No soy de leer este género, pero tengo que admitir que este libro en particular me gustó mucho. Desde la primera página fui totalmente suyo.

Uno de los atractivos más llamativos son los personajes y sus maneras de ser. Son sutilmente diferentes, pero esa sutileza, paradójicamente, los hace contrastar mucho.

El final me gustó muchísimo.

Es un hecho importante y conocido que las cosas no siempre son lo que parecen. Por ejemplo, en el planeta Tierra el hombre siempre supuso que era más inteligente que los delfines porque había producido muchas cosas -la rueda, Nueva York, las guerras, etcétera-, mientras que los delfines lo único que habían hecho consistía en juguetear en el agua y divertirse. Pero a la inversa, los delfines siempre creyeron que eran mucho más inteligentes que el hombre, precisamente por las mismas razones.

Another classic. If you don't like this series, you probably put your babel fish in the wrong hole. You are the reason that human beings are only the third most intelligent species on earth behind mice and dolphins. So long, and thanks for all the fish!

طنزی پست مدرن و نگاهی غریب به پرسش های اساسی انسان
مدت ها بود اینگونه نخندیده بودم

Quirk.
Quirk quirk.
Quirk quirk quirk.
Quirk quirk.
Quirk.

Read the above. Read it again. Read it seven more times.

The cute thing about language is that if you see, hear, or say a word enough, it just doesn't seem to make sense anymore. You know it's a word, but suddenly the q just doesn't get along with the u anymore, the r and the k just can't see eye to eye, and the i wants to run away from home.

Read it again.

That's this book.

It's quirky. It's so quirky it's quirks have quirks, and those quirks have little quirks of their own. By the time you finally work you way through the whole quirk family tree, the first quirk doesn't seem quirky anymore.

It seems annoying.

Douglas Adams has force-fed and painfully injected so much quirk into this worthless little novel that it makes your head spin. There is no point to this novel. There is no deeper meaning. The supercomputer chose '42' because I'm convinced that's the highest Adams can count.

Quirk.
Quirk.
QUIRK.

It's a sort of electronic book. It tells you eveything you need to know about anything. That's its job. [...] Which is exactly the sort of thing you need to know if you are an impoverished hitchhiker trying to see the marvels of the Universe for less than thirty Altairan dollars a day.

Anybody can have a brilliant idea for a good story, but it takes hard work and dedication to transform it into a magnum opus of satirical science-fiction. According to legend, Adams was lying on his back, pennyless and with a beer in his hand, somewhere down Innsbruck valley, gazing up at the starry night, thinking how great it would be to keep on hitchhiking all the way up there among the stars. The story may even be true, I don't give a hoot one way or another. I'm just grateful for the result of this flight of fancy that was first put together as a BBC radio show and later written down in a series of novels.

This here is a revisit, after almost thirty years, from my own hitchhiking youth to the current soft middle age comfortable armchair. I was afraid I would find the text silly, and there is enough inside that is chaotic and playful and improvisational, but there is also the "Heart of Gold" of the artist captured for eternity and beyond - the exuberant energy, the sense of wonder and the acid observations of human folly (making us understand we are not at the top of the evolution ladder is sort of the point if the exercise). In the introduction, Neil Gaiman refers to the author as : "tall, affable, smiling gently at a world that baffled and delighted him.", and it is this image that I see as I picture myself the hero of the journey, the Earthman Arthur Dent, who is send tumbling out into the universe one fine morning, as bulldozers gather around his modest home while up in the sky Vogonian spaceships are waiting to obliterate the Earth.

Arthur Dent finds himself marooned in space, with only an electronic guide book for wisdom and solace, but that is after all the human condition, and without a sense of humour we would have probably have slit our common throats before now. So listen to the words of wisdom printed on the good book, and get ready for the adventure of a lifetime:

... he also had a device that looked rather like a large electronic calculator. This had about a hundred tiny flat press buttons and a screen about four inches square on which any one of a million "pages" could be summoned at a moment's notice. It looked insanely complicated, and this was one of the reasons why the snug plastic cover it fitted into had the words DON'T PANIC printed on it in large friendly letters.

The plot is absurd and episodic, relying on word games, dramatic developments and wacky characters. The Brits have transformed this type of satire into an art form, starting with P G Wodehouse, who is cited as an influence by Adams, and continuing with Blackadder, Monty Python Flying Circus, Fawlty Towers and more recent shows like Red Dwarf. The Hitchhiker's Guide belongs in this Hall of Fame of intelligent and subversive entertainment, indeed it could be said to be one of the foundation stones of the whole edifice. Any attempt to explain and to describe the characters out of context is doomed for failure on my part, you simply have to be there to understand the importance of the towel in the career of Ford Perfect, the researcher-editor of the Guide; to be crushed by the ego of Zaphod Beeblebrox, president of the Galactic Council ("adventurer, ex-hippie, good-timer (crook? quite possibly), manic self-publisher, terrible bad at personal relationships, often thought to be completely out to lunch.") ; to design fjords with Slartibartfast or to sigh at the pointlessness of existence with Marvin the Paranoid Android:

Pardon me for breathing, which I never do anyway so I don't know why I bother to say it, oh God, I'm so depressed. Here's another of those self-satisfied doors. Life! Don't talk to me about life.

Suffice to say I had a great time revisiting the novel, and that I even found some interesting actual sci-fi concepts among the jokes and the satirical sketches. The Guide is very much like a smartphone with acces to Wikipedia, and The Infinite Probability Drive is a cool plot device, allowing the adveturers to travel from one corner of the universe to the other in a blink of an eye ("... we will be restoring normality just as soon as we are sure what is normal anyway."), but it was the description of motion detectors in entertainment devices that really rang a bell:

For years radios had been operated by means of pressing buttons and turning dials; then as the technology became more sophisticated the controls were made touch-sensitive - you merely had to brush the panels with your fingers; now all you had to do was wave your hand in the general direction of the components and hope. It saved a lot of muscular expenditure, of course, but meant that you had to sit infuriantingly still if you wanted to keep listening to the same program.

The first book in the series ends on a cliffhanger, so I guess I have to hold on to the "a nicely chilled Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster in my hand." and hitchhike in the Heart of Gold to the next destination for Arthur Dent and his friends. Until we get to the Restaurant at the End of the Universe:

... we'll be saying a big hello to all intelligent life forms everywhere ... and to everyone else out there, the secret is to bang the rocks together, guys.

4.5/5

DON’T PANIC

Always great to have a good tidbit of life advice thrown into a book.

well I see why this series has such a following. Wow I can’t wait to read the rest of it. It’s always fun to read a book that you can tell an author had fun writing. Each scene just brought so much joy to my life.

Something crazy would happen then the digital guide would bring it all together and fill me in on why a species acts a certain way. It was a really great way to fit exposition into a story while still pushing the plot forward because I was learning about the universe along with Arthur and as he read the guide I got to read it too.

Though I loved all the characters (particularly interactions between Ford and Zaphod) I have to tip my hat to Marvin. His ability to bring a room down in mere seconds is hilarious. He had the ability to make a ship commit suicide.

Anyway, I’m excited to read the remaining books and until then at least I can rest easy knowing the meaning of life is 42.

This is another instance where it's daunting to write a review because the novel is well-known and loved by millions of people. As a Sci-Fi/Fantasy reader, it's embarrassing that I've only read this once, and I've waited 'till 2016 to read this. I'm glad that I can finally say that I've read this. I've finally read and enjoyed one of the most influential books of the sci-fi genre.

I understand all the buzz regarding this novel. This is the first time in my whole life that I laughed out loud while reading a novel. I've never believed that a novel could be humorous enough to make me elicit more than a giggle or a smile. This novel changed my perception of humor novels in general. I finally have faith in that genre, and an even stronger desire to read more important Sci-Fi novels.

I don't see the need to make a short summary of the novel. You can find other reviews that did that. I'm writing this review to express my feelings toward the novel, and the journey that I had with it. Speaking of journey, it was a damn short one. I honestly hate gigantic novels, but it's always fulfilling to finish one if the book is great. This book I can consider amazing, but too short.

Aside from the humor, I enjoyed the wittiness of the novel and the author himself. The ideas he incorporated in the novel are vital for the readers to understand. It may be a humor novel, but it's more than that as a whole.

The characters are funny and well-developed. The main ones managed to make me laugh. Ford reminds me of Sheldon Cooper from The Big Bang Theory, and Arthur as Leonard Hofstadter. This is like a classic Big Bang theory episode, or maybe The Big Bang theory is a modern Hitchhiker.

The plot is not that complex, but it is interesting. I'm always interested to read about other planets in the galaxy, even if it's just fiction. I like to imagine that there are hundreds or thousands of worlds out there in the galaxy. Funny thing that the Earth blew up in this novel. Funnier that they considered Earth as a funny name in the beginning.

All the ideologies Adams incorporated here are interesting to me. How some animals are superior and manipulated us, or how the Earth was all a project of some aliens. It's funny and vastly interesting. I can't wait to read the other books in the series.

4.5/5 stars. I decided to round it down because while the novel truly entertained me, it still lacked something and made me think twice about the 5-star rating.

Otostopçunun Galaksi Rehberi bir radyo oyunu olarak başlayıp bir sürü değişikliğe uğrayarak bir kitap serisi haline gelmiş. Uzun zamandır baskısı yoktu ve Alfa Kitaptan tekrar çıktı. Elime geçtiği gibi de merakıma yenik düşüp okudum. Kitabın önsözü bile aslında size nasıl bir kitap okuyacağınızın izlenimini veriyordu.

Başlarda adapte olmakta fazlasıyla zorlandım. Hatta ve hatta ‘ben ne okuyorum ya’ dedim çoğu yerde. Bazen olaylar aşırı tuhaf bir hal aldığı için kitaptan koptuğum anlarda oldu. Oluşturulan evren oldukça ilginç. Bir saniye durun ve farelerin hayatın anlamını bulmak için insanları yaratmış olduğunu düşünün. İşte o kadar ilginç bir evren.

n  ’Hayatım boyunca dünyada bir şeylerin, büyük hatta uğursuz bir şeylerin döndüğüne, ama hiç kimsenin bana bir şey söylemediğine dair tuhaf ve açıklanmaz bir his vardı içimde.’n

Alışılmış bilimkurguların biraz ötesinde mizah yüklü bir kitap Otostopçunun Galaksi Rehberi. Diyalogları okurken inanılmaz eğlendim ve keşke hiç susmasalar dedim. İnce mesajları, felsefi düşünceleri, varoluşsal sorunları absürt mizahla harmanlayıp diyaloglara yerleştirmiş Douglas Adams.

n   ‘Ne aradığımı bilmiyorum.’
‘Neden?’
‘Çünkü… çünkü… ne aradığımı bilirsem onu arayamam.’n

Her şey kestirme yol yapımı için Arthur Dent’in evinin yıkılması ile başlıyor. Daha doğrusu yıkılmaya çalışılması ile. Arthur buldozerin önüne yatıp buna engel olmak isterken Ford Prefect geliyor ve ona dünyanın sonuna 12 dakika kaldığını söylüyor. Çünkü Vogonlar uzayda kestirme bir yol yapılması için Dünya’yı yok edecekler. Son anda Ford ve Arthur otostop çekerek Vogon gemisine binip kurtulmayı başarırlar ama bundan sonra olacak şeyler Arthur’un asla hayal edemeyeceği gibidir.

Huysuz manik depresif robot Marvin kesinlikle en sevdiğim karakter oldu. İçimde bir yerlerde bir Marvin barındırdığım için de olabilir tabi. Ama gerçekten haksız olduğunu kim söyleyebilir ki ?

n  ‘Hayat! Sakın bana hayattan bahsetmeyin.’n

Google’da ‘what is the answer to life, the universe and everything’ diye arattığınızda karşınıza 42 cevabı çıkar.
Cevap 42.
Peki asıl soru ne ?
Bu kitabı okuyun çünkü direnmek faydasız.

This book (and its Sequel, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe) are ultimately a story about how ludicrous we tiny little creatures actually are. How we fill our lives with bullshit trivialities that are nobody else’s business, with institutions and bureaucracies, and how the pattern repeats in micro and macro scale. How ultimately, people really are very silly, that we search for meaning in an existence where there probably is none beyond being, you know, nice to each other, that we’re always looking for the “will-be” and never savoring the “now”. How everyone needs to just fucking take it easy.

But most importantly, this book is funny. Laugh out loud funny. And it probably contains the greatest narrative device I’ve ever read to pass exposition along to the reader. Shall we have paragraphs of info dump? Shall we have long and tedious conversations amongst each other to explain to the reader what’s going on? No, let’s build ourselves a n00b named Arthur, and hand him a tiny electronic book that will not only explain everything the reader needs to know, but make them giggle like five years olds to boot.

Mr Adams, sir, you are missed.

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.

n  

“If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.”

n

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. Demanding 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 some of us are in on it.