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.

I love this … and can quote great swathes of it—yet until this year I had never read the book. Weird? Not really.

It started out in ... (was it really that long ago?) as a late-night radio comedy series. OK then, full disclosure, it was on BBC Radio 4 at 10:30 pm on Wednesday, 8th March … 1978. I distinctly remember thinking this is really quirky and odd, but I love it! Anyone else I knew who had been listening thought the same, and we weren’t quite sure what to make of it. Low budget and decidedly different, what was it supposed to be? The term “space opera” had been coined in 1941, but this was not space opera. It was unlike any Science Fiction we knew, and anyway SF (the acronym used at the time) was hardly ever humorous. It was very British, at a time when more and more producers were giving an eye to overseas broadcasts. What would those overseas listeners make of this programme? Americans in particular would not be likely to “get” it. The closest we could get in nailing the type of surreal humour was as a sort of “Monty Python’s Flying Circus in Space”—except that it clearly had an ongoing storyline. (In fact Douglas Adams was very briefly in a couple of episodes of “Monty Python’s Flying Circus”.) We fervently hoped that it would last the whole six episodes, and not be taken off the air by the then rather staid BBC…

We need not have worried. Despite the BBC’s cautious approach, the audience’s reaction was tremendously enthusiastic, even though this was radio, and it had hardly been broadcast at prime time. But people talked: friends, family, fellow students, and workmates. More and more tuned in for the next week’s episode—and we all hoped there would not be too much atmospheric interference—or one of the power cuts which plagued the late 1970s. These six episodes even received good reviews, and the BBC boldly commissioned a “Christmas special”: a one-off episode for the most popular British comedy series.

I have a memory of an interview from the time, or perhaps a little later, revealing that Douglas Adams would be writing, and making script changes, right up until just before the broadcast. He seemed excessively shy about his writing, although he had been on the outskirts of radio comedy for years and even written sketches for some, for example “The Burkiss Way (to Dynamic Living)”—a personal favourite of mine. I was in the live audience once; a very strange experience. I kept thinking: “It’s no use enjoying it and smiling broadly, I have to laugh out loud!” But none of this had come easily. Although Douglas Adams had eventually become a member of “Footlights”, the invitation-only student comedy club which has acted as a hothouse for British comic talent for many years, that had taken a while too. Douglas Adams’s humour was different, and none of us could have anticipated where it would lead. Anyway, back to the first series …

It quickly took the UK by storm, and was repeated twice in 1978 alone and many more times in the next few years. This led to an LP re-recording, (long playing vinyl records, now confined to history—or enthusiasts) and I was lucky enough to have this set bought for me for my birthday by my brother. It was the first comedy series to be produced in stereo, and Douglas Adams said that he wanted the programme’s production to be comparable to that of a modern rock album. In fact much of their budget was spent on sound effects produced by the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. There was just one problem for me. The postman left it out in the rain while everyone was at work, and the result was a corrugated mess. So I never played it.

The BBC soon realised they had a success on their hands, and commissioned a second radio series. This consisted of a further five episodes, bringing the total number of episodes to 12, to be broadcast in 1980. Meanwhile Douglas Adams had been persuaded to reformulate the series as a novel, an idea he was not at all happy about to start with, feeling that his talent lay in revues and writing radio comedy. But he agreed to adapt the series as a book—this novel in fact—which was then published in 1979.

Those of us who had been in at the start as it were, were initially resistant to reading a book (and I have stayed resistant for far too many years) feeling that it could not possibly be as good. And indeed, it isn’t as sparky and with that sense of the ridiculous that radio comedy can have, although the novel of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (one word, no hyphen is the author’s preference) does include a few more details. If anything these slow the panic-filled action down, and seem to add very little.

The next step was to “graduate” to TV. In Britain, this usually signals a commercial success, but sometimes in the conversion, a lot of the spontaneity and characterisations which have marked the radio series are lost. However the BBC were very canny in casting the comedy actor Peter Jones as “The Book”, both for the radio series, and the TV versions. Peter Jones was cast after a three-month long casting search and after at least three actors (including Michael Palin) had turned the role down!

We grudgingly agreed that the TV version was not too bad an attempt, and to be honest, we were pretty gobsmacked at the time by the “new” type of graphics. This was before CGI, but the onscreen graphics more than made up for any loss of the listeners’ imagination, which is such an essential feature of slightly surreal radio comedy. It was just different again. So a six-episode television series aired on BBC 2 in January and February 1981. Many of the actors from the radio series were in it, and it was based mainly on the radio versions of the first six episodes. A second series was at one point planned, with a different storyline from the second radio series, but it was sadly never made, because Douglas Adams had various disputes with the BBC.

So the TV series fizzled out, but the radio series went on and on, and so did the books. There was a film too, but the less said about that the better. Made many years later, it premiered on 20th April 2005. Douglas Adams had died during the film’s production, although he had still helped with the early screenplays, and new concepts introduced with the film. The script was completely different, and the film was a modest success, commercially. In the film, Stephen Fry was the voice of the Guide/Narrator, which led to him recording the version of the novel most often listened to as an audio book.

I actually listened to the audio book on this occasion, which seems a little odd, but it was the only way I could access it easily, as the library e-book was out on loan. The edition I listened to was an RNIB disc, read by the excellent actor Gordon Dulieu, using his panoply of voices. The narration was superb. It did of course continually remind me of the radio series, which was perhaps inevitable.

The radio scripts are prescient and priceless. I ordered the CD set for a Christmas present, and the young guy on the phone said, quoting the pack: “The best-selling audio CD of all time? That’s quite a claim isn’t it? Perhaps I should listen to it…!”

You can imagine my reply.

What surprised me about this novel is that it just seemed to stop randomly. How this reads to someone approaching it for the first time, I have no idea, but the first radio series continues going straight into “The Restaurant at the End of the Universe”. There are then 4 subsequent novels in the series: “Life, the Universe and Everything”, “So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish”, “Mostly Harmless” and the final “And Another Thing” (most written by Eoin Colfer with additional unpublished material by Douglas Adams) as well as some short stories.

What’s with the title? Well, Douglas Adams had at times claimed that the title came from a 1971 incident while he was hitchhiking around Europe as a young man with a copy of the “Hitch-hiker's Guide to Europe”. He said that while he was lying drunk in a field near Innsbruck, and looking up at the stars, he thought it would be a good idea for someone to write a hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy as well. But this could be apocryphal.

What is it about? Oh, that’s what you want from a review … well the main character is a sort of Everyman called Arthur Dent. We learn very quickly that he is the last surviving man, following the demolition of the Earth by a Vogon constructor fleet to make way for a hyperspace bypass.

He has a friend called by the unlikely name “Ford Prefect”, after a misreading of an electronic travel guide The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Unbeknownst to Arthur Dent, Ford Prefect is a human-like alien writer for the aforenamed eccentric reference book, and he proceeds to rescue Arthur Dent from Earth’s imminent destruction, by hitching a lift on a passing Vogon spacecraft.

Following this rescue, the pair explore the galaxy, meeting Trillian, another human who had been taken from Earth (and whom Arthur Dent had met at a party in South London —this is easily explained by the Improbability Drive)—and also the two-headed and self-centred President of the Galaxy Zaphod Beeblebrox, and the terminally depressed Marvin, the Paranoid Android with his “brain the size of a planet” ... surely he must be based on A.A. Milne’s perennially depressed donkey “Eeyore” in “Winnie the Pooh”?

This all sounds far lamer and less absurd than it really is! You’re just going to have to read it—or even better, track down the radio series—for yourself. And just for those who already know and love this gem, here are a few quotations which quickly became catchphrases:

“Don’t Panic!”

“Space is big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist’s, but that’s just peanuts to space.”

“Ford … you’re turning into a penguin. Stop it!”

“A towel, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have …”

“So long, and thanks for all the fish.”

“Ford!” he said, “there’s an infinite number of monkeys outside who want to talk to us about this script for Hamlet they’ve worked out.”

And of course we can’t leave without remembering that Answer to the Great Question … Of Life, the Universe and Everything:

“Forty-two”.

I can't remember laughing at a book so much!

Loved, loved, loved(!!) everything about it.

The delivery by Stephen Fry is outstanding also.

Hugely recommend! There aren't enough superlatives to throw at this!

This was my first exposure to the writing of Doug Adams. I went on to read the full Hitchhiker series with great enjoyment. The perfect tongue in cheek humor and a plot that pulls you along combination.

★★ /5

This was fine… I guess?
This was definitely easy to read and absorb, but at the same time, it didn’t feel like a real book. The ridiculousness of the plot sometimes was just too much and brought up me from the story. Some parts of this book were actually really interesting, but a lot of things were just annoying. I didn’t really like the character, at least for me they didn’t have the proper motivation for their actions.
I understand why people like it, but sadly it was just not for me.

What the hell did I just read?

Probably should have smoked something before and/or during the reading of this.

Awarding one star for each of the following:

Digital Watches
Babel Fish
Marvin

Reread. Last read it 2020. Its funny how much reading tastes changes over the years. Still like it but not at all as much. Lower rating this time around.

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This. Was. Amazing! I wasn't at all prepared that this tiny book would hold so much greatness and other worldy amazingness. It's funny, it's quirky and it doesn't try to be serious but it doesn't feel forced or overly ridiculous. It's just have enough fun bits and it doesn't feel overpowering. It's short but feel like it has the perfect length. I'm glad I got the next book on hand and I can easily say it's one of the best book I've read this year!!

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.

چی میگید اگر بهتون بگم توی این کتاب رئیس جمهور شدن "ترامپ "پیش ببینی شده؟
(کتاب سال ۱۹۷۹ نوشته شده )

کتاب طنز بانمکیه، توش میتونی جمله های فلسفی باحال پیدا کنی برای استوری اینستاگرامت و خودتو کول نشون بدی. درباره‌ی معنای زندگی ام سوال می پرسه و جوابشم نمیده طبق معمول. نکته‌ش اما این نیست . چیزی که همه‌ی این کتاب میخواد بگه اینه که برو زندگی کن،حالشو ببر و سوالاتی رو که جوابشون دو به توان بی‌نهایت غیر محتمله، بیخیال شو. مثل منکه هیچی از فیزیک کوانتوم حالیم نمیشه بنابراین وانمود میکنم اصلا وجود نداره.
راستی شاید براتون جالب باشه بدونید معنی اسم من به زبان ساکنان سحابی ماژلان میشه *دختری که هیچی از فیزیک کوانتوم نمیفهمه و هیچ وقت ته دیگ سیب زمینی هاش نمیسوزه.*
..
همه‌ی کتاب رو توی چهار ساعت خوندم. نه اینکه خیلی خفن و پرکشش باشه‌ها، فقط برای اینکه صدای رعد و برق و بارون نمی ذاشت بخوابم.
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.
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عذاب وجدان گرفتم ...بی‌انصافی نباشه داستانش‌هم بانمک بود خب. احتیاج داشتم به طنزش. جلدهای بعدی رو هم میخونم.
فکر کنم نوجوونا بیشتر ازش خوششون بیاد. شاید!

Popsugar challenge 2020 - A Book with a Robot, cyborg or AI character / A Book written by an author in their 20's

Yeah, I'm not the intended audience for this book, with a male dominated cast in space I was never going to be able to relate.

I'd heard great things but I couldn't get into it, my mind kept drifting, i looked for the humor but couldn't find it (was it where the British guy wanted a cup of tea on a spaceship?).

It just didn't hold my attention i'm afraid which is a shame as its such a cult classic.

***3 Stars***

This book was... weird.
But not bad weird.
Weirdly funny, weirdly entertaining and weirdly delightful.

Yet it had a certain ridiculousness to it, which is what made give it only 3 stars. But I also enjoyed reading it.
Will see if I'll ever feel like reading the other books in the series.