Seconds before the Earth is demolished to make way for a galactic freeway, Arthur Dent is plucked off the planet by his friend Ford Prefect, a researcher for the revised edition of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy who, for the last fifteen years, has been posing as an out-of-work actor.
Together this dynamic pair begin a journey through space aided by quotes from The Hitchhiker's Guide ("A towel is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have") and a galaxy-full of fellow travelers: Zaphod Beeblebrox--the two-headed, three-armed ex-hippie and totally out-to-lunch president of the galaxy; Trillian, Zaphod's girlfriend (formally Tricia McMillan), whom Arthur tried to pick up at a cocktail party once upon a time zone; Marvin, a paranoid, brilliant, and chronically depressed robot; Veet Voojagig, a former graduate student who is obsessed with the disappearance of all the ballpoint pens he bought over the years.
Where are these pens? Why are we born? Why do we die? Why do we spend so much time between wearing digital watches? For all the answers stick your thumb to the stars. And don't forget to bring a towel!
Even if you haven't read the book, you've probably heard of Ford Prefect and Zaphod Beeblebrox, Marvin the paranoid android, Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters, Vogon poetry, Deep Thought, and Babel fish. About the only source of nerd humor that has infiltrated pop culture as thoroughly as The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is Monty Python, and you will probably love HHG in direct proportion to how much you love Monty Python.
For me, a little Monty Python goes a long way. I find the sketches amusing enough but they are not OMG!ROTFLMAO! funny and that guy (everyone knows a guy like this) who is constantly quoting lines from Monty Python? Needs a smack upside the head.
Surprisingly enough, I'd never actually read this book before it came up as my next assignment for the
books1001 challenge, nor had I seen the BBC series or the movie. 216 breezy pages later, I can say that my life has not been changed by reading it, but it was worth reading just so now I'll really get all the jokes.It takes a certain amount of tongue-in-cheek audacity to begin a zany, wildcap comedy with the destruction of the Earth. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy begins with a bit of parallelism that reflects the moderate but not exceptional amount of writing depth Adams displays throughout the book: Arthur Dent awakens to find his house about to be demolished. When he protests, he learns that supposedly the plan has been on file for months -- unannounced, in a dingy, inaccessible basement.
Moments later, a Vogon Constructor Fleet arrives to demolish the Earth to build a hyperspatial express route through the solar system, telling the protesting Earthlings that the plans have been on file at Alpha Centauri for fifty years.
See, that's irony! Get it?
From puns and one-liners to subtle quantum physics jokes to much longer bits of humor with the punchline delayed until the end of the book, HHG is full of funnies, but most of the humor is just floating on the surface, one quip after another.
"Charming man," he said. "I wish I had a daughter so I could forbid her to marry one..."
"You wouldn't need to," said Ford. "They've got as much sex appeal as a road accident. No, don't move," he added as Arthur began to uncurl himself, "you'd better be prepared for the jump into hyperspace. It's unpleasantly like being drunk."
"What's so unpleasant about being drunk?"
"You ask a glass of water."
This is a book that careens from whacky situation to whacky situation in a series of hijinks involving a stolen spaceship, an ancient planet, and a supercomputer that has solved the answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything. This wasn't a deeply profound book, but after I got past the constant stream of one-liners (I admit a few of them did tickle me, like: "The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't"), I found that there really was a story underneath the comedy, a fast-paced, carefully plotted if slightly absurd story. My first impression, that Adams was a failed screenwriter passing off a comedy sketch as a book, was wrong. He actually wrote a pretty tight little novel at the center of all these comic turns.
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is the first book in a "trilogy in five parts," the next four books being The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, Life, the Universe and Everything, So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish, and Mostly Harmless. Although Hitchhiker's Guide ends on a definite "To be continued" note, it's not really a cliffhanger, and I appreciated how deftly Adams wrapped up almost all the plot threads he'd started in one book, with some particularly clever use of seemingly minor elements introduced earlier.
That said, I'll save the rest of the series for when I've got nothing more compelling to read. I know Adams has passionate fans who just love his books, but I'm content to pat the Hitchhiker's Guide on its head and toss it back onto PaperBackSwap.com. It was fun, but I did not catch the Adams bug and feel my heart immeasurably lightened, nor do I feel an urge to spend the rest of my life quoting lines from it.
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