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The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Paperback – April 30, 2002
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Now celebrating the pivotal 42nd anniversary of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, soon to be a Hulu original series!
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read)
Seconds before the Earth is demolished for a galactic freeway, Arthur Dent is saved by Ford Prefect, a researcher for the revised Guide. Together they stick out their thumbs to the stars and begin a wild journey through time and space.
The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
The moment before annihilation at the hands of warmongers is a curious time to crave tea. It could only happen to the cosmically displaced Arthur Dent and his comrades as they hurtle across the galaxy in a desperate search for a place to eat.
Life, the Universe and Everything
The unhappy inhabitants of planet Krikkit are sick of looking at the night sky– so they plan to destroy it. The universe, that is. Now only five individuals can avert Armageddon: mild-mannered Arthur Dent and his stalwart crew.
So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish
Back on Earth, Arthur Dent is ready to believe that the past eight years were all just a figment of his stressed-out imagination. But a gift-wrapped fishbowl with a cryptic inscription thrusts him back to reality. So to speak.
Mostly Harmless
Just when Arthur Dent makes the terrible mistake of starting to enjoy life, all hell breaks loose. Can he save the Earth from total obliteration? Can he save the Guide from a hostile alien takeover? Can he save his daughter from herself?
Includes the bonus story “Young Zaphod Plays It Safe”
“With droll wit, a keen eye for detail and heavy doses of insight . . . Adams makes us laugh until we cry.”—San Diego Union-Tribune
“Lively, sharply satirical, brilliantly written . . . ranks with the best set pieces in Mark Twain.”—The Atlantic
- Print length832 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherDel Rey
- Publication dateApril 30, 2002
- Dimensions6.15 x 1.31 x 9.2 inches
- ISBN-100345453743
- ISBN-13978-0345453747
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This beautifully illustrated edition of the New York Times bestselling classic celebrates the 42nd anniversary of the original publication—with all-new art by award-winning illustrator Chris Riddell | New York Times bestselling author Douglas Adams and zoologist Mark Carwardine take off around the world in search of exotic, endangered creatures | Culled posthumously this is a selection of essays, articles, anecdotes, and stories that offer a fascinating and intimate portrait of the multifaceted artist and absurdist wordsmith |
Editorial Reviews
Review
–San Diego Union
“LIVELY, SHARPLY SATIRICAL, BRILLIANTLY WRITTEN . . . RANKS WITH THE BEST SET PIECES IN MARK TWAIN.”
–The Atlantic
From the Inside Flap
The Hitchhiker?s Guide to the Galaxy
Seconds before the Earth is demolished for a galactic freeway, Arthur Dent is saved by Ford Prefect, a researcher for the revised Guide. Together they stick out their thumbs to the stars and begin a wild journey through time and space.
The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
Facing annihilation at the hands of warmongers is a curious time to crave tea. It could only happen to the cosmically displaced Arthur Dent and his comrades as they hurtle across the galaxy in a desperate search for a place to eat.
Life, the Universe and Everything
The unhappy inhabitants of planet Krikkit are sick of looking at the night sky? so they plan to destroy it. The universe, that is. Now only five individuals can avert Armageddon: mild-mannered Arthur Dent and his stalwart crew.
So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish
Back on Earth, Arthur Dent is ready to believe that the past eight years were all just a figment of his stressed-out imagination. But a gift-wrapped fishbowl with a cryptic inscription conspires to thrust him back to reality. So to speak.
Mostly Harmless
Just when Arthur Dent makes the terrible mistake of starting to enjoy life, all hell breaks loose. Can he save the Earth from total obliteration? Can he save the Guide from a hostile alien takeover? Can he save his daughter from herself?
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Douglas Adams?
He was tall, very tall. He had an air of cheerful diffidence. He
combined a razor-sharp intellect and understanding of what
he was doing with the puzzled look of someone who had
backed into a profession that surprised him in a world that
perplexed him. And he gave the impression that, all in all, he was rather
enjoying it.
He was a genius, of course. It’s a word that gets tossed around a lot
these days, and it’s used to mean pretty much anything. But Douglas was
a genius, because he saw the world differently, and more importantly, he
could communicate the world he saw. Also, once you’d seen it his way
you could never go back.
Douglas Noel Adams was born in 1952 in Cambridge, England (shortly
before the announcement of an even more influential DNA, deoxyribonucleic
acid). He was a self-described “strange child” who did not learn
to speak until he was four. He wanted to be a nuclear physicist (“I never
made it because my arithmetic was so bad”), then went to Cambridge to
study English, with ambitions that involved becoming part of the tradition
of British writer/performers (of which the members of Monty Python’s
Flying Circus are the best-known example).
When he was eighteen, drunk in a field in Innsbruck, hitchhiking across
Europe, he looked up at the sky filled with stars and thought, “Somebody
ought to write the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.” Then he went to
sleep and almost, but not quite, forgot all about it.
He left Cambridge in 1975 and went to London where his many writ-ing
and performing projects tended, in the main, not to happen. He
worked with former Python Graham Chapman writing scripts and sketches
for abortive projects (among them a show for Ringo Starr which contained
the germ of Starship Titanic) and with writer-producer John Lloyd
(they pitched a series called Snow Seven and the White Dwarfs, a comedy
about two astronomers in “an observatory on Mt. Everest–“The idea
for that was minimum casting, minimum set, and we’d just try to sell the
series on cheapness”).
He liked science fiction, although he was never a fan. He supported
himself through this period with a variety of odd jobs: he was, for example,
a hired bodyguard for an oil-rich Arabian family, a job that entailed
wearing a suit and sitting in hotel corridors through the night listening to
the ding of passing elevators.
In 1977 BBC radio producer (and well-known mystery author) Simon
Brett commissioned him to write a science fiction comedy for BBC Radio
Four. Douglas originally imagined a series of six half-hour comedies
called The Ends of the Earth–funny stories which at the end of each, the
world would end. In the first episode, for example, the Earth would be
destroyed to make way for a cosmic freeway.
But, Douglas soon realized, if you are going to destroy the Earth, you
need someone to whom it matters. Someone like a reporter for, yes, the
Hitchchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. And someone else . . . a man who was
called Alaric B in Douglas’s original proposal. At the last moment Douglas
crossed out Alaric B and wrote above it Arthur Dent. A normal name
for a normal man.
For those people listening to BBC Radio 4 in 1978 the show came as a
revelation. It was funny–genuinely witty, surreal, and smart. The series
was produced by Geoffrey Perkins, and the last two episodes of the first
series were co-written with John Lloyd.
(I was a kid who discovered the series–accidentally, as most listeners
did–with the second episode. I sat in the car in the driveway, getting
cold, listening to Vogon poetry, and then the ideal radio line “Ford,
you’re turning into an infinite number of penguins,” and I was happy;
perfectly, unutterably happy.)
By now, Douglas had a real job. He was the script editor for the long-running
BBC SF series Doctor Who, in the Tom Baker days.
Pan Books approached him about doing a book based on the radio series,
and Douglas got the manuscript for The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the
Galaxy in to his editors at Pan slightly late (according to legend they telephoned
him and asked, rather desperately, where he was in the book, and
how much more he had to go. He told them. “Well,” said his editor,
making the best of a bad job, “just finish the page you’re on and we’ll
send a motorbike around to pick it up in half an hour”). The book, a paperback
original, became a surprise bestseller, as did, less surprisingly, its
four sequels. It spawned a bestselling text-based computer game.
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy sequence used the tropes of science
fiction to talk about the things that concerned Douglas, the world
he observed, his thoughts on Life, the Universe, and Everything. As we
moved into a world where people really did think that digital watches
were a pretty neat thing, the landscape had become science fiction and
Douglas, with a relentless curiosity about matters scientific, an instinct
for explanation, and a laser-sharp sense of where the joke was, was in
a perfect position to comment upon, to explain, and to describe that
landscape.
I read a lengthy newspaper article recently demonstrating that Hitchhiker’s
was in fact a lengthy tribute to Lewis Carroll (something that
would have come as a surprise to Douglas, who had disliked the little of
Alice in Wonderland he read). Actually, the literary tradition that Douglas
was part of was, at least initially, the tradition of English Humor Writing
that gave us P. G. Wodehouse (whom Douglas often cited as an influence,
although most people tended to miss it because Wodehouse didn’t write
about spaceships).
Douglas Adams did not enjoy writing, and he enjoyed it less as time
went on. He was a bestselling, acclaimed, and much-loved novelist who
had not set out to be a novelist, and who took little joy in the process of
crafting novels. He loved talking to audiences. He liked writing screenplays.
He liked being at the cutting edge of technology and inventing and
explaining with an enthusiasm that was uniquely his own. Douglas’s
ability to miss deadlines became legendary. (“I love deadlines,” he said
once. “I love the whooshing sound they make as they go by.”)
He died in May 2001–too young. His death surprised us all, and left a
huge, Douglas Adams—sized hole in the world. We had lost both the man
(tall, affable, smiling gently at a world that baffled and delighted him)
and the mind.
He left behind a number of novels, as often-imitated as they are, ultimately,
inimitable. He left behind characters as delightful as Marvin the
Paranoid Android, Zaphod Beeblebrox and Slartibartfast. He left sentences
that will make you laugh with delight as they rewire the back of
your head.
And he made it look so easy.
–Neil Gaiman,
January 2002
(Long before Neil Gaiman was the bestselling author of novels like American Gods and
Neverwhere, or graphic novels like The Sandman sequence, he wrote a book called Don’t
Panic, a history of Douglas Adams and the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.)
Product details
- Publisher : Del Rey (April 30, 2002)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 832 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0345453743
- ISBN-13 : 978-0345453747
- Item Weight : 1.69 pounds
- Dimensions : 6.15 x 1.31 x 9.2 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #2,690 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #19 in Humorous Science Fiction (Books)
- #36 in Humorous Fiction
- #100 in Science Fiction Adventures
- Customer Reviews:
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About the author
Douglas Adams (1952-2001) was the much-loved author of the Hitchhiker's Guides, all of which have sold more than 15 million copies worldwide.
Photo by michael hughes from berlin, germany (douglas adams Uploaded by Diaa_abdelmoneim) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons.
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The original novel by Douglas Adams - based on a radio show he also wrote (the twisted history of the first book is related in an introduction) - is the sharpest in the set. For the uninitiated, the tale follows Arthur Dent, last human survivor of Earth after the planet is cleared away for a hyperspatial bypass. Along with his alien friend Ford Prefect, they go off on a series of adventures which will eventually reveal the true purpose of the planet Earth. Completing a quintet of heroes is Zaphod Beeblebrox, the President of the Galaxy, and Trillian (Trisha MacMillan), another human who left Earth a while before it was destroyed, and Marvin, the most depressed robot ever.
In this book, Adams sets the tone for this the whole series with a parody of the conventions of science fiction and a grand sense of the absurd. In a universe where time travel and the improbable happen as a matter of course, contradictions, paradoxes and continuity problems are plentiful and acceptable. The second novel - The Restaurant at the End of the Universe - directly follows up on the first book and is of equally high quality.
An almost imperceptible slide begins with book three, Life, the Universe and Everything, which deals with an ancient race of aliens who are threatening to make a comeback and destroy all other life. Arthur and Ford are recruited by planetary engineer Slartibartfast to try and save all reality. We begin to see other of the characters pushed aside although they still do play some roles. We also learn it is possible for a man to fly.
In So Long and Thanks For All the Fish, Arthur returns to an Earth that apparently believes its destruction was just a mass hallucination. Although Ford is still around in a parallel story, the other recurring characters are almost non-existent. This is the most upbeat of all the stories, with things finally going somewhat right for the usually hapless Arthur. Unfortunately, some of the true wackiness is beginning to fade away. With no Zaphod acting recklessly and with Ford acting semi-responsibly, this novel is not quite as much fun. And sadly, Mostly Harmless, the final novel is even less fun, again absurd but not really very funny. And the bonus short story "Young Zaphod Plays It Safe" is completely forgettable.
The first three books remain five star material, the fourth gets four stars and the fifth gets three (the short story gets two). As a collection, however, this is a five star bunch, with the first two books being excellent enough to offset any weaknesses in the others. For any fan of science fiction, this is a must-read and continues to be the best parody of the genre.
Read this book, not only is it excellent, but you will finally understand what others are talking about. It's uniquely written and is referenced all the time by society and people online. I've seen "the meaning of life is 42" and "Don't Panic!" throughout my life and had no idea what people were talking about... but now I do!
The author has a unique writing method and I have found myself thinking back to it often. It is not just the main plot that is memorable, its the small things that are throw in that I really liked. When it rains, I think of the rain god who didn't know he was a rain god and the 100+ types of rain he had identified. When my computer freezes, I think of the computer on board the ship that has an unknown hole in it and how it talks to other computers.... it's worth the time to read and is easily understood.
The last book seems to have taken on a darker tone and gets a little confusing, with a few more swear words thrown in, but the ending was phenomenal. I had to reread the last chapter to make sure I clearly understood what had just happened. It's the most surprising ending I have ever read and unlike other authors, the ending, just ENDS... just like that, its over, and you are left to wonder exactly what just happened. Many other authors could have gone to great lengths writing a detailed ending, but I preferred the ending in the book... its been weeks since I finished this book and I still smile when I think back to Ford Perfect laughing manically while looking at the matchbook. Read it, you won't be sorry.
The collection also contains the horrid story “Young Zaphod Plays It Safe” and it is a waste of space in the text. But, that is a small quibble, and the story is short.
I enjoyed the series, mostly, and I would recommend it to certain readers. For more specifics see below where you will find my review for all five of the novels in chronological order.
1. “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” is short and never gives much development (character or plot) but it seems appropriate for this tale. The novel reminds me a lot of Vonnegut in its style and presentation. Short chapters and biting satire mixed with fantastical plot devices. And it all works!
The introduction and first chapter of this novel are funny and pull you into the book. There are moments that are so clever and witty that you will find yourself re-reading certain lines for no reason other than to enjoy them once again. Chapter 23 of the text (perhaps the book’s most famous) is brilliant and to the point. It is very short, funny, and kind of wise. Its opening line, “It is an important and popular fact that things are not often what they seem” could be a thematic statement for the book. One of the novel’s key devices is the idea that Earth is an experiment, and without revealing too much, I will say that it gives the novel its focus.
Also enjoyable are the characters of Marvin the paranoid android and Eddie, the shipboard computer on “The Heart of Gold” (a spaceship that serves as the novel’s main setting). Some of the text’s best moments and lines belong to them, and I was more endeared to them than I was to the novel’s two human characters.
“The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” is a delightful and quick read and I will be continuing my trip through the galaxy with its sequel, “The Restaurant at the End of the Universe.”
2. “The Restaurant at the End of the Universe” reads like a typical adventure tale, and it is more in this genre than its predecessor “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”. The restaurant of the title is a place where the characters go and can literally watch the end of the Universe during dinner. Trust me, the way Mr. Adams explains it, it makes sense!
The plot of the novel begins right where its predecessor left off, and the set up is that space psychiatrists plot to kill Arthur Dent and Trillian because they are the last survivors from Earth, which we found out in “Hitchhiker” was an experiment designed to answer the purpose of “Life, the universe, and everything.” The psychiatrists do not want that question answered because they would be out of business. And with this clever premise it is off to the races.
In this delightful and quick romp of a novel we get to meet space psychiatrists, rock stars, and the ruler of the universe. And it goes without saying that none of it is as expected. The satire of the rock stars and bands is wonderful, as is the clever jab at rock stars that use to flee tax jurisdictions to record albums. In the book one mega space rock star even goes into “suspended death” for two years for the tax deductions.
The last 20 pages of the book contain some pretty rough satire of modern professions and social dynamics. And then the text ends abruptly, like Mr. Adams was leading you into the next novel. It worked, because I will be continuing my journey with these hitchhikers. You should too!
3. Of the three novels that I have read so far out of the five that compose the “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” series, “Life, the Universe and Everything” is the weakest, but it is still incredibly good. The whole book feels like a Monty Python sketch, but the first few chapters especially feel that way. It works, but it does get a little tiresome after a while.
The humor in this text is mostly through wordplay. It serves the book well and is a strength of this novel because in terms of plot “Life, the Universe and Everything” is all over the place. The unity of the wordplay and humor serves to coalesce (as much as it can) a very scattered text. Especially enjoyable is a clever discourse on swear words, their usage and how they evolve and change. In the world of this novel the word “Belgium” is their equivalent of the F-word. This part of the novel is a witty piece of satirical writing, and is very enjoyable.
There are two interesting bits in this novel I would like to share in this review. The first is one of my favorite cameo appearances in this entire series thus far, the character of Wowbagger, the Infinitely Prolonged. He is an alien who through an accident has immortality and is bored to tears. So he makes it a mission to insult everyone in the Universe. His occasional appearances in this story are a joy. Another aspect of the text that I enjoyed is that the ultimate question and answer to everything remains unexplained. There is also a thinly veiled satire aimed at religious symbols where it seems Adams is mocking finding value in such things. It is an engaging section of the text.
I will be moving on to the fourth book in this series soon. I have enjoyed this ride so far!
4. This fourth novel in the series begins exactly as the first one, word for word, with one small twist. You can decide for yourself what you think of that twist. I did not care for it, as it shifts the focus in this text from the ones that preceded it. “So Long, and Thanks for all the Fish” begins with Arthur Dent back on earth, which is no longer destroyed (it was blown up in the first book of the series) but the explanation for how this is so is best glossed over if one wants to fully enter the world of the text. This novel does not feature the other characters from the previous three, so fans of Zaphod Beeblebrox and Trillian will be disappointed. Other series staples such as Ford Prefect and Marvin the Android make cameos in the novel’s final pages, but they seemed forced and not all that interesting in the context Mr. Adams uses here.
This are some shining moments in this book, among them chapter 25 in which the author’s persona intrudes into the text to answer the question “Does Arthur Dent f-word?” We also get to see “God’s final message to His creation”, and it is actually not a letdown.
At one point in the novel Arthur tells someone “See first, think later, then test” as the best way to approach something one does not fully comprehend. If you don’t take the last two parts of his advice while you are reading “So Long, and Thanks for all the Fish” you can enjoy the text.
I am anxious to see how the series concludes in installment 5, and I will be traveling that way soon.
5. "Mostly Harmless" is a great example of a writer extending a series by one book too many. Of the five books in the "Hitchhiker" series numbers four and five don't add much to it, and take a lot from it. "Mostly Harmless" just feels out of sync with the books that preceded it. Stylistically it is also very different, the chapters are much longer, the humor is much rarer, etc. It is not a good change.
A big flaw of the text is that our hero Arthur Dent does not even show up until chapter seven, and even when he does there is no transition from how we left him in book four, "So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish." From chapter seven to almost the final 40 pages the chapters alternate point of view between Arthur Dent and Ford Prefect. I found Prefect's story boring until his storyline merges with Dent's about 3/4s of the way through the novel.
The book does have some good moments, particularly chapter nine in which it finally feels like the other novels in the series. Arthur Dent goes to the planet Hawalius to seek the advice of the oracles that inhabit it. In this chapter we see sparks of the Douglas Adams from the previous texts and it is a joy to read. There is also a witty cameo appearance by Elvis, which is cleverly woven into the plotline.
As has been stated in previous reviews "Mostly Harmless" is a dark text, almost nihilistic in its themes. The series ends in a uncharacteristic manner. Although as a reader I did not like the ending per se, I do feel it was kind of appropriate. It feels jarring and out of place at the same time. I can't say much more without spoiling it. Regardless it does give the series a sense of definite completion, and I think that is a good thing.
Top reviews from other countries
Eu geralmente prefiro livros menores e de capa mole para leitura, pois eles facilitam o processo físico em si. Mas essa edição é maleável e confortável em todos os sentidos. Tanto para fãs ou pessoas que querem ler pela primeira vez.
Quanto ao livro em si, nem preciso dizer muito. Talvez nenhuma edição possa fazer jus a Douglas Adams, mas esse livro é perfeitamente aceitável. Recomendo pela praticidade e pelo leve luxo que ela providencia.
Reviewed in India on April 21, 2024
Es un clásico de la ciencia ficción y el humor, repleto de gags y de situaciones insólitas, de tremenda actualidad a pesar de los años, muy entretenido y fácil de leer. Una auténtica joya.
Y ciertamente, mucho mejor leerlo en inglés para apreciarlo a fondo. Si no lo has leído y te gusta la literatura de evasión, ya tardas.