The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

What can I say? I wish I had been in the movie, although it was bad and I guess I should be happy about NOT being in it.

I was right to not want to read this one.

It's so stupid. This is not even close to my kind of humour. I like clever funny, not stupid funny. This is just beyond ridiculous and I mostly cringed my way through it. I don't think I cracked a smile once.

I get that this is hilarious and delightful for some people but I am not one of them.

Thank god it was mercifully short.

He really wrote an entire series of this crap?

British humour, man. I just n  don't get it.n

This was book 13 of my #Dymocks52challenge refined. You can read more here.

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n  Originally shelved as 'never gonna happen':n

Absurdist humour is not really my thing, and I've heard enough about this one to not even be a little tempted to read it. It sounds too ridiculous for my liking. I'd rather read something with clever humour.

Useful phrases in Icelandic

Að mestu meinlaus - Mostly harmless

Bless á meðan og takk fyrir allan fiskinn - So long and thanks for all the fish

Ekki örvænta - Don't panic

Fjörutíu og tveir - Forty-two

Húppi frúddi - Hoopy frood

Lífið, alheiminn og allt saman - Life, the universe and everything

Ó þú fretlaði rýtböggull - O frettled gruntbuggly

Öll mótstaða er tilgangslaus - Resistance is useless

Vetrarbrautarheilakúpubomba - Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster

Þennan hræðilega verk í öllum dióðunum í vinstri síðunni - This terrible pain in all the diodes down my left side

Þrjátiu altairska dollara á dag - Thirty Altairian dollars a day

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy starts on a Thursday, and Arthur Dent is having a very bad day. Things start going sour when a construction crew tries to knock his house down so they can build a highway bypass through the land it sits on, and get worse rather quickly when the Earth is suddenly and completely destroyed. A galactic orphan, Dent embarks on an interstellar journey with his longtime friend Ford Prefect (who is really an alien who has been stranded on the Earth for the past fifteen years), Zaphod Beeblebrox, who is President of the Galaxy, Zaphod's girlfriend Trillian, and a depressed robot named Marvin.

There were some things I didn't like about this book, but overall I really enjoyed it. Just after the halfway point in the book, when the travellers reach the planet Magrathea, the tone changes from constant joke-telling and silliness, with a frenetic story and dialogue, to a more serious tone, with a more static story taking place in just one locale (on and around the planet Magrathea), with less jokes and humour and noticeably denser prose. This made the two halfs of the book quite tonally different from each other, which I personally found jarring. The book started to get funnier again near the end, but in a book that is only 180 pages you really notice when the tone changes for even 20-30 pages, as it did in this book.

I also generally didn't care much for the second half of the book for this reason; the first half was more fun, and I wish the entire book had been written in that way. It felt a bit like Adams got tired of trying to write non-stop silly prose and dialogue and somewhat gave up on that for a decent amount of the second half of the book, only picking it back up again near the end.

Some characters were also very one-dimensional and didn't add much to the story. The best example of this was Trillian. I would have liked to see her have a larger role in the story, given she is the partner of one of the main characters, but I found her to be flat and mostly invisible. Maybe she is developed more in later books in the series; I guess I'll find out when I pick these books up again.

Negatives aside, I loved Adams' humour; this is a very funny book, sometimes laugh-out-loud funny. I thought some aspects of the story and world-building were crazy but absolutely brilliant, and I feel, with this first book, like Adams has only just begun to craft what will end up being a hilarious and impressive tale of our universe and its "history".

Recommended!

4.5 stars

Well, it's a rather tough one to review, isn't it?

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is a sci-fi comedy with a good dose of philosophy, lots of loveable characters, and an ingeniously absurd plot. You’ve probably read the thing and wonder what I’m going to have to say about it. As it turns out, probably not a whole lot you haven’t heard before.

So, instead of that, I thought about giving you 42 quick thoughts on the novel. But then, that too seemed too daunting an affair to consider writing and would almost definitely be an unpleasant thing to read. I mean, really, towards the mid-point of such a list you’d just be getting into a list of snacks I ate in between reading.

In lieu of all that, I’ll be brief.

I liked this a lot. It was a nice break from the hard sci-fi I’ve found myself reading of late, and a good reminder that there’s a lot that can be done with the genre. Speaking of: do we have much other funny sci-fi out there? If so, do let me know in the comments.

Sorry to my fiancé for having put this one off for so long. I LOL’d like everyone used to LOL when the book came out rather than how we all LOL today. It was a great gift all those years ago, but I worry that if I had read it back then a wormhole might have opened up to drop it into the distant past of a far away alien civilization. And I think we all know how that sort of thing turns out.

There’s a lot of great writing to be found between these pages. A lot of it uses simple language, portmanteaus, and suitably wild looking alien words to convey a world in which anything might happen. Very often that very anything does happen (see: orbital sperm whale).

I had a good bit of fun and will touch back with the rest of the books in the omnibus later in the year. I think I’ll be visiting them whenever I need a good laugh, or feel like something a bit lighter.

3/5

"En los remotos e inexplorados confines del arcaico extremo occidental de la espiral de la Galaxia, brilla un pequeño y despreciable sol amarillento.
En su órbita, ..., gira un pequeño planeta totalmente insignificante de color azul verdoso, cuyos pobladores, descendientes de los simios, son tan asombrosamente primitivos que aún creen que los relojes de lectura directa son de muy buen gusto.
Este planeta ... tenía el problema siguiente: la mayoría de sus habitantes eran infelices la mayor parte del tiempo. Muchas soluciones se sugirieron para tal problema, pero la mayor parte de ellas se referían principalmente a los movimientos de pequeños trozos de papel verde; ... ".

Así es como arranca la "Guía del autoestopista galáctico", escrita en 1979 por Douglas Adams, que después se transformó en serial radiofónico, serial televisivo y, finalmente en 2004, sería convertida en película de Hollywood, hoy de difícil acceso o al menos, yo no lo he conseguido. En cualquier caso, este arranque ya nos predispone para una novela de humor inglés, muy al estilo de Monthy Python, para lo bueno y para lo malo. Sobre la Guía se nos dice nada más empezar:

"En primer lugar, es un poco más barata (que la Enciclopedia Galáctica); y luego grabada en la portada con simpáticas letras grandes, ostenta la leyenda NO SE ASUSTE".

Todo esto da pie a una delirante aventura de ciencia ficción donde conviven algún terrícola y muchos alienígenas de diferentes procedencias, que componen una ingeniosa y divertida sucesión de situaciones disparatadas, en las que no faltan referencias a teorías físicas o astronómicas sobre diversos aspectos. Como ejemplo, puede servir la descripción que hace de la toalla como complemento indispensable en la mochila de cualquier autoestopista galáctico. Para los amantes de las matemáticas o la física, es especialmente reseñable a alusión a la Teoría de la Improbabilidad, como fuente de alta energía, o a la R17 como límite superior y flexible de la velocidad máxima que puede alcanzarse. He aquí una muestra:

"La Energía de la Improbabilidad Infinita es un medio nuevo y maravilloso para recorrer grandes distancias interestelares en una simple décima de segundo, sin tener que andar a tontas y a locas por el hiperespacio".

Y por si esto no parece lo suficientemente disparatado, ahí va otra cita sobre la existencia de la Tierra:

" ... el planeta ... fue encargado, pagado y gobernado por ratones. Quedó destruido cinco minutos antes de alcanzarse el propósito para el cual se proyectó, y ahora tenemos que construir otro".

La razón por la que afronté la lectura de este libro se la debo a "La anomalía", donde uno de los diseñadores del protocolo de actuación es fan declarado de esta novela y hace referencia a la respuesta a la Pregunta Última de la Vida, del Universo y de Todo, proporcionada por el super-ordenador Pensamiento Profundo. Y claro, ya había oído hablar antes de la novela y no pude resistirme.

Resumiendo, la novela es divertida y disparatada y seguro que hace las delicias de aquellos que os apasione este tipo de humor, pero no busquéis argumento más allá de estas consideraciones. En cualquier caso, os hará pasar un buen rato. En mi caso, opino que el tiempo no le ha hecho mucho bien y se ha quedado un poquito anticuada, de manera que no ha conseguido engancharme demasiado y, desde luego, no para leer las tres novelas que tiene como secuelas.

Arthur Dent is having a bad day his home is being demolished, a new highway bypass is needed progress you know, it's for his own good...really, so goodbye house. On the bright side (by the way), it does not matter either. Earth too will no longer be, soon just billions of inconsequential floating pieces scattered throughout the cosmos, no one left to remember. The powers of the galaxy have decided this little insignificant, dull planet at the edge of the Milky Way must go. A hyperspatial express route is being built, Earth is in the path no big deal to the rest of the universe, just a few souls disappear think of the convenience to others , people... His friend drops by, Mr. Ford Prefect and finds Arthur lying in the mud in front of the bulldozers, and asks him what's new ? And can he go to the local pub for a drink, they must talk... Seems okay to Dent, but first the intelligent man gets a gentleman's solemn sacred promise, from a bureaucrat (who shall remain nameless), that his house will still be standing when he gets back. Even has Mr. Prosser, replace him in the dirt (I can never keep a secret). After a few drinks which relaxes Arthur, Ford tell's his friend he's an alien from a another planet in the vicinity of the great star Betelgeuse, just 600 light-years away. Dent always thought Prefect was an eccentric man but this being England, perfectly permissible, goes on to explain he's a researcher for something called, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy". A weird sound emulates from the outside disrupting this enlightening discussion, Arthur jumps up runs out the door and sees that there are no more gentlemen in the world now. Home gone, but the over excited man starts calling the wrecking crew unkind names. Such language (I will not repeat them, in mixed company, besides this is a family site ). People should be calm, always calm nothing to be concerned about, remember you are English...Looking up, odd yellow streaks in the sky Dent wonders, Ford did say the Earth would be destroyed today but he is strange...Stiff upper lip ...But something is occurring, though. Ford arrives and the noise level rises also...A short time later the waking, Dent...Mr. Dent, comes to in the dark in an alien spaceship , one of those that vaporized his not quite beloved planet, with Ford there... Evil green, and very ugly aliens the Vogons who like to torture people by reciting bad poetry, I mean really bad Vogon poetry, resulting in captives welcoming death, rather than listen to another word... Captain Jeltz hates hitchhikers, and Ford had a devise to enter the ship, secretly. But the clever friends say they loved the excruciating poem, of the captain's; obvious lying, the angry poet has the two rudely thrown off the craft into space, without... spacesuits...these aliens, are barbarians... They can hold their breaths for thirty seconds, so don't worry... A miracle, on the 29th second, they're saved by the President of the galaxy , in a stolen vessel. And the runaway politician ( surprisingly not exactly honest), Zaphod Beeblebrox is on board, so is his two heads and three arms, with his girlfriend Trillian and Marvin, the paranoid robot, don't talk to it, he's very depressing, you would want to crush him, with your bare hands ... As the semi cousin (what's that?) of the president, Ford Prefect is in luck. All the galaxy, are after the Heart of Gold, the new spaceship which can cross the Milky Way, in a flash, on ship the greedy, seek the legendary, lost and fabulously rich planet, Magratha. In the vastness of the whole endless Universe everything's is possible, except an android like Marvin...Remember the Guide's motto, "Don't Panic"...

طنز کتاب را خیلی درک نکردم و با خود کتاب هم آن‌چنان ارتباط برقرار نکردم.

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تاریخ تکامل هر تمدن مهمی تو کهکشان از سه مرحله مشخص و مجزا می‌گذره: زنده موندن، دانش اندوختن و تکمیل کردن دانش. به این مراحل می‌گن مراحل «چه‌جوری، چرا و کجا». برای مثال مهم‌ترین سؤال مرحله‌ی اول اینه «چه‌جوری غذا پیدا کنیم که از گشنگی نمیریم؟» مهم‌ترین سؤال مرحله‌ی دوم، «چرا غذا می‌خوریم؟» و مهم‌ترین سؤال مرحله‌ی سوم، «خوشمزه‌ترین کباب رو از کجا می‌شه خرید؟»
شاید بتوان گفت که غرب در نیمه دوم قرن بیستم درحال گذار از مرحله دوم به مرحله سوم است. مسائل و پرسش‌های مهم فلسفی و سیاسی اهمیت خود را برای اغلب مردم از دست داده‌اند، چرا که پاسخی برای آن‌ها یافت نشده و کوشش‌ها به‌جایی نرسیده یا آدمی را به‌جایی نرسانده‌اند. در غیبت این پرسش‌ها لذت یا همان مرحله سوم آدامز «خوشمزه‌ترین کباب رو از کجا می‌شه خرید؟» به دغدغه اصلی بدل شده ‌است. پیش‌گفتار مترجم- صفحات ۹- ۱۰ کتاب
واقعاً عجیبه. دقیقاً همون موقعی که آدم فکر می‌کنه زندگی از این بدتر نمی‌شه، یه اتفاقی می‌افته و آدم می‌بینه که خیلی بدتر از این هم هست. صفحه‌ی ۱۰۶ کتاب