Bir haftada bitiririm umuduyla başlayıp iki ayda bitirmem, ikinci kitabın hayal kırıklığına uğratması ve üçüncü kitabın gereksiz olduğunu düşünmem dışında güzeldi. Güzel yapan en büyük etken de Ford Prefect karakteriydi tabi.

otostopçunun galaksi rehberi: 5/5
evrenin sonundaki restoran: 3/5
hayat, evren ve her şey: 2/5
elveda ve bütün o balıklar için teşekkürler: 5/5
çoğunlukla zararsız: 4/5

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.

This collection of five books and a short story can be very difficult to plod through after a while. It is a parody of science fiction that has very British humor and can be difficult for many people to connect with. The first book is fresh and witty and the second one mostly is too, but as it goes on, it becomes very rambly and inane. It doesn't always make sense and thus begins to feel pointless. The humor becomes stale and is even recycled. After reading five continuous books, it does not feel like a saga, but rather a long, inane ramble. It also has rather dark and depressing humor that is rather nihilistic and mocks the idea of belief in any kind by illustrating that there is no order to the universe. Again, it starts out fun, but didn't need to be dragged out that long. It is nearly impossible to read thie whole collection at once. Breaks with other books are needed.

The universe is a joke.

Even before I was shown the meaning of life in a dream at 17 (then promptly forgot it because I thought I smelled pancakes), I knew this to be true--and yet, I have always felt a need to search for the truth, that nebulous, ill-treated creature. Adams has always been, to me, to be a welcome companion in that journey.

Between the search for meaning and the recognition that it's all a joke in poor taste lies Douglas Adams, and, luckily for us, he doesn't seem to mind if you lie there with him. He's a tall guy, but he'll make room.

For all his crazed unpredictability, Adams is a powerful rationalist. His humor comes from his attempts to really think through all the things we take for granted. It turns out it takes little more than a moment's questioning to burst our preconceptions at the seams, yet rarely does this stop us from treating the most ludicrous things as if they were perfectly reasonable.

It is no surprise that famed atheist Richard Dawkins found a friend and ally in Adams. What is surprising is that people often fail to see the rather consistent and reasonable philosophy laid out by Adams' quips and absurdities. His approach is much more personable (and less embittered) than Dawkins', which is why I think of Adams as a better face for rational materialism (which is a polite was of saying 'atheism').

Reading his books, it's not hard to see that Dawkins is tired of arguing with uninformed idiots who can't even recognize when a point has actually been made. Adams' humanism, however, stretched much further than the contention between those who believe, and those who don't.

We see it from his protagonists, who are not elitist intellectuals--they're not even especially bright--but damn it, they're trying. By showing a universe that makes no sense and having his characters constantly question it, Adams is subtly hinting that this is the natural human state, and the fact that we laugh and sympathize shows that it must be true.

It's all a joke, it's all ridiculous. The absurdists might find this depressing, but they're just a bunch of narcissists, anyhow. Demnading the world make sense and give you purpose is rather self centered when it already contains toasted paninis, attractive people in bathing suits, and Euler's Identity. I say let's sit down at the bar with the rabbi, the priest, and the frog and try to get a song going. Or at least recognize that it's okay to laugh at ourselves now and again. It's not the end of the world.

It's just is a joke, but only some of us are in on it.

Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy (5-star)
What a blast! This zany, whacky, completely absurd story has a plot, a reason for being, a vision. It's so off the wall! I loved the absurdness and the way events came together so well, for all their craziness.
I have read this "trilogy" of 5 books many years ago. I've remembered so much of it incorrectly. I've forgotten even more than I remember. It's wonderful to have the zaniness brought back to life in this rereading.
Marvin is still my favorite character.

The Restaurant At The End Of The Universe (5 star)
Originally, this was my favorite scene in this entire book. I hope the Restaurant is as great as I remember it to be.
Update: Yes, it is. Milliway's (the restaurant at the end of the Universe) is still an amazing restaurant to visit. The concept is so imaginative and spectacular.
The rest of this book continues in the zany, wonderful unfolding of a very good story.

Life, The Universe and Everything (4-star)
The Room of Informational Illusions...…. brilliant! What a marvelous way to learn history.
The planet of Krikket….great story. A people who so cannot imagine a universe or others besides themselves who, when they learn of these things, feel the need to destroy anyone that is not them. They simply cannot imagine others. Also, I loved the reason why Earth is avoided and ignored by all the other planets and how it related to the planet Krikket.
The never-ending party!
A wonderful continuation of this series. Full of off-the-wall, zany situations and feats of logic.

So Long, And Thanks For All The Fish

Ever been on a drunk trip with friends where you converse about space and aliens and meaning of life and your existence etc! That's how this book reads. All throughout. It is weird in more than one ways and it is still brilliantly attention-grabbing. Adams has celebrated wit and intelligence of the language. He masters it. Nails it. He repeats words and sentences and twists and turns them and brings out more than one meaning out of them. I enjoyed this so much that I think I have fallen in love all over again.

Having read this book I now know the answer to the universes, lifes big question. The answer is 42! However, it's not really the answer that is important. It's the question. ;)
Actual rating; 3.5, only because this is a collection of 5 novellas and a couple of them dragged a little for me.

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.

Great science fiction combined with comedy, You'll laugh all around.

De inicio todos los libros en uno solo, mas que genial.
Que se puede decir de esa colección de historias. Personajes memorables, situaciones de todo tipo, viajes espaciales y temporales, y un humor siempre presente.
Aventura, comedia, robótica, heroísmo, de todo hay, y siempre divertido.

The story is intricate, and beautifully woven, involving inter/intra galactic worlds, employing science and of course probability.
This sci-fi book takes some of the major metaphysics questions (or at times put some, if deeply thought, in its own way) - pertaining to cosmology, universe, epistemology in a humour, which is imaginative, innovative, and illuminating on the subject. Right from addressing philosophical questions to attending idiosyncrasies of each character to the description of each one of them - in books lingua - is humorous, very humorous, really humorous, humorously humorous.
I have always enjoyed Doulas Adams' playful use or misuse of our language.
Surrealiously folks, you have to read it to believe it. And you won't believe it!

Finally I've read this popular witty classic sci-fi. The series is definitely worth praise although the last story - Mostly Harmless - seems too dark and depressive. The best parts were authors hilarious narration: the plot couldn't stand a chance without it.

"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.