Well hello weird world of ciao. I have been away, I am back. Where have I been? "We may neve...
Well hello weird world of ciao. I have been away, I am back. Where have I been? "We may never care", I hear you cry. I will attempt to plague you with the written word, so beware..........
Member since:03.01.2003
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I have just finished reading this book for the umpteenth time and it's still brilliant. I first came across this story when it was serialized on BBC Television, but it started out as a BBC Radio series. I was so taken with the TV series that I sought it out in the school library back in about 1985. (It was written in 1979). I found the book so absorbing, hilarious and just downright brilliant that I 'forgot' to take it back, and still have that original copy on my bookshelves (looking very 'foxed') alongside a newer copy and the following 4 books in the trilogy. (Yes I said trilogy, yes there are 5 books in this innacurately-named trilogy).
For those of you unfamiliar with Douglas Adam's work, you are missing out big time. Go read all of his books (starting with this one) and then cry for all the lost years you spent piddling about reading far lesser books. Then cry some more that the world will never see this sort of genius again, for Douglas Adams met his untimely end in 2001, at the age of 49, from a heart attack.
Now that I've pointed you in the right direction, the story goes like this:
Unremarkable Earthman Arthur Dent is having a bad day. His house is about to be knocked down to make way for a bypass. He
is totally unaware that this is the least of his problems, just as he is totally unaware that his best friend Ford Prefect is not from Guildford as he usually claims, but is in fact from a small planet in the vicinity of Betelgeuse 5. Ford is a roving researcher for the Hitch-Hikers Guide to the Galaxy, an electronic 'book' with useful, if sometimes wildly innacurate, information on how to see the Universe for less than 30 Altarian Dollars a day. He came to earth for a week and got stuck for 15 years. Like you do. Ford takes Arthur away from his bulldozer-threatened house down to the pub where he explains this, and the staggering fact that the Earth has approximately 12 minutes left before it is demolished to make way for a hyperspatial express route. After the swift consumption of 3 pints each (to cushion the system you understand) Ford 'thumbs a lift' with the Vogon Constructor Fleet (big yellow ships by this time hovering above the Earth ready to demolish it. He takes Arthur with him. Arthur is bewildered, confused and still in his pyjamas. Ford lends him his copy of the Hitch-hikers Guide to the Galaxy to comfort him - it says DON'T PANIC in big letters on the front.
The Vogons do not like hitch-hikers - the only reason Ford and Arthur manage to get a lift is because the Dentrassis (cooks aboard the ships) want to annoy the Vogons. When the Vogons become aware of the hitch-hikers, they jettison them out into space, but not before reading some of their poetry to them. (The Vogons are only the third worst poets in the known universe, coming behind the Azgoths of Kria, whose Poet Master Grunthos the Flatulent's poem 'Ode to a Small Lump of Green Putty I Found in My Armpit One Midsummer Morning' caused 4 of his audience to die of internal haemorrhaging, and the very worst poetry in the world created by Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings of Greenbridge, Essex). Fortunately, for Ford and Arthur, when they are catapulted into the vacuum that is space, they are picked up by a passing stolen spaceship. A mind-boggling coincidence in itself, made even more so by the fact that it is crewed by Zaphod Beeblebrox and Tricia McMillan, now going under the name of Trillian. Trillian is a girl that Arthur totally failed to get off with at a party in Islington some years previously, when she went off with a gatecrasher who claimed to be from another planet Zaphod). Zaphod is Ford's semi-cousin and more recently President of the Galaxy. He became President in order to steal the Starship Heart of Gold and search for the ancient planet of Magrathea, a planet building world. There is one other 'crew member' aboard this ship - Marvin the Paranoid Android - a robot with a 'Genuine People Personality'- depressed and depressing, but with a brain the size of a planet.
So here they all are aboard the Starship Heart of Gold, a spaceship powered by the Infinite Improbability Drive, enabling them to flip across vast interstellar distances in an instant, passing through every point in the known universe along the way. This means that hugely improbable things keep happening every time they use the drive to balance the sums. (Cue sperm whales and petunias being called into existence about long-forgotten planets). What happens next? Well I don't want to spoil it for you but the answer to life, the universe and everything is 42. Now they've just got to work out the question. Along the way they encounter mice, a coastline maker called Slartibartfast and cops from Blagulon Kappa. All through this Arthur is filling in the gaps in his knowledge of the Universe by reading Ford's copy of the Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy. He looks up Earth and finds it's entry just below the entry for Eccentrica Gallumbits, the Triple-breasted whore of Eroticon 6. Arthur in incensed to find that there is only one word describing Earth - Harmless. Ford points out that he did manage to update it during the fifteen years he spent researching on Earth. When the updates get sent out over the ether it will read 'Mostly harmless'.
The book is littered with explanations about things from the Hitch-hiker's guide, but to quote them would take too long and would interfere with your enjoyment of the book when or if you take my advice and read it. Summarizing, the book is imaginative, witty and incisive. If you scratch below the surface of the humour, I believe you get an insight into one of the most brilliant minds of our day, an opinion that is only compounded by reading more of this great man's books. I have no idea how much this book costs nowadays, but I do know that you can get it from just about any bookstore and I would presume that the paperback would be no more than about 6 quid.
Read it and find out where your towel is.
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Losing your planet isn't the end of the world . . . the movie tie-in edition of Douglas ... more
Adams's perennially popular novel, with exclusive on-set stories, interviews and pictures. Pan's tie-in edition of this cult classic will include substantial extras...
Postage & Packaging: refer to website Availability: in stock
Advantages: Very funny, great characters, exciting and original. Disadvantages: Some theories were a little hard to understand, perhaps too random in places
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