The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Cover Art: 

Book Title: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy


Subtitle: "A Novel"


Author(s): Douglas Adams


Publishing Year: 1979


Review:

 This book is a mixture of science fiction, and comedy. It’s full of amusing bits, irony, jokes, and interesting parts. The main story is this; Arthur Dent is trying to keep his house from getting bulldozed (it was in the way of where a bypass was going to be built), when the Earth is destroyed to build a hyperspace bypass. In a hurry, his best friend Ford (who happens to be an alien, and who’s a researcher for the informative book “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”), whisks him off the planet; but not before making sure that they both know where their towels are.

Together, and with a few other people they meet along the way (the girl that Arthur failed to ask out, the crazed President of the Galaxy, and a manically depressed robot), they go in search of the ultimate question of Life, the Universe, and Everything. Because they need the question, not the answer. They know the answer. It’s 42. They’re now just wondering what question would go to that answer that would actually be meaningful at all.

This book ends kind of abruptly, but the story is quickly picked up in the next novel in the five-book trilogy, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe.

Favorite Part(s):

1. I loved the part where Trillian realizes that the probability is the telephone number of where she met Arthur.
2. Any part where Marvin is being all depressed is very funny; his depression becomes quite a useful tool for them.
3. Zaphod is a crazy guy. I like when he was talking about how he injured his brain; I’ve not yet finished reading the series, and I hope the other books shed some light on why he did that.
4. The bowl of petunias…and all the other little bits that are small stories about very interesting and funny things that have happened that nobody has been able to predict or prevent.

Additional Notes:

The only thing I can think to add is, I don't think you've really read science-fiction until you've read this book. It's just an amazing book, and it warps every way you will ever look at the universe (or a bowl of petunias).

The movie is pretty close to the book, but with The Guide, I don't really compare the books to the movie/radio program/TV series or anything else that came out of or preceded it. They're all their own entities, and all are great mixtures of awesome.