Hello everyone!
I remember reading it for the first time YEARS ago, when I was probably too young to really understand it (appreciation isn't something we'll be talking about), so I'm thankful I found a nice copy in my local bookstore so that I could sit through it.
And by sit I mean SUFFER through it for more days than it should take to read a book that short.
I don't know what it is about this one that appeals to so many people overall, but it definitely did not appeal to me, and I figured, since Tuesday's review was a rant, I might as well make this Thursday one a disappointed sort of post to top it off.
Maybe it's because I'm not in the best frame of mind to truly appreciate this book.
Maybe I should have read it at a different point in my life.
Or maybe I'd always look at it and go ... wut?
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is on scene.
When the author himself admits he got the idea for the book while lying drunk in a field looking up at the night sky, you know you're in trouble.
Or you SHOULD know, really.
I didn't. I pushed on. And struggled massively.
Though I'll admit that the main starter point for the story is actually hysterical - Earth is demolished because there needs to be room for a new galactic hyper-speed lane or something, some sort of travel route either way - the story itself is LACKING.
We follow Arthur Dent whose house is about to be demolished because, again, a new road is going to go right there, and who gets rescued by Ford Prefect (who sounds like a Harry Potter character), an alien stuck on Earth for fifteen years while he's working on editing The Hitchiker's Guide.
They hitch a ride from the Vogons, which is this book's version of Klingon's, who've demolished Earth, then get yeeted out into space when they're found, only to be picked up by the current galactic president who's on the run, having stolen the only ship in the galaxy with an improbability drive.
Oh and also, he did something to his brain that sort of separates a clump of cells from the rest of it and gives him ideas, but he doesn't know why or how.
Anyway, he's looking for ... something, he doesn't know what, whatever he's going to find at the end of the improbability drive's course, and what they find is a dead planet that used to be a factory which produced other, luxury planets.
And once there, it turns out Earth was actually commissioned by ... wait for it ... mice.
Yup, those little suckers we have running on wheels? They had Earth made because they needed the planet - and its inhabitants - for a LONG ASS experiment (think start of planet until now long) to gain the question that would produce the answer 42.
What's the answer 42 you ask? Well, in theory this is supposedly the answer to the galaxy's burning questions of why are we alive, how are we alive, what's our purpose, etc., but none of these are really definite enough, so they actually need the CORRECT question to go with this answer, and Earth was destroyed five minutes before that popped up.
Arthur has no clue, neither do the others, so in the end the mice improvise - How many roads must a man walk down? - and our group head back to their ship, fleeing from the police that's come after the president, but whose spacecraft committed suicide after chatting with the melancholy and depressed robot our people have on hand.
Then they're off, and the book ends!
Supposedly there's two more, but they both contradict what was said in this first one, and honestly, I'm not in the mood for more seventies and eighties drivel.
I mean, the question alone comes RIGHT out of a Bob Dylan song, COME ON NOW.
Plus nothing really happens. They kind of just exist there - and at one point there's literally a sperm whale and a bunch of petunias that splatter against the surface of the planet, for no other reason than for there to be something even more ridiculous than the plot itself in there.
Look, I get it: at the time of publication it had to have been a wild success, because it's basically a mirror of its time, and then some. And even though it's predominantly British humour, that's not the problem with the book - the problem is that nothing happens, the characters aren't likeable, and some stuff really isn't funny, either.
Mostly, this looks like Douglas Adams had spare time on his hands with nothing to do, had a psychedelic moment in that field in Austria, and just sketched out drivel onto pages that somehow then got printed.
I'm glad I read it, if only to decide this is NOT for me, so, thank you, but no to the sequels.
Do not recommend.
xx
*image not mine
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