of a camel and an orangutan, or some rubbery stuffed toy that the dog had chewed to bits. In short, I just can’t see why I should care about the fate of these monstrous, barely human creatures. Why waste precious time reading about some trash can android or an alien that looks like the Elephant Man on a bad hair day while there are perfectly normal, realistic HUMAN characters out there?My favorite genre is historical fiction; you know, those books about human beings who either have been dead for centuries, or never existed at all, written by people who cannot possibly have any first-hand knowledge of the period that they’re writing about? Nothing could be more different than science fiction, something that I have not touched in 20 years or so.So, what am I doing with The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Omnibus, 832 pages of sci-fi drenched in techno babble and redolent of the smell of a million alien armpits?Well, for one thing, it’s included in the BBC’s 100 Big Reads, which for some reason has become my guide to a worthwhile reading list that is not solely composed of the classics. The other thing is that it’s supposed to be one of the funniest books ever written ---I can always overlook the sci-fi for the funnies. And the characters are recognizably human, or at least sort of human, although one of them is called Zaphod Beeblebrox, (which, incidentally would make a good brand name for a laxative) and has two heads and three arms. The other two are genuine human beings from Earth --- or carbon-based ape-descended life forms --- take your pick, and the other one is a human looking alien with ginger hair (a hideous genetic mutation that should be bred out in real humans). And he is conveniently named Ford Prefect. No need to memorize ridiculous alien names when a simple English one will do. And now that we are superficially acquainted with the protagonists, it’s time to summarize the plot of this sprawling intergalactic tome --- except that there is no real plot to speak of. Well, actually there is something about looking for the Ultimate Question --- ‘What is the meaning of life?’ --- which is of interest to all life forms in the universe, at least to those that have the brain capacity to ponder such things. But mostly they just bounce around from one bizarre planet to another, having weird adventures in which they meet, among others, a paranoid android, rebellious appliances, a comatose intergalactic rock star and a megalomaniac book publisher. Ultimately, the barely there plot is nothing but an excuse for an absurdist farce through which Adams pokes fun at organized religion, meat-eaters, politicians, big businesses, environmentalists, the publishing industry and other pet peeves. Some parts are brilliantly funny, especially in the first book, while others had me scratching my head and wondering whether he was high on something when he wrote them. Certain sections are mind-numbingly boring and confusing in that special sci-fi way. Oh, and the constant smugness and non-stop zaniness are grating after the second book or so, and I just lost interest completely after finishing it.At least I know now that ‘babel fish’ is not just a strangely named online translation program. And that it is possible to write a book about what is essentially nonsense and have it become a major pop culture icon. But I’m also mightily relieved that I can stop hitchhiking through THIS universe, which is probably too cool and too clever for me to completely understand.And this shall be my last sci-fi book for the next 20 years.
The universe is a joke. Even before I was shown the meaning of life in a dream at 17 (then promptly forgot it because I thought I smelled pancakes), I knew this to be true--and yet, I have always felt a need to search for the truth, that nebulous, ill-treated creature. Adams has always been, to me, to be a welcome companion in that journey. Between the search for meaning and the recognition that it's all a joke in poor taste lies Douglas Adams, and, luckily for us, he doesn't seem to mind if you lie there with him. He's a tall guy, but he'll make room.For all his crazed unpredictability, Adams is a powerful rationalist. His humor comes from his attempts to really think through all the things we take for granted. It turns out it takes little more than a moment's questioning to burst our preconceptions at the seams, yet rarely does this stop us from treating the most ludicrous things as if they were perfectly reasonable.It is no surprise that famed atheist Richard Dawkins found a friend and ally in Adams. What is surprising is that people often fail to see the rather consistent and reasonable philosophy laid out by Adams' quips and absurdities. His approach is much more personable (and less embittered) than Dawkins', which is why I think of Adams as a better face for rational materialism (which is a polite was of saying 'atheism').Reading his books, it's not hard to see that Dawkins is tired of arguing with uninformed idiots who can't even recognize when a point has actually been made. Adams' humanism, however, stretched much further than the contention between those who believe, and those who don't.We see it from his protagonists, who are not elitist intellectuals--they're not even especially bright--but damn it, they're trying. By showing a universe that makes no sense and having his characters constantly question it, Adams is subtly hinting that this is the natural human state, and the fact that we laugh and sympathize shows that it must be true.It's all a joke, it's all ridiculous. The absurdists might find this depressing, but they're just a bunch of narcissists, anyhow. Demnading the world make sense and give you purpose is rather self centered when it already contains toasted paninis, attractive people in bathing suits, and Euler's Identity. I say let's sit down at the bar with the rabbi, the priest, and the frog and try to get a song going. Or at least recognize that it's okay to laugh at ourselves now and again. It's not the end of the world.It's just is a joke, but only some of us are in on it.
What do You think about The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy (2002)?
I first read the Hitchhiker's series when I was in early high school I think, and though I enjoyed it I was sort of too young to enjoy the immaturity of the books I think, stupid though that might sound. At that time I was reading Rogue Squadron and Foundation and was like "What is this shit? A sci-fi that doesn't take itself seriously? I don't have time for this I need to read Ringworld"Having matured a bit and gotten over myself, re-reading these books was a joy. Considering how short the individual books are (150-200 pages max), he crams more storytelling and character development in than most standard-length sci-fi novels, while also being unbearably funny as Hitchhiker's, Restaurant and Life are.What took me off guard was how invested I got in So Long and Thanks for All the Fish. Dem characters yo.I also omitted reading Mostly Harmless, because going off what I remember and reviews I glanced at it is a disappointing end and not up to snuff with the rest of the series, and honestly I didn't want anythting ruining the conclusion of the fourth book.
—Liam
I think after having made little to no progress in the past about 9 months it's best if I just give up even pretending I'm still reading this book.The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was the book I really wanted to read - classic English comedy? Bring it on! I enjoyed that book; if I was rating this alone it would be a good 4-star book - it was funny and inventive with some great characters...it's the other books in this series that made it so difficult for me. The second - The Restaurant at the End of the Universe - wasn't particularly bad, but didn't even nearly live up to Hitchhiker's Guide. I plowed through it hoping it would get better.It didn't.Half-way through the third book - Life, the Universe and Everything - I just got stuck. There was no longer any consistent plot, often even within the books, and I didn't really have a clue what was going on any more. There were some interesting bits but not enough to motivate me to read any more.And I'm disappointed about this, because there were some great characters. Marvin the depressed robot is sheer genius and I love him. Unfortunately, he's not in it all that much. Similarly, the incredibly enthusiastic doors were great, but (for obvious reasons - namely that they are doors) don't appear all too often.I love British humour - dry wit and sarcasm is very much my thing. But even that wasn't enough to save this series for me. My recommendation: read Hitchhiker's Guide, but don't bother with any of the others.I'll maybe try reading this again in a few years because I so want to love these books, and hopefully the outcome will be better. But I'm not holding my breath.
—Melanie
Often muddled, completely confusing and contradictory and utterly ridiculous, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy offers a singular perspective on well...Life, the Universe and Everything and at least four barrels of laughter along the way.And perhaps that's the whole point. Life is completely confusing, contradictory and utterly ridiculous. So, why should this trilogy in five parts be any different?The more iconic moments are, of course, more towards the beginning. It gets muddled in the middle and in the end, it starts to make some kind of sense (and we feel like we might finally getting a grip on things but then gets blasted to smithereens). It is not incredibly linear. It's wildly hilarious, but things never really seem to progress forward. This is not an epic, despite its length. There is no overall lesson to be learned. There's barely a story to follow. If anything it is a string of very funny scenes that are more-or-less vaguely and totally unrelated to the previous ones. The language is clever and sharp. The concepts are mind-altering. The humor is the kind that makes me laugh out loud and startle everyone else unfortunate enough to be occupying the same room as I am. I'm giving it three stars: One for humor, one for wit, one for becoming such an iconic part of my life. However, I think if no more than two books had been written, things would have...well, made more sense.
—Aryn
