Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy Paperback – March 5, 2020

Douglas Adams’ bestselling book The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy published in 1979 is witty, occasionally complex, and accessible to the average reader. The protagonist, Arthur Dent, is a befuddled Englishman and his friend, Ford Prefect, is a hitchhiking alien doing research for the latest edition of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. The two narrowly escape destruction with the rest of planet Earth when Ford catches wind of its impending demolition by intergalactic civil servants and beams them to the nearest accessible spaceship--the Vogon demolition fleet’s mothership. Inside, they encounter murdered mattresses, ruthless bureaucrats, and torture by poetry. They are soon ejected into space and twenty-nine seconds later (one second short of death), the president of the universe and his girlfriend rescue them in their recently stolen state-of-the-art spaceship, The Heart of Gold. In the remaining pages, Adams prioritizes unpacking the absurdity of bureaucracy, politics, and religion over a strong plot and whimsically manipulates grammar and rhetoric to inspire in the reader a sense of his disregard for the possibility of any sense or meaning to life.Entries peppered throughout the book from the “real” The Hitchhiker’s Guide inform the reader of non-essential historical, cultural, and always humorous tidbits about the universe and its inhabitants. For example, the popular drink the Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster makes the drinker feel like their brain is being “smashed out by a slice of lemon wrapped round a large gold brick” (Ch 2). Ford hopes to update the electronic guide with how one can see the wonders of the universe for 30 Altarian dollars a day, but due to being stuck on Earth for 15 years his signature contribution remains his description of Earth as “mostly harmless”. Arthur Dent is more the butt of every joke than the hero of the story and simply plays the role of baffled human encountering the unknown. The president, Zaphod Beeblebrox, who happens to be Ford’s cousin, has two heads, three arms, and the ego of a true politician. He steals almost everyone’s thunder, but that’s probably because, while only six people know it, he’s succeeding phenomenally at his presidential mandate of distracting everyone’s attention away from power instead of wielding it. Zaphod is accompanied by his human girlfriend, Trillian, who acts as the token female character in the typically male-dominated sci-fi tale. Smart and sexy, she is mostly disregarded by her boyfriend while dutifully following him into every folly. Marvin is a pet robot of sorts with a serious depression problem which proves to have tremendous utility.On account of the Heart of Gold’s Infinite Improbability Drive, the serendipitous crew encounters and escapes from a series of unthinkable situations, the most notable being the discovery of the fabled planet of Magrathea. Believed to now be dead, it supposedly designed and constructed luxury planets at the behest of ultra-wealthy clients until closing up shop with the collapse of the intergalactic economy some ten million years ago. At this point in the book a loosely coherent plot begins to emerge. After narrowly evading the planet’s automatic defense missiles, the crew land the Heart of Gold on the surface and Zaphod leads the bunch on a hunt for the unfathomable riches he is certain must be hidden there... somewhere. Instead, he comes to a shocking realization about the key to his wildly successful career of misconduct, Arthur learns of the mysterious nature and fate of his late beloved Earth, Trillian loses her two pet mice, and Marvin unwittingly saves everyone’s lives just by being himself.Adams playfully goads the reader closer and closer into agreeing that “The Universe is almost certainly being run by a bunch of maniacs” (Ch 31) by poking fun at bureaucracy and politics with amusing analogies. Much like the local bureaucrat trying to tear down Arthur’s house, the Vogons respond to Earthlings’ protests before imminent destruction by stating, “All the planning charts and demolition orders have been displayed in your local planning department in Alpha Centauri for fifty of your Earth years” (Ch 3). Zaphod Beeblebrox is the posterchild for theatrical two-faced politics. His wild antics make him the most successful president in history and he possesses two heads, and therefore two faces, one of which is more popular than the other (Ch 4).Adams then picks apart religion and philosophy without being overtly insulting due to his use of their very own arguments. A small but exceedingly sophisticated fish proves God’s existence and is therefore the final and clinching proof of his nonexistence. God “promptly vanishes in a puff of logic” because “without faith I am nothing” (Ch 6). Philosophers protest the creation of a supercomputer they fear will put them out of a job if it is able to answer the questions of the Universe, thus they demand the “total absence of solid facts” (Ch 25). Adams’ deft criticism of these topics threatens to elicit not much more than a self-deprecating chuckle from the very people he is poking fun at.Absurd similes and outrageous statements infuse the writing style with charming humor while occasionally reminding the reader that reality can in fact be quite ridiculous. “For a few seconds Ford seemed to ignore him, and stared fixedly into the sky like a rabbit trying to get run over by a car” (Ch 1), and, “The ships hung in the sky much the same way that bricks don’t” (Ch 3), are clearly very foolish things to say, yet confer upon the reader a precise picture of the given situation that Adams wants them to have. In a similar vein, a police ship commits suicide after hearing Marvin’s depressing view of the universe (Ch 34), letters of the alphabet can be “friendly” (Ch 1) or “unfriendly” (Ch 34), and the answer to life, the universe and everything is simply the number “42” (Ch 27). Adams makes clear to the reader exactly how seriously he takes his subject matter.Poking fun at politics and religion and making ludicrous statements are the more obvious of Adams’ tactics to discourage the reader from taking life, or really anything, very seriously. Less obvious, but equally effective, is his manipulation of grammar and rhetoric. By rendering the familiar structure of language malleable in his expert hands, he reminds the reader at every turn that all is not as it seems. He breaks commonly accepted rules of writing by blatantly using redundant vocabulary and pairing oxymoronic words. Arthur wakes up blearily then gets up and wanders blearily around his room (Ch 1), Ford Prefect is not conspicuously tall and his features are striking but not conspicuously handsome (Ch 1), and Zaphod rides a thoroughly ridiculous form of transport, but a thoroughly beautiful one (Ch 4). The windows on Arthur’s soon to be destroyed home are “of a size and proportion which more or less exactly failed to please the eye” (Ch 1), and there is something “very slightly odd” about Ford Prefect (Ch 1). With these deviances from the norm and by slipping in a clever grammar joke here and there, “...to boldly split infinitives that no man had split before” (Ch 15), Adams taunts the grammar police and then scoffs when their powerlessness and lack of creativity are exposed. By deftly rendering malleable the familiar institution of language, Adams bring home his deeper message that societal constructs are the mere product of a human desire to invent order out of chaos.While Adams can boast a nimble sense of humor and a clever mind, obvious plot holes emerge as the story progresses. For example, the Vogons dump Arthur and Ford millions of lightyears away from Earth but then Trillian and Zaphod pick them up in the same vector as Earth. This could be due to the fact that Adams was a legendary procrastinator who would often leave manuscripts unfinished until the last minute. His biographer, M.J. Simpson, author of Hitchhiker: A Biography of Douglas Adams says that Adams also had problems following the traditional structure of a story. He shares that, “Adams was good at writing beginnings, middles, and endings, but when he got to the middle he’d thought of another good beginning and wanted to write that instead of the ending”. Adams’ habit of making things up as he went along is uncomfortably apparent to the reader who craves consistency and resolution, especially from a book some say holds a place in the sci-fi genre. Therefore, his book might more accurately fall under the category of comic science fiction.While he falls short of producing the next great science fiction series of our time, Adams succeeds remarkably in demonstrating how a truly inquisitive mind works. He breaks the rules of fiction writing, but rather than being his downfall, these bold deviations add to his appeal. By weaving together intelligence, humor, and slapstick, he reaches a broad audience without sacrificing his unique voice and underlying message. So much so that the reader is left almost certain that “the chances of finding out what really is going on are so absurdly remote that the only thing to do is to say hang sense of it and just keep yourself occupied” (Ch 30).

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is a a classic and often humorous work of science fiction. The book is a quick read and well written. While I believe that it might be slightly over-hyped by its fans it is still a must read.

“But the story of this terrible, stupid Thursday, the story of its extraordinary consequences, and the story of how these consequences are inextricably intertwined with this remarkable book begins very simply. It begins with a house.” The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams is the first in it’s series, also made into a movie. The sheer weirdness of this book is unexplainable for one to understand without reading it. It plays with the kind of humor where everything is so random that your mind feels it is comical. Also, this book is truly not the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy itself, but rather, as it explains in the exposition, a book about the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy and those who are using it.The story, at first, seems normal as a narrator tells us about a man getting his house knocked down. The reality slowly fades, as random names and phrases that the narrator uses are seeming very un-Earth like. It is present day, or around this time, and first set in London, England. Soon after, the setting turns into a fantasy, yet not impossible, world of aliens around our galaxy that we never knew. It jumps into this turn fairly quickly, and persuades you to keep reading with the constant action and suspense. Then, there are the characters. “The thing that used to worry him most was the fact that people always used to ask him what he was looking so worried about.” Our main character; Arthur Dent. Arthur is the one real character in the story that can be related to or understood by us, the human people of Earth. A stubborn, normal, fed up human that is always confused or questioning things in all the madness of the plot. Ford Prefect, Zaphod Beeblebrox, Marvin-all know what is going on in this crazy world since they are a part of it. A women named Trilian brings a mother character to the book, being human aswell but always caring and responsible during the adventure. These main characters are the protagonists, and the entirety of their journey is the antagonist. They all seem to be in search for something, but each character doesn’t really understand what it is or how to find it.In the beginning, all Arthur cares about is his house. Shortly after, his house and everything around it aren’t his biggest problem. His home planet of Earth went through a dramatic change, from full of life to non-existent. His best pal Ford, who was secretly not from Earth himself, decided to rescue Arthur from his death. This spirals to extreme coincidences and near death-experiences as they hitchhike their way through space. They later get picked up by the president of the Universe, Zaphod Beeblebrox, and his two helpers Trillian and Marvin. They are now searching for the legendary planet of Magrathea, which was told to have been creating planets as luxury items. The ship searches, and discovers, the hidden planet, but finding the true treasures are harder than they appear. The randomness of their adventures and the narrations throughout the novel show a genius way of connecting these facts and instances into one story that captivates the reader. The erratic events somehow create a normality. It brings the reader into the story, teaches and explains all the events and ideas, and gives flashbacks so all the facts come together into one plot.While reading this, every chapter has something that would make me laugh or force me to press forward in the book. Adams achieved his goal, finally bringing us a children’s book for adults. When explaining this to someone, it sounds like you are reading a kindergarten’s story. But when actually reading it, the elements of description and hidden pieces of the story somehow make the overall book feel more mature and more deep. I loved the sudden and random way he would explain, almost over explain, all the details in the story. Though you could say he was droning on and on, the way he does this helps the story seem more clear through the insanity. I enjoyed the comical way that Adams used to describe who people are without even the character itself knowing about it. Mr. Prosser, the man trying to knock down Arthur’s house, was shown to us as this; “Curiously enough, though he didn’t know it, he was also a direct male-line descendant of Genghis Khan..” The story later tells that the stubby male called Mr. Prosser gets very vivid, but violent, war scenes in his memory every now and then. Adams later uses this to explain Mr. Prosser’s thoughts and feeling about what he does or how he lives. Interesting ways that Adams shows his characters are far from normal, but far from normal is perfect for me and I appreciated it immensely. My favorite thing about the characters was having Arthur as the main focus. Arthur is the rock, the glue, the sanity of the entire story. I related to him myself, and he keeps you in focus during the book. Though I was thrilled with these parts of the book, sadly not every story is perfect. Compared to the roaring events of the rest of the story, the ending just didn’t meet my expectations. There just wasn’t enough action in it like the rest of the story, but I could see how a tranquil ending would wrap up all the crazy events in the book.Adams has a very unique style, and it would seem to work with young adults who find themselves not usually enjoying reading books. It has that childish setting and overall feel, but with mature ways of writing. A younger child may enjoy the fun setting but have trouble sticking to the plot, so a more young adult would suit it better. The Hitchhiker Guide to the Galaxy is a comical, interesting book that would be great for anyone who likes science fiction or fantasies.