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Title:
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Series:
THGttG #1
Author: Douglas Adams
Rating:
3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: SF
Pages:
184
Words: 50K
I
first read these in the late 90’s and laughed my head off. I can
still remember how my stomach and sides hurt from laughing so much.
It was gloriously ridiculous and in the midst of all the stresses of
going through Bibleschool (and all of the attendant growing up I had
to do), it was exactly what I needed. When I read the series again in
‘09, I had just gotten married, life was good (but hard due to the
recession of ‘08 being in full swing) and I didn’t need any
silliness in my life. Hence my “feelingometer” swung over to the
“This is Stupid” side of things and I was not impressed at all.
Quite the change. Which brings us to the present.
I
am now fully mature, wise, sagacious, totally even keeled emotionally
and generally in control of every aspect of my life.
HAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAA!
~wipes tears from eyes~
Ahhh,
good one Bookstooge, good one.
I
definitely enjoyed this more than my time in ‘09 and yet at the
same time, I found this very disturbing.
Most
of that is due to Adam’s philosophy of Hedonistic Nihilism. It
boils down to taking as much pleasure from your existence because
you’re going to die and then that’s that. It is a horrible,
horrible way to go through life and while Adams covers things up with
lots of humor and silliness, that dark thought is there through the
whole book. As a Christian, what Adams assumes is completely
antithetical to my entire world view. After thinking about it for a
bit, I realized it wasn’t so much that the inclusion of such a
philosophy bothered me, but that Adams seemed to truly enjoy rubbing
the readers’ faces into it. Time after time he has a character
expound on just how insignificant and pointless life is. That kind of
thinking is how you break someone down psychologically. It is, simply
put, evil. With Resurrection Sunday just past, it’s very apropos
to speak the truth to the lie of what Adams spouts here: Humans, as
individuals, have value and are valuable because they are created in
the image of God and Jesus Himself died and then rose from the dead
for each person in existence. If God Himself thinks we are valuable
enough to make that kind of sacrifice for, well, you won’t hear me
deny it or claim otherwise.
Storywise,
this is just plain bonkers. Things happen. Quickly. Outrageously.
Continuously. Arthur, the main character, goes from finding out his
house is going to be bulldozed for a bypass to having the Earth
blownup, to getting thrown out an airlock by aliens, to meeting the
two-headed President of the Universe to finding out that two mice
want his brain for Scyenze. And it all ends with everyone going for a
bite to eat at a restaurant. Crazy man, just plain craaaaaaazy.
If
you want a short, madcap adventure, this is the series for you. Chaos
and silliness abound on every page.
★★★✬☆
From
Wikipedia
The
novel opens with an introduction describing the human race
as a primitive and deeply unhappy species, while also introducing an
electronic encyclopedia called the Hitchhiker's Guide to the
Galaxy which provides information on every planet in the galaxy.
Earthman and Englishman Arthur Dent awakens in his
home in the West Country to discover that the local
planning council is trying to demolish his house to build a bypass,
and lies down in front of the bulldozer to stop it. His
friend Ford Prefect convinces the lead bureaucrat to lie
down in Arthur's stead so that he can take Arthur to the local pub.
The construction crew begin demolishing the house anyway, but are
interrupted by the sudden arrival of a fleet of spaceships.
The Vogons, the callous race of civil servants running
the fleet, announce that they have come to demolish Earth to make way
for a hyperspace expressway, and promptly destroy the
planet. Ford and Arthur survive by hitching a ride on the spaceship,
much to Arthur's amazement. Ford reveals to Arthur he is an alien
researcher for the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, from a
small planet in the vicinity of Betelgeuse who has been
posing as an out-of-work actor from Guildford for 15 years,
and this was why they were able to hitch a ride on the alien ship.
They are quickly discovered by the Vogons, who torture them by
forcing them to listen to their poetry and then toss them
out of an airlock.
Meanwhile Zaphod
Beeblebrox, Ford's "semi-cousin" and the President of the
Galaxy, steals the spaceship Heart of Gold at its unveiling
with his human companion, Trillian. The Heart of Gold is
equipped with an "Infinite Improbability Drive" that allows
it to travel instantaneously to any point in space by simultaneously
passing through every point in the universe at once. However, the
Infinite Improbability Drive has a side effect of causing impossible
coincidences to occur in the physical universe. One of these
improbable events occurs when Arthur and Ford are rescued by
the Heart of Gold as it travels using the Infinite
Improbability Drive. Zaphod takes his passengers — Arthur, Ford, a
depressed robot named Marvin, and Trillian — to a legendary
planet named Magrathea. Its inhabitants were said to have specialized
in custom-building planets for others and to have vanished after
becoming so rich that the rest of the galaxy became poor. Although
Ford initially doubts that the planet is Magrathea, the planet's
computers send them warning messages to leave before firing
two nuclear missiles at the Heart of Gold. Arthur
inadvertently saves them by activating the Infinite Improbability
Drive improperly, which also opens an underground passage. As the
ship lands, Trillian's pet mice Frankie and Benjy escape.
On
Magrathea, Zaphod, Ford, and Trillian venture down to the planet's
interior while leaving Arthur and Marvin outside. In the tunnels,
Zaphod reveals that his actions are not a result of his own
decisions, but instead motivated by neural programming that he was
seemingly involved in but has no memory of. As Zaphod explains how he
discovered this, the trio are trapped and knocked out with sleeping
gas. On the surface, Arthur is met by a resident of Magrathea, a man
named Slartibartfast, who explains that the Magratheans have
been in stasis to wait out an economic recession. They have
temporarily reawakened to reconstruct a second version of Earth
commissioned by mice, who were in fact the most intelligent species
on Earth. Slartibartfast brings Arthur to Magrathea's planet
construction facility, and shows Arthur that in the distant past, a
race of "hyperintelligent, pan-dimensional beings" created
a supercomputer named Deep Thought to determine the answer to the
"Ultimate Question to Life, the Universe, and Everything."
Deep Thought eventually found the answer to be 42, an answer that
made no sense because the Ultimate Question itself was not known.
Because determining the Ultimate Question was too difficult even for
Deep Thought, an even more advanced supercomputer was constructed for
this purpose. This computer was the planet Earth, which was
constructed by the Magratheans, and was five minutes away from
finishing its task and figuring out the Ultimate Question when the
Vogons destroyed it. The hyperintelligent superbeings participated in
the program as mice, performing experiments on humans
while pretending to be experimented on.
Slartibartfast
takes Arthur to see his friends, who are at a feast hosted by
Trillian's pet mice. The mice reject as unnecessary the idea of
building a new Earth to start the process over, deciding that
Arthur's brain likely contains the Ultimate Question. They offer to
buy Arthur's brain, leading to a fight when he declines. The group
manages to escape when the planet's security system goes off
unexpectedly, but immediately run into the culprits: police in
pursuit of Zaphod. The police corner Zaphod, Arthur, Ford and
Trillian, and the situation seems desperate as they are trapped
behind a computer bank that is about to explode from the officers'
weapons firing. However, the police officers suddenly die when their
life-support systems short-circuit. Suspicious, Ford discovers on the
surface that Marvin became bored and explained his view of the
universe to the police officers' spaceship, causing it to commit
suicide. The five leave Magrathea and decide to go to The
Restaurant at the End of the Universe.
