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Title | The HitchHiker's Guide to the Galaxy
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Author | Douglas Adams
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Cover Art | Various
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Publisher | Pan Books - 1979
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First Printing | Pan Books - 1979
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Title | The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
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Author | Douglas Adams
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Cover Art | Garry Ruddell
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Publisher | Science Fiction Book Club - 2000
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First Printing | - 1980
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Title | Life, the Universe and Everything
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Author | Douglas Adams
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Cover Art | Garry Ruddell
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Publisher | Science Fiction Book Club - 2000
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First Printing | - 1982
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Title | So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish
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Author | Douglas Adams
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Cover Art | Garry Ruddell
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Publisher | Science Fiction Book Club - 2000
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First Printing | - 1984
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Title | Mostly Harmless
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Author | Douglas Adams
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Cover Art | Garry Ruddell
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Publisher | Science Fiction Book Club - 2000
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First Printing | - 1992
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Title | And Another Thing...
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Author | Eoin Colfer
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Cover Art | Larry Rostant
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Publisher | Hyperion - 2009
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First Printing | Hyperion - 2009
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Category | Science Fiction / Humour
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Warnings | None
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Main Characters | Arthur Dent, Ford Prefect, Zaphod Beeblebrox, Trillian, Marvin, Random
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Main Elements | Aliens, robots
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Website | DouglasAdams.com
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 The HitchHiker's Guide to the Universe
One Thursday lunchtime the Earth gets unexpectedly demolished to make way for a new hyperspace bypass. For Arthur Dent, who had only just had his house demolished that morning, this seems already to be more than he can cope with. Sadly, however, the weekend has only just began, and the Galaxy is a very strange and startling place.
The HitchHiker's Guide to the Universe - Omnibus
Suppose a good friend calmly told you over a round of drinks that the world was about to end? And suppose your friend went on to confess that he wasn't from around here at all, but rather from a small planet near Betelgeuse? And what if the world really did come to an end, but instead of being blown away, you found yourself hitching a ride on a spaceship with your buddy as a travelling companion?
It happens to Arthur Dent.
An ordinary guy from a small town in England, Arthur is one lucky sonofagun: his alien friend, Ford Prefect, is in fact a roving researcher for the universally bestselling Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy...and expert at seeing the cosmos on 30 Altairian dollars a day. Ford lives by the Guide's seminal bit of advice: Don't Panic. Which comes in handy when on their first ride - on the very same vessel that demolished Earth to make way for a hyperspatial freeway - ends disastrously (they're booted out of an airlock). With 30 seconds of air in their lungs and the odds of being picked up by another ship 2 to the 276,7069 to 1 against, the pair are scooped up by the only ship in the universe powered by the Infinite Improbability Drive.
But this (and the idea that Bogart movies and McDonald's hamburgers now exist only in his mind) is just the beginning of the weird things Arthur will have to get used to. For, on this travels, he'll encounter Zaphod Beeblebrox, the two-headed, three-armed ex-President of the Galaxy; Trillian, a sexy space cadet he once tried to pick up at a cocktail party, now Zaphod's girlfriend; Marvin, a chronically depressed robot; and Slartibartfast, the award-winning engineer who built the Earth and travels in a spaceship disguised as a bistro.
Arthur's crazed wanderings will take him from the restaurant at the end of the Universe (where the main dish of the day introduces itself and the floor show is doomsday), to the planet Krikkit (locked in Slo-Time to punish its inhabitants for trying to end the Universe), to Earth (huh? wait! wasn't it destroyed?!) to the very offices of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy itself as he and his friends quest for the answer to the Question of Life, the Universe and Everything...and search for a really good cup of tea.
Ready or not, Arthur Dent is in for one hell of a ride!
The HitchHiker's Guide to the Galaxy has appeared in more forms than one might reasonably expect, most of which flatly contradict each other. It has appeared as a BBC radio series (its original form), a BBV TV series, all sorts of different records, cassettes, and CD's, a computer game, a series of graphic novels, a motion-picture, and also, apotheotically, a bath towel.
And Another Thing...
AN ENGLISHMAN'S CONTINUING SEARCH THROUGH SPACE AND TIME FOR A DECENT CUP OF TEA...
Arthur Dent's accidental association with that wholly remarkable book The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy has not been entirely without incident.
Arthur has traveled the length, breadth, and depth of known, and unknown, space. He has stumbled forward and backward through time. He has been blown up, reassembled, cruelly imprisoned, horribly released, and colorfully insulted more than is strictly necessary. And of course Arthur Dent has comprehensively failed to grasp the meaning of life, the universe, and everything.
Arthur has finally made it home to Earth, but that does not mean he has escaped his fate.
Arthur's chances of getting his hands on a decent cuppa have evaporated rapidly, along with all the world's oceans. For no sooner has he touched down on the planet Earth than he finds out that it is about to be blown up...again.
And Another Thing...is the rather unexpected, but very welcome, sixth installment of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series. It features a pantheon of unemployed gods, everyone's favorite renegade Galactic President, a lovestruck green alien, an irritating computer, and at least one very large slab of cheese.
Some people say that this book has changed their lives. I am not one of those people. I wouldn't even say that I particularly liked the series. But if I take the book as a collection of funny quotes and insightful comments, then yes, I did enjoy it after a fashion. There were moments when I laughed and moments when I went "Ewww, gross!" and moments that makes one question the meaning of life. After all, that is the question...or is it? In the end, that's what the story is all about.
But, regardless of my less than exciting review, you simply HAVE to read the first book in the trilogy of four...or is that five? If you want to know why everyone things 42 is such a great number, then you got to pick up this book. And "Don't Panic", it's short, you can read it in a day or two. And then, if you're on a roll, you can read the remaning four in no time at all.
I think the first book is the best of the set, but if you can make it to the end of the five, I'd say that ending is worth getting to. It may be a little unexepected, and yet at the same time not, and was completely appropriate.
Oh, and whatever you do, don't forget your towel.
The Movie
So I decided, what the heck, might as well see the movie with some friends. It starts off...interesting...to say the least. I had both eyebrows raised at the sight of the singing dolphins during the opening credits. Yes, the book the movie was based on was weird, but not that weird...ok, maybe it was that weird, but it was stranger to see it on the big screen than in my imagination.
I thought to myself that this movie was going to be weird, but in a bad way. I was mostly wrong. It vaguely followed the plot of the novel, making a couple of major detours along the way, whole scenes are to be found only in the movie and nowhere in the trilogy. But there were some truly funny scenes, like where Arthur and Ford get turned into a pair of sofas.
Though I hadn't pictured Ford as black, and they had to get around Zaphod's two heads and extra arm in a creative (and rather disturbing) way, I began to accept them as my new mental image of the characters. I still think Marvin should have been metallic, but he was so adorable I could forgive them for that oversight. Alan Rickman was absolutely perfect as the voice of the depressed robot, he simply couldn't have sounded more depressing. In my opinion it was the best played character.
I prefered reading the book. It was written in such a way that it wasn't so much driven by a plot as it was a collection of thought provoking statements and ridiculous scenarios that were meant to be read and processed in one's own mind, rather than on the big screen. And UGH! I know the Vorlons were supposed to be ugly but the Babel Fish!!!! Ick, I'd never stick a thing like that in my ear. Yucky. And it was huge!
So it might be worth a rent if you like the books, but perhaps not if you're a diehard fan that has it memorized word-for-word. But then, if you are truly such a diehard fan, you'll know that the radio show, TV series, novel trilogy, computer game, etc... got changed every step of the way, so why not once more.
February 2020 - And Another Thing...
In 2020 I decided I wanted to finish as many series that I had started that I could, so when I found this book at a library book fair I figured why not. After all it's been nearly 15 years in waiting for completion. I'm not a huge fan of this series and its very British humour, I only liked the first book, but I was curious to see why Colfer felt the need to write another book in a series where the original author had already passed away (apparently he did have approval from the estate).
And, well, I didn't see the point of it. It was more of the same, and since it wasn't a series that was particularly going to some destination, I felt the wrap of up the original series was better than this new ending Colfer decided to tack on at the end. But as Arthur Conan Doyle and L. Frank Baum knows all too well, no matter how well you think you tied up the loose ends, if your fans want your characters back for another adventure, you'll find a loophole to give them what they want.
However, if you are one of those fans that really love this kind of humour, and enjoy things like Monthy Python, and simply needed more Arthur Dent, well I guess this would be the book for you. I know I'll forget it in a couple years, just as I had to leaf through the last of the other 5 books to see how it ended originally. As for myself, I'll see if that book fair can benefit selling the same book twice!
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