Mostly Harmless - Douglas Adams

Douglas Adams' Hitch-Hiker's Guide 'trilogy' entertained and inspired me, and I was wary to read this final instalment due to reviews on the internet which suggested it was of poor quality and may hunder my enjoyment of the series. The fifth and final book chronicling the experiences of Arthur Dent and his less human comrades does seem much less original and enjoyable than the previous books, and although this was my opinion of the fourth book "So ...
...the way that book's style was taken in a different direction. This book seems to be a mix between the fast-paced comedy adventures of the first three books and the reflective, stationary nature of the fourth, and it doesn't fit together too well.

"Mostly Harmless," once again taking the title from a memorable concept in the first book, occurs an unspecified several years after the events of the last book and sees the "thirty-ish, ... more

Douglas Adams' Hitch-Hiker's Guide 'trilogy' entertained and inspired me, and I was wary to read this final instalment due to reviews on the internet which suggested it was of poor quality and may hunder my enjoyment of the series. The fifth and final book chronicling the experiences of Arthur Dent and his less human comrades does seem much less original and enjoyable than the previous books, and although this was my opinion of the fourth book "So Long, and Thanks for all the Fish" I could admire the way that book's style was taken in a different direction. This book seems to be a mix between the fast-paced comedy adventures of the first three books and the reflective, stationary nature of the fourth, and it doesn't fit together too well.

"Mostly Harmless," once again taking the title from a memorable concept in the first book, occurs an unspecified several years after the events of the last book and sees the "thirty-ish, tall and never quite at ease with himself" last human survivor Arthur Dent living the simple life of a sandwich maker on a planet not dissimilar to his own Earth which was destroyed by the Vogons surprisingly early in the first book. Similar to the way he last book was handled, a device which I was not fond of in either book, the different characters' experiences are told in seperate chapters before their meeting later on. One of my favourite aspects of the earlier books was the interaction between all of the characters who, despite occasionally having extra heads and arms, being robotic and basically not being human, were all very ordinary and fallible human beings. Arthur's story once again seems to be the main plot, while those of Ford Prefect, Trillian (the forgettable human woman from the earlier books who solved everything but was never too funny), Random and Trillian: another one.

Arthur's newfound peace is a welcome relief from the unrewarding search for alternate-dimension equivalents of the planet Earth, during which he would trade in his own gametes and semen for trips to what would turn out to be undesirable locations. The spaceship crash which strands him amongst the underdeveloped civilisation seems to be one of the only things to go right for him in a long time, until the arrival of his daughter and his old friend Ford Prefect who is not made particularly welcome.

Ford's story seems a little more loose and irrelevant as he finds the new owners of the Hitch-Hiker's Guide offices are not very nice. He goes to a lot of trouble escaping and eventually arrives at Arthur's planet with a strange device which just gets stolen by Arthur's daughter anyway.

The 'regular' Trillian apparentlly became pregnant some time ago and inevitably, as a large number of pregnant women do, gave birth to a daughter. The father is not Zaphod Beeblebrox, who was supposed to be her husband at the time of the last book, but Arthur. The book leaves the reader to ponder how this could have happened for a while, before revealing that she used his sperm samples; I'm sure my shocking use of the word semen earlier ensured that this was no surprise here. Trillian has not paid due attention to her daughter, who has accidentally aged before her time thanks to temporal day-care, and has decided that she should meet her father.

Random would be the star of the book if she was in the majority of it, but her appearance is quite far in. Suffering from a case of severe curiosity she steals Arthur's package from Ford and heads back to a version of Earth in her rebellious teenage way.

The alternate version of Trillian inhabiting this 'other' Earth has led a very different life, having never taken Zaphod up on his offer to join her in space many
years ago. She eventually meets with the others when they arrive at her version of Earth at the end.

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If the above summaries seem difficult to grasp or appreciate, it is because there are many flaws in this book. Adams' humour, while less prominent, does manage to shine through at regular intervals much more than in the last book, however the number of irrelevant plot features make it difficult and at times uninteresting to follow. The book certainly has a bit of a 'necessity' feel to it, as if Adams simply desired to get another Hitch-Hiker's Guide under his belt rather than writing a true classic. There are still a number of positives however:

- The locations in this book are described in great detail in a way that makes them much easier to envisage than in the previous books. The village, the seedy planets and the desert towards the end are all very well written in a way that shows Adams' writing style has clearly evolved in the fifteen years since he wrote the first book.

- The true and wry observations of humanity's failings are as present as ever, with Arthur's belief that he is from a superior culture and can teach the villagers how to build new technology hampered when he realises he doesn't actually know how to make anything, just how to use stuff.

- The ingenious sci-fi concepts are less ingenious this time round than a Restaurant at the End of the Universe, a computer calculating the answer to the Ultimate Question and an Infinite Improbability Drive, but they stull have their moments. The Perfectly Normal Beasts are a great idea, (that was meant to be 'beasts,' it isn't a mis-type) and the mystics sitting on poles are some of the highlights of the book.

- The continuation of some great ideas, most notably that of Agrajag from
the third book. Agrajag was a creature who was aware of his own reincarnations and whose life was always, constantly ended accidentally by Arthur Dent. This was one of my favourite parts of the third book and is continued here, although not completely satisfactorily.

- Arthur's character shows real progress and effects from his experiences, something which was lacking in the earlier books. Unfortunately this does not stem to the other characters.

My major criticisms of the book are the already-mentioned weak plot structure, as well as the way it does not seem to fit into the series very much at all. The style makes it a much different read to the first few, but no reference is made to anything which happened in "Thanks for all the Fish" apart from a brief sentence explaining the death of Arthur's girlfriend Fenchurch. The popular character Marvin the Paranoid Android is admittedly absent after the climax of the last book, however there is still no sign of Zaphod Beeblebrox who was also missing from the previous outing. Ford Prefect never seems as funny any more either.

I'm aware that most of these criticisms don't evaluate the book as a stand-alone novel, but with the tragic death of Douglas Adams in 2001 and nothing amounting to a successful sixth book on his hard drive, this is the final instalment in the inventive, witty and very enjoyable series. The book has not ruined the enjoyment of the others for me, although I was disappointed that it hadn't amounted to more; the endings of every book from number 2 onwards have been left at satisfying conclusions however this one seems to demand a sequel more than the others simply so the series can end on a positive and more understandable note. Another flaw in the book is that it doesn't offer many memorable quotes, whereas the others provided such countless classics as "life, don't talk to me about life," "Zaphod's just this guy you kno
w," "stick this fish in your ear" and the unforgettable and unexplained answer to the Ultimate Question, "forty-two." The actual question to this answer was never discovered.

Fans of light-hearted science fiction will likely enjoy this excursion into space, however it's even more likely that the earlier books in the series will appeal much more, especially the famous first novel which I can't recommend enough. Read it, listen to the original radio show or at least watch the old TV series, there are plenty of crazy and enjoyable ideas to last you a lifetime. Speaking of that, I think I'm off to buy it on the internet. 

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