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.

Jedyny element, który mi się podobał to Marvin

Review of the audio, read by Stephen Fry:

Overall, Fry earns a solid 'B+' for his rendition of the classic Hitchhiker's Guide. Fry has the perfect 'narrator' voice, and I generally enjoyed most of his character voices. Ford Prefect often has a rakish tone, his reading of Arthur Dent is note-perfect clueless, and Zaphod Beeblebrox has a deliciously smarmy confidence. It was a bit of a revelation to find Marvin more amusing in audio than when I read the book, although I feel like Fry might have given him a tad too much despondent enthusiasm. His reading of the Vogon gibberish as the Babel fish was inserted and translated it into English had me laughing.

No, my biggest problem is that I think sometimes Fry got a little too involved in the story, and his character voices bled together. He'd suddenly remember who was speaking, and pull Zaphod out of dashing Ford territory and back into cocky confidence, but it was often enough and in dialogue enough that I definitely noticed as a trend, not an instance.

Well, no matter; still utterly engaging. There was a distracting formatting issue where the pause between chapters must have been edited out between the end of the previous chapter, Fry reading the chapter heading (ex. "Chapter Five") and the continuation of the story, there was no pause at all.

Though Audible claims this is unabridged, I either spaced out a few moments (entirely possible) or it isn't, quite. I'll have to give it another listen-through as I'm driving. But I'm definitely enthusiastic about moving on to The Restaurant at the End of the Universe if Fry is reading.

“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.”

Another great reread of Douglas Adams' The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. Always entertaining and so absurdly profound!
~~~

Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is an entertaining romp through the galaxy. It's a book I've read several times (first in high school); however, after reading Kurt Vonnegut's most overtly science fiction novel, The Sirens of Titan, it almost felt like a fresh experience. Of course, Vonnegut and Adams are very different writers. Still, the influence of Vonnegut is evident in Adams' seminal novel of nerd culture. The absurdity of the human condition explored in Sirens (something which Vonnegut refuses to take seriously but can't treat as a punchline either) gets a funny and entertaining twist in Adams' work. While I view Sirens as a better novel, it took Adams to turn that absurdity into such an entertaining adventure.

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

I read this book about 51,017 times when I was in seventh grade. I wore my copy out. That was a time in my life when I very much would have preferred to belong to some alien species, trapped here through no fault of my own. Also: "The ships hung in the air in much the same way that bricks don't." How can you improve on writing like that?

Q: What's so bad about being drunk?
A: Just ask a glass of water.

ahhh, good times.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy #1), Douglas Adams

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a comedy science fiction series created by Douglas Adams.

The broad narrative of Hitchhiker follows the misadventures of the last surviving man, Arthur Dent, following the demolition of the planet Earth by a Vogon constructor fleet to make way for a hyperspace bypass.

عنوانهای چاپ شده در ایران: «راهنمای مسافران مجانی کهکشان»؛ «راهنمای کهکشان برای اتواستاپزنها»؛ نویسنده: داگلاس آدامز؛ تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز نهم ماه سپتامبر سال2016میلادی

عنوان: راهنمای مسافران مجانی کهکشان؛ نویسنده: داگلاس آدامز؛ فرزاد فربد؛ تهران، پنجره، 1386؛ در 207ص؛ شابک 9789647822336؛ موضوع: داستانهای خیال انگیز علمی و خنده دار از نویسندگان بریتانیا - سده 20م

عنوان: راهنمای کهکشان برای اتواستاپزنها؛ نویسنده: داگلاس آدامز؛ آرش سرکوهی؛ تهران، چشمه، 1394؛ در 205ص؛ شابک9786002292902؛

راهنمای کهکشان برای اتواستاپ‌زن‌ها، داستان «آرتور دنت»، مردی از طبقه ی متوسط «انگلیس»، و نقش ناخواسته ی او را، برای دریافتن معنی زندگی، روایت میکند؛ رمان با حادثه‌ ای آغاز می‌شود، که برای ساکنان کره ی زمین رخداده است، اما در رمان آن رخداد، رویدادی فرعی است؛ «وگون‌»ها که یکی از نژادهای کهکشان هستند، سیاره ی زمین را، برای احداث یک بزرگراه بین کهکشانی، نابود می‌کنند؛ کره ی زمین نابود می‌شود، اما «فورد» و «آرتور دنت (دوست فورد)» چند ثانیه پیش از نابودی زمین، به یاری دستگاهی که «فورد» به همراه دارد، خود را به سفینه ی «وگون‌»ها منتقل کرده، و از آن پس با «اتواستاپ» زدن، سفر خود را در کهکشان‌ها ادامه می‌دهند؛ «فورد پریفکت»، از پژوهشگراان مؤسسه‌ ای ست، که کتاب راهنمای کهکشان برای اتواستاپ‌زن‌ها را منتشر می‌کند؛ او سال‌ها پیش از نابودیِ زمین، برای پژوهش میدانی به زمین سفر کرده بود؛ رمان، ماجراهای سفرهای این دو دوست، و نقشِ «آرتور» را، برای دریافتن معنی زندگی، در بافتی جذاب، و با زبانی روان، با واژه می‌آراید؛

گویا روانشاد «داگلاس آدامز»، برای نگارش همین سری شش کتاب در خیال خویش کاشته داشته اند، پنج کتاب، در زمان زنده بودن نویسنده، منتشر شد، عنوان کتاب نخست با عنوان سری یکسان است؛ و چهار کتاب دیگر سری، با عنوان‌های: «رستوران آخر جهان»؛ «زندگی، جهان و همه‌ چیز»؛ «خداحافظ و ممنون از اون همه ماهی»؛ و «بیش‌ترش چیزی خاصی نیست»؛ نامگذاری شده اند؛

روانشاد «داگلاس آدامز» در سال2001میلادی، از درب سرای این دنیا بگذشتند، و پس از درگذشت ایشان؛ «ایون کالفر»، نویسنده ی «ایرلندی»، با اجازه‌ ی بیوه ی «آدامز»، و با بهره‌ گیری از آرشیو یادداشت‌ها، و نوشته‌ های چاپ نشده ی «داگلاس آدامز»؛ جلد ششم و آخرین کتاب از همین مجموعه را نیز، با عنوان: «راستی تا یادم نرفته...» را نوشتند، و در سال 2009میلادی منتشر کردند

تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 24/06/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ 04/06/1400هجری خورشید؛ ا. شربیانی

They stumbled out of the Heart of Gold and looked around them. It was very quiet among the tall buildings. The ground was covered with brightly-colored objects that, from a distance, looked a little like paperback novels. Trillian picked one up.

"It's a paperback novel!" she said, surprised. "Long Hard Ride, by Lorelei James." She flipped through it. "Hm, who'd have thought that the late inhabitants of Frogstar Z would have been into women's erotica?"

She picked up some more. "Be With Me, by Maya Banks... Dangerous Secrets, by Lisa Marie Rice... A Little Harmless Pleasure, by Melissa Schroeder. They're all women's erotica!

The rest of this review is available elsewhere (the location cannot be given for Goodreads policy reasons)

Please, before anything... DON'T PANIC.


This review is harmless, well mostly harmless.

I think that one of the things that one has to keep in mind while reading this book is that it was written in 1979. Having this important factor in perspective, it's quite astonishing the vision of Douglas Adams, the author, presenting a lot of visionary elements, starting with the very "book inside the book", I mean The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, since it's presented as an electronic book. which now it's a very common way to read a lot of books now. Also, he mentioned stuff like "touch-sensitive screens" that yet again, it's now something introduced in our daily lives. Science-Fiction, the good science fiction is defined by being visionary in the moment to be published and a fact, years later. Just like Verne's work predicting events like space rockets and nuclear submarines.

n  The President of the Universe holds no real power. His sole purpose is to take attention away from where the power truly exists...n

Obviously, beside the mesmering tecnology stuff that he predicted, the signature style here is his remarkable sense of humor, SMART sense of humor. In literature and pop culture in general, there were been unforgettable examples of computers like the cold HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey and the noble K.I.T.T. from Knight Rider, also robots like the loyal R2-D2 from Star Wars and the logical robots from I, Robot short story collection. However, nothing of that can prepare you to the experience of meeting "Eddie", the Main Computer of the Heart of Gold spaceship or Marvin, the Paranoid Android. This is one of the best traits of Douglas Adams' wit in the development of artificial intelligence. I wasn't surprised since some months ago, I read Shada by Gareth Roberts but based on the Doctor Who's unaired script written by Douglas Adams where you find another priceless example of a computer with a personality that only Adams is able to develop. You laugh and laugh with them BUT not only because they's funny but also they are truly logical as artifical intelligences in their way to react to situations. Adams' impact of how presenting artificial intelligence can be found too in another novel of Doctor Who, Festival of Death by Jonathan Morris, where the author showed how well he learned Adams' lessons.

n  Resistance is useless!n

I believe that Douglas Adams' involvement in the production of the iconic British sci-fi TV series Doctor Who as script editor and writer of three stories, it was fated since I found remarkable similarities on the premises of both works, this novel and the TV series. Both has a peculiar fellow who stole certain machine and along with companions is travelling around. So, it wouldn't a surprise that he got some inspiration since Doctor Who was widely known since 1963 specially on its native country, England. Of course, his participation on another British TV institution like Monty Python's Flying Circus was a relevant point for Adams to explode his humoristic potential.

n  To boldly split infinitives that no man had split before...n

It's possible that people unfamiliar with Adams' work could think that since this is a novel with comedy, they could think that it can't be a "serious" science-fiction book. However, the brilliance of this novel is its capacity of offering smart humor while using scientific concepts like the theory of faster-than-light objects. Even you won't be able to fight against his priceless explanation behind the UFOs' sightings.

Without spoiling anything, I think that my only reason of getting off a star in my rating of this great novel was its lacking a proper closure. I understand that this the first book in a trilogy of five books (yes, you read correctly, it wasn't a mistake) so the adventures and mysteries will continue in the second book The Restaurant at the End of the Universe. However, it was quite unsettling when you are having the time of your life reading it and the book just stopped to have words. I describe it like that since I didn't feel an ending. It was indeed just like the impossibility of not finding more words in the book. What I can give to Adams is that that was quite improbable but in my opinion, quite unlikely way to just "ending" this book.

Certainly I want to read the rest of this great n  TRILOGYn of n  FIVEn books. (Yes, yet again, you read well, and it isn't a mistake)

It’s true what they say... You pick up n  The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxyn and either chuck it away when your head starts to whirl OR you totally appreciate the head-whirling sensation, plunge right in and don’t surface till you have reached the Restaurant at the End of The Universe.

It is with great delight and spots before my eyes that I can proclaim that I belong to the latter breed. You need a wee bit of whimsy, a lot of quirky and a love for all things whacky (all three which I possess in abundance) to appreciate the magnificence of this space odyssey.

The plot is fairly simple. Seconds before planet Earth is completely demolished to make way for a galactic bypass, bemused Englishman Arthur Dent is whisked away to safety by his friend, Ford Prefect. Ford is not an out-of-work actor as he has led everyone to believe. He is in fact, the resident of a small planet in the vicinity of Betelgeuse and a researcher for the revised edition of ‘The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy’.

Together, the bursting-with-enthusiasm Ford and the bursting-with-disbelief Arthur get set to cruise around the galaxy. Adding to the comedy of errors are Zaphod Beeblebrox, the two-headed, three-armed galactican president; Trillian, a lady who by some bizarre coincidence had once given Arthur the ditch at an earth-party and Marvin, the oppressively-depressed robot who could drive even a spaceship to suicide.

Along the way, they have many a hit-and-fly situation with various warped creatures who inhabit the universe…they listen to some truly terrible poetry…they land on the legendary planet, Magrathea…and even learn about the super-intelligent computer *DEEP THOUGHT* and it’s mission to answer the question to Life, The Universe and everything. All this while trying to find a decent cup of tea...

Douglas Adams was the king of one-liners and whip-smart dialogue. He took human flaws, failings and reams of red-tape and converted it into a seriously funny tale. Many argue that the written work is just a reflection of Adams’thoughts…well hell..which book isn’t?!?

I have hemmed and hawed over the years wondering whether I should pick up the book or not…always inhaling it in bits and pieces. All I can say to the still-wary is this: grab the spaceship by it’s tail-lights and get geared for a mad-trip of a lifetime.

Nothing to review here, awesome no matter how many time you read it.

n  "He felt that his whole life was some kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it."n

The world has gone mad. No, the entire universe has. And by reading this, we get to laugh about it. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a little bit of a mad ride, but what a joyous one!



Arthur Dent, a regular, averagely intelligent guy from Earth one day finds himself entangled in a very improbable chain of events that lead him to finding out that his best friend is an alien. Everything goes downhill from there. There is no point in summarizing the story, as it's not the story that makes this book special.

n  "For a moment, nothing happened. Then, after a second or so, nothing continued to happen."n

It's how the story is made up. Everything is reversed and the narrative takes the most surprising and unexpected twists and turns, always resulting in something humorous. It's more than a space opera, however, because in its absurdity it manages to be highly relevant, even over three decades after its publication.



Its puts us into our place. Humans have this tendency to think of themselves as the most developed species, but little did we know that the universe is in fact run by mice. And the aliens in this book are all just as clueless about where they belong and what kind of world they live in. Which is comforting, because isn't this was life is essentially like? Confusing, sometimes seemingly pointless.

The Hitchhiker's Guide is a kind reminder that that's okay, that it is enough to remember that we're just part of something that is so much bigger than the perspective we have on it. And while we never will fully understand what is happening around us, we might as well just try, gathering as much knowledge as we can in order to find our way in a world that is full of chance and coincidence.