Quando ho preso in mano questo volume, sapevo già di trovarmi dinanzi a uno dei capisaldi della letteratura sci-fi humour. Solo leggendo il ciclo con i cinque romanzi della Guida Galattica per Autostoppisti, mi sono accorto di quanto invece sia molto più di un capolavoro.
Per quanto non mi abbia fatto ridere particolarmente, se non in qualche preciso punto, ho ritenuto geniali certi ragionamenti (interventi dell’autore veri e propri o citazioni della Guida) e sono fonte di spunti di riflessione anche alcuni scambi di battute fra personaggi.
Il ciclo della Guida Galattica per Autostoppisti non ha bisogno di molte parole per essere descritto e commentato, ma quelle poche parole che possono essere spese sono decisamente positive. In effetti, nel corso dei cinque libri, non solo Adams ha dimostrato di essere un eccellente narratore, ma ha dimostrato di avere una fantasia invidiabile visto il modo in cui ha ricollegato certi eventi che si ritrovavano in ogni libro e che sembravano di poco conto, salvo poi rivelarsi cruciali nello sviluppo della trama di tutto il ciclo. Inoltre Adams ha dimostrato un encomiabile cambiamento nello stile: se i primi tre libri sono molto più "umoristici", gli ultimi due romanzi del ciclo assumono spesso e volentieri caratteri più seriosi che, nonostante tutto, non stonano affatto con il complesso narrativo sapientemente creato.
L'unica pecca che qualcuno potrebbe riscontrare nel corso della lettura, molto spesso, è quella per cui certi passaggi potrebbero essere poco comprensibili a causa della materia trattata: i viaggi multidimensionali e nello spazio-tempo.
Si fa forse un po' fatica a seguire le vicende che prendono vita, nel passaggio da un capitolo all'altro, in luoghi e tempi differenti, ma senz'ombra di dubbio, tutto sarà lentamente più comprensibile mano a mano che il lettore si avvicinerà al gran finale a sorpresa.
Questi cinque libri rimangono comunque fenomenali nella loro critica dissacrante e mai prosaica e che abbraccia tematiche delicate (o ritenute tali) come la religione, la politica e anche certi comportamenti di noi esseri umani sperduti in questo GCG di Universo (Gran Casino Generale di Universo). È veramente un testo più che consigliato, che con leggerezza e sarcasmo pungente riesce a tutti gli effetti ad abbracciare “La Vita, l’Universo, tutto quanto” (cit.)

This was a super fun ride. I wasn't a huge fan of the first book when I originally read it. But I am glad I finally went back and read the whole thing.

I am a huge fan of this series because:

1. The writing style is hands down amazing
2. This is a satire in science fiction's clothing
3. The plot is highly original and unpredictable
4. The author's creativity is remarkable
5. Pretty much every page has at least one quote
6. It is a fun, light read that touches on deep subjects
7. It features one of my favourite robot characters (Marvin)
8. Oh, and it is hilarious

I love this series so much that I dedicated my 42nd blog post to Douglas Adams.

I recommend this series to everyone I know. Seriously, I could shout about it from rooftops (i.e., if I ever drop my book/laptop/kindle, get up from my couch and venture out to the rooftop).

Classica trilogia in cinque parti (e appendice). A tratti irresistibile, con trovate geniali e esilaranti, è però inadatta ad una lettura "tutta d'un fiato": avendone già letti i primi volumi, ho voluto gustarmi l'intera saga, e devo ammettere che qualche momento di stanca c'è stato (e l'appendice non è agli standard di Adams).

Inquietante, ad ogni modo, la preveggenza dell'Autore (come spesso nella sci-fi): la Guida, in fondo, è un moderno notebook con accesso a Wikipedia...

In questi libri non si trova solo la risposta alla vita, l'universo e tutto, ma anche una delle migliori analisi politologiche di sempre:

"Il maggior problema, ossia uno dei maggiori problemi (ce ne sono tanti) che l'idea di governo fa sorgere è questo: chi è giusto che governi? O meglio, chi è così bravo da indurre la gente a farsi governare da lui?
A ben analizzare, si vedrà che: a) chi più di ogni altra cosa desidera governare la gente è, proprio per questo motivo, il meno adatto a governarla; b) di conseguenza, a chiunque riesca di farsi eleggere Presidente dovrebbe essere proibito di svolgere le funzioni proprie della sua carica, per cui; c) la gente e il suo bisogno di essere governata sono una gran rogna."

This book was one of the funniest and original books I’ve read.

English: https://elifthereader.com/books/the-h...
Türkçe: http://kitaplikkedisi.com/2012/03/dou...

Acho que foi a série mais louca que já li kkk e isso faz a série ser muito legal e única.
Confesso que gostei mais dos dois primeiros livros e depois a leitura se tornou um pouco cansativa e perdendo um pouco a graça. Mas mesmo assim valeu a pena ter lido, todas essas coisas loucas e bizarras me divertiram bastante.

This review is for the first two books only.

I have a confession to make: I am allergic to sci-fi. The kind that has as its hero a humanoid who lives in 23345 AD on a dystopian red planet, where he must fight slimy insectoid aliens whose sole purpose in life is to lay and hatch their filthy eggs on human bodies. The guy is barely human anyway, with half his face swathed in shiny robotic gear with glowing red eyes that look like the battery-powered tip of my 10 year old’s toy laser gun. Or instead of being half-android, he is half Vulcan or Neptune or whatever and thus has the emotional life of a plant. He would speak in pseudo-scientific jargon, something like, “ I must get the quark-photon-intercellular battery on my jet-propulsion pack to work so that I can get back to my Hyper Drive Interstellar Pod and shoot off to Alpha Centauri XYZ2345 in 10,000 times the warp speed along the space-time continuum”. I could feel my brain slowly turn to mush after barely ONE page of dialogue like that. He would have a robotic sidekick that looks like my Brabantia Dome Lid Waste Container with a string of blinking Christmas light around it, except that it can also speak in a metallic voice that somehow sounds like my mother-in-law in one of her bad days. Oh, and there will be other more sympathetic alien life forms that look like the misbegotten offspring of a camel and an orangutan, or some rubbery stuffed toy that the dog had chewed to bits. In short, I just can’t see why I should care about the fate of these monstrous, barely human creatures. Why waste precious time reading about some trash can android or an alien that looks like the Elephant Man on a bad hair day while there are perfectly normal, realistic HUMAN characters out there?

My favorite genre is historical fiction; you know, those books about human beings who either have been dead for centuries, or never existed at all, written by people who cannot possibly have any first-hand knowledge of the period that they’re writing about? Nothing could be more different than science fiction, something that I have not touched in 20 years or so.

So, what am I doing with The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Omnibus, 832 pages of sci-fi drenched in techno babble and redolent of the smell of a million alien armpits?

Well, for one thing, it’s included in the BBC’s 100 Big Reads, which for some reason has become my guide to a worthwhile reading list that is not solely composed of the classics. The other thing is that it’s supposed to be one of the funniest books ever written ---I can always overlook the sci-fi for the funnies. And the characters are recognizably human, or at least sort of human, although one of them is called Zaphod Beeblebrox, (which, incidentally would make a good brand name for a laxative) and has two heads and three arms. The other two are genuine human beings from Earth --- or carbon-based ape-descended life forms --- take your pick, and the other one is a human looking alien with ginger hair (a hideous genetic mutation that should be bred out in real humans). And he is conveniently named Ford Prefect. No need to memorize ridiculous alien names when a simple English one will do.

And now that we are superficially acquainted with the protagonists, it’s time to summarize the plot of this sprawling intergalactic tome --- except that there is no real plot to speak of. Well, actually there is something about looking for the Ultimate Question --- ‘What is the meaning of life?’ --- which is of interest to all life forms in the universe, at least to those that have the brain capacity to ponder such things. But mostly they just bounce around from one bizarre planet to another, having weird adventures in which they meet, among others, a paranoid android, rebellious appliances, a comatose intergalactic rock star and a megalomaniac book publisher. Ultimately, the barely there plot is nothing but an excuse for an absurdist farce through which Adams pokes fun at organized religion, meat-eaters, politicians, big businesses, environmentalists, the publishing industry and other pet peeves. Some parts are brilliantly funny, especially in the first book, while others had me scratching my head and wondering whether he was high on something when he wrote them. Certain sections are mind-numbingly boring and confusing in that special sci-fi way. Oh, and the constant smugness and non-stop zaniness are grating after the second book or so, and I just lost interest completely after finishing it.

At least I know now that ‘babel fish’ is not just a strangely named online translation program. And that it is possible to write a book about what is essentially nonsense and have it become a major pop culture icon. But I’m also mightily relieved that I can stop hitchhiking through THIS universe, which is probably too cool and too clever for me to completely understand.

And this shall be my last sci-fi book for the next 20 years.

I definitely am overdue to reread this comic scifi classic! I remember laughing all the time at the quirky universe that Adams conjured up, but admit to have forgotten many of the details...on my 2018 TBR!

"Absürdlükler Teorisi" ve "Saçmalıklar Kuramı" ile yaratılan, espritüelliği yüksek bir evrenin akıllıca kurgulanması diyebiliriz kitap için. Aslında yazarın dehası da bu işte: Sunduğu evrenin "anlamsızlığı"nın oldukça sürükleyici oluşu. Kimine göre(celi) boş bir kitap (ya da kitaplar) gelebilir ama, "okumadan bilemezsin" derler. En can alıcı noktası, bizleri, insanları ve dünyayı evrenin "ucuna "koyarak ne kadar da önemsiz olduğumuzu bize hatırlatması. Sonuçta popüler kültüre (müzik, televizyon, sinema vs) malzeme sağlaması bile eserin etkilerini anlamaya değer.

It was a horrible, uninteresting, and confusing book where it would lead you into a world of nonsense and chaos. First of all, there was no point to it. The characters lacked any sophistication and were outright stupid. Some people may consider it funny, but I was not one of them. From page one, I wanted it to simply end. Not because I would go on a trip of glory and fun, but because it was just lacking any interest. It wasn't something that pulled the reader in and kept them excited throughout the book, eager to know more. The jokes didn't make any sense. The characters didn't make any sense. Even the whole plot had no point to it! I really regret picking up this book (since page one). I thought maybe I needed to read a bit more to get into it, but big mistake. It just went further downhill. Personally, I didn't like it and wouldn't recommend it to anyone. But hey, if you want to go for it, try it out, and maybe you'll like this style of book, but I certainly didn't. If this was your summer reading book like it was mine, I would suggest to SparkNote it and rather use your time to read a better book.

Awesome in every way. I read this at least once a year.

Edit 11/17/2017: Added mini-review of The Restaurant at the End of the Universe.
Edit 4/18/19: Added mini-review of Life, the Universe and Everything.
Edit 7/19/19: Added mini-review of So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish.
Edit 11/5/21: All done!

2013: I don't think I've ever gotten all the way through this five-books-plus-a-short-story trilogy but it still remains fond in memory as part of my British sci-fi TV phase in high school that also included Dr. Who and Blake's 7. (A good looking actor or two, and the scripts, had about equal influence on teenager-me's interest level.)

*

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: it has to have been since I was in high school that I read this one, since I would have recognized the Monty Python nods that pop up here and there from hanging out with nerds through college and beyond. Our universe here has a white maleness about it, but calling that out feels ungracious in the face of something that still made me laugh, even after having been through the story many times over the years in TV, book, and movie form.

*

The Restaurant at the End of the Universe:

Already we're moving on to parts of the series that I don't have nearly memorized. All I specifically remembered from this was the scene with the Dish of the Day, but bits and pieces of it came back as I went along.

This second novel finishes, sort of, the story started in the first book, giving us the ultimate question that is answered by the ultimate answer. Or does it?

Structure-wise it's a series of set pieces connected with huge jumps through time and space. My favorite part is where Zaphod meets the ruler of the Universe, who has an existentialist point of view so extreme that it becomes absurd. But all the sequences are striking in their own way. It has a somewhat relaxed and conceptual vibe, not as hectic or humorous as Hitchhiker's. Maybe some of that is because Arthur's become more accustomed to his life as a galactic wanderer and isn't freaking out all the time.

Restaurant ended rather abruptly: I was clicking away through my Kindle copy, and boom. If I'd been reading a paper copy, obviously I wouldn't have been surprised by it! That said, it would be a reasonable end to a duology, if we didn't all know the series went on for three more books. :)

I read this because one of the lines from the first book came to mind in a political discussion. Unsurprising, really. What sometimes surprises me, though, is how much these books are consolatory reading for me, despite their essential cynicism. In the face of events you can't control--and the characters witness and go through quite a lot of them--you have to keep on keepin' on.

*

Life, the Universe and Everything:

I'd read this novel only once over thirty years ago, and it was surprising how much of it I remembered, from the S.E.P. field to the immortal who travels the universe insulting everyone--literally everyone--in alphabetical order.

Adams himself admitted that he was a reluctant novelist who preferred to work in other media, and in this third volume, well, it's starting to show. Adams' wonderful talent for funny set pieces remains, but those set pieces have to share the stage with a not terribly interesting "save the Universe" plot (that apparently was, itself, imported from a scrapped other project), which makes parts of this story mildly boring to get through.

There are a couple of points where the reader can ponder serious questions like military escalation or how any given life sustains itself at the expense of other lives... but they certainly don't have to. This a quick and mostly entertaining read, and while it isn't the best of the lot by far, for me it was worth its brief time investment to see Arthur, Marvin and the rest again. This volume ends with Arthur being separated from the others, much as he was at the end of the second book. But with two volumes left to go, you know it won't be long before we're back to seeing the wildest corners of the universe through his goggling shocked eyes.

*

So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish:

Well, what to say about this one. There are a couple of really good parts, the last few chapters being a standout. But more than half of the book is taken up with Arthur Dent falling in love.

It goes like this: Arthur first meets--or rather, sees, under circumstances that are on the "Yikes!" side--a woman named Fenchurch. They are separated by coincidence, and meet again through coincidence (neither of which coincidence involves the Heart of Gold, apparently). They are immediately infatuated and have a lot of sex.

That isn't a romance. It isn't even a story! And it eats up dozens of fairly boring pages. The story about the biscuits within the Arthur-Fenchurch hookup arc is much better than it is.

And then when Ford and Arthur meet again, Fenchurch fades entirely into the background. [goes off to ship Ford and Arthur]

Zaphod and Trillian are mentioned in passing, and Marvin makes a final (?) appearance, but anyone expecting a reunion of the gang is up for a disappointment.

It's hard to say what I'd think about this one if my mind hadn't been dazzled with the first two books. I can completely understand an author not wanting to write the same book over and over, and this one's different, all right, but it also largely fails to be either funny or thoughtful. There's a feeling of "if I must" about it, and Adams' reluctance to grind out more of these incredibly popular books hangs over the whole thing.

*

"Young Zaphod Plays It Safe": an elaborate, nicely-presented setup for a mid-'80s-topical punch line.

*

Mostly Harmless:

Wow, that was unexpected. It's a downer a lot of the time, and extremely unpleasant once or twice. I'll give this one a better write-up in its own review. (edit to add: the review is here.)

*

This "trilogy" is never the same thing twice, and that's all to the good. Some books work better than others; the third and fourth are skippable aside from a handful of passages, in my opinion. On the whole it's well worth a read, if you're of a certain age and/or have an affinity for British pop media of a couple of generations ago. I don't think Adams' imagination and novels... or at least, the discipline that goes into creating novels... were aligned all that well. But I am grateful that these, and the Dirk Gently novels, exist as a legacy of that imagination, both in its youthful exuberance, and in its later weary nihilism.