It should probably be 4*. I attribute a certain amount of yawning while reading this to it having been a long time since I read Volume 2 of "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy". Still, I surely will read Volume 4, "So Long, and Thanks For All the Fish" if only for the title that reminds me of the divorce negotiations between the EU and England.

Another world, another day, another dawn.
The early morning’s thinnest sliver of light appeared silently. Several billion trillion tons of superhot exploding hydrogen nuclei rose slowly above the horizon and managed to look small, cold and slightly damp.
There is a moment in every dawn when light floats, there is the possibility of magic. Creation holds its breath.

... and then a voice from above utters the words:

“You’re a jerk, Dent!”

Arthur Dent has every reason to be both puzzled and angry at the blue skinned alien called Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged who came over the aeons only to insult him. In the previous two volume the hitchhiking Earthman served as a sort of lightning rod, attracting all sort of (explosive) troubles on his head.

He was stranded on prehistoric earth as the result of a complex sequence of events that had involved his being alternately blown up and insulted in more bizarre regions of the Galaxy than he had ever dreamed existed, and though life has now turned very, very, very quiet, he was still feeling jumpy.
He hadn’t been blown up now for five years.

Arthur Dent should actually rejoice at the respite he gets and at being back on his previously annihilated planet, but prehistoric times had very little to offer in the entertaining department. His melancholic mood is lyrically captured by an author who is more famous for his comedy chops:

In the end, it was the Sunday afternoons he couldn’t cope with, and that terrible listlessness that starts to set in at about 2:55, when you know you’ve taken all the baths you can usefully take that day, that however hard you stare at any given paragraph in the newspaper you will never actually read it, or use the revolutionary new pruning technique it describes, and that you stare at the clock the hands will move relentlessly on to four o’clock, and you will enter the long dark teatime of the soul.   the passage is referring to the troubles with immortality that Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged is experiencing, but for me it has an universal resonance with regard to my own empty and dark weekends with nothing to do

Escape comes in the unusual form of a galloping Chesterfield sofa, but readers familiar with the style of Douglas Adams already know to be prepared for the unexpected and to always have a towel handy before they embark on a new adventure. Arthur Dent and his companion in exile Ford Perfect should also be more careful what they wish for, because times are about to get interesting and the boredom of prehistoric times will be sorely missed : an old friend, a planet designer specialising in shaping fjords, has need of their assistance for nothing less than the saving of the Universe.

“Deep in the fundamental heart of mind and Universe,” said Slartibartfast, “there is a reason.”
Ford glanced sharply around. He clearly thought this was taking an optimistic view of things. [...] “Where are we going?”
“We are going to confront an ancient nightmare of the Universe.”
“And where are you going to drop us off?”
“I will need your help.[...] A curse has arisen from the mists of time. A curse which will engulf the Galaxy in fire and destruction, and possibly bring the Universe to a premature doom. I mean it,” he added.
“Sounds like a bad time,” said Ford; “with luck I’ll be drunk enough not to notice. [...] My doctor says that I have a malformed public duty gland and a natural defficiency in moral fiber, and that I am therefore excused from saving Universes.”

Move over, Mr. Flash Gordon! Arthur Dent is taking over the role of saviour of the Universe and the quest starts right here on Earth (after alittle time travel on the Bistromathic spaceship) when alien war robots from the planet Krikkit are stealing a piece of junk from the middle of a sports field. For many readers, a piece of burned wood from Melbourne, Australia in the year 1882 would mean nothing, to others it is a holy relic of national pride. For Slartibartfast and his unwilling heroes, it is an artefact of ancient power and evil.

The game you know as cricket is just one of those curious freaks of racial memory that can keep images alive in the mind aeons after their true significance has been lost in the mists of time. Of all the races of the Galaxy, only the English could possibly revive the memory of the most horrific wars ever to sunder the Universe and transform it into what I am afraid is generally regarded as an incomprehensibly dull and pointless game.

... and so the journey into danger and adventure begins anew, with only a towel and a small tourist guide in my pockets, ready to witness the neverending wonders of the Universe.
Wheeee!!! Sign me in for the trip, Mr. Adams! Each episode is better than the previous one for me, and I am in awe at the inventivity of the setting, the satirical sharpness of the sketches, the all embracing and gentle acceptance of our human condition in a cold and hostile Universe. So fasten your seatbelts folks, relax and have an enormously long lunch break!  Lunch breaks are apparently the secret of succes in business that all the big megacorporations are keeping mum about. Hurling Frootmig, it is said, founded the Guide, established its fundamental principles of honesty and idealism and went bust. Hurling only recovered when a friendly tip revealed to him the power of the mighty Lunch Break

Riding in a ship powered by advanced mathematics theories ( The Bistromathic Drive is a wonderful new method of crossing vast interstellar distances without all that dangerous mucking about with Improbability Factors. [...] The most extraordinary thing about it was that it looked only partly like a spaceship with guidance fins, rocket engines and escape hatches and so on, and a great deal like a small, upended Italian bistro. ), a ship made invisible by a force field called “Somebody Else’s Problem” , Arthur and his friends will guide my eyes towards the absurdity of war, making fun I suspect of some of my favorite epic fantasies series in the vein of J R R Tolkien:

The Silastic Armorfiends of Striterax were engaged in one of their regular wars with the Strenuous Garfighters of Stug, and were not enjoying it as much as usual because it involved and awful lot of trekking through the Radiation Swamps of Cwulzenda and across the Fire Mountains of Frazfraga, neither of which terrains they felt at home in.
So when the Strangulous Stillettans of Jajazikstak joined in the fray and forced them to fight another front in the Gamma Caves of Carfrax and the Ice storms on Varlengooten, they decided that enough was enough, and they ordered Hactar to design for them an Ultimate Weapon.
“What do you mean,” asked Hactar, “by Ultimate?”
To which the Silastic Armorfiends of Striterax said, “Read a bloody dictionary,” and plunged back into the fray.

Later on I get a chance to take part in the Ultimate Party to end all parties, a millenia long bash on a floating hotel that attracts the Galactic jet-set while making the host planet a wasteland through unbridled consumption and pollution. Sounds familiar? The Romans are reputed to say “Aftee us, the Flood!” and thinks apparently are unchanged in the future. Pro-Tip if you happen to get an invite: don’t use the word Belgium :

“Belgium,” exclaimed Arthur.
A drunken seven-toed sloth staggered past, gawked at the word and threw itself backward at a blurry-eyed pterodactyl, roaring with displeasure.

In between saving the Universe from its latest Ultimate Weapon of Total Annihilation, we might spent a moment on the issue of truth, as in shutting down the voices of reason and moderation:

When it became clear what was happening, and as it became clear that Prak could not be stopped, that here was truth in its absolute and final form, the court was cleared.
Not only cleared, it was sealed up, with Prak still in it. Steel walls were erected around it, and, just to be on the safe side, barbed wire, electric fences, crocodile swamps and three major armies were installed, so that no one would ever have to hear Prak speak.

What exactly did this man Prak know that was so dangerous to the establishement? Was he another Snowden shouting to the world that the emperor has no clothes on? We might never know more than the fact that it has something to do with frogs, because when Prak lays eyes on Arthur Dent mayhem issues:

He howled and screamed with laughter. He fell over backward onto the bench. He hollered and yelled in hysterics. He cried with laughter, kicked his legs in the air, he beat his chest. Gradually he subsided, panting. He looked at them. He looked at Arthur. He fell back again howling with laughter. Eventually he fell asleep.

In the end, laughter may be the best weapon we have at our disposal against the tyranny of people and the tyranny of time. Without a sense of humour life, the universe and everything are pointless and utterly depressing. The final scene is for me essential and relevant, but I think I’d better put it in a spoiler bracket:

Arthur Dent learns how to fly in this episode, he soars high above the petty worries of ordinary existence, and with the help of the Babel Fish he can even learn the language of birds. Are they the ultimate poets of flight or what?
Unfortunately, he discovered, once you have learned birdspeak you quickly come to realise that the air is full of it the whole time, just inane bird chatter. There is no getting away from it.
For that reason Arthur eventually gave up the sport and learned to live on the ground and love it, despite the inane chatter he heard down there as well.
Thank you again, Mr. Douglas, for the wisdom to accept the world as it is and for urging me to laugh on my way to the gallows to the tune of the Monty Python’s “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life”

An earlier passage is even more evocative for me of the unexpected depths of feeling underlining the hilarity and the sillyness of the expedition:

It seemed to him that the atoms of his brain and the atoms of the cosmos were streaming through each other. It seemed to him that he was blown on the wind of the Universe, and that the wind was him. It seemed to him that he was one of the thoughts of the Universe and that the Universe was a thought of his.

I hope I will find time for the next episode of the Hitchhker’s Guide soon. In the meantime I will let Marvin The Paranoid Android serenade you to sleep:

Now the world has gone to bed,
Darkness won’t engulf my head,
I can see in infrared,
How I hate the night.

Now I lay me down to sleep,
Try to count electric sheep.
Sweet dreams wishes you can keep,
How I hate the night.

Barking mad and made me chuckle

Not quite as fun as the second book, but this was still entertaining. I think the “plot” takes more of a role in this one, which isn’t necessarily a good thing - the best parts are just the social commentary gags and satire.

Audiobook.

I had first read this book a few years ago, although I'm pretty sure I had skimmed through the end of it. I liked it more this time around. I can't describe the plot of any of the books in this series after the first one. It's just a crazy ride. The writing is so clever and funny that I'm honestly mostly reading it for the weird British humor. I'll finish the series.

Brilliantly brilliant discussing brilliant things lol the kind of book that you can’t read wrong. While the characters haven’t changed too much it’s more about throwing them in the wildest scenarios and watching how their differing personalities interact, the questions they’re asking are getting better.

What makes this series stand out is the strength of the narrator. The narrator is incredibly prominent and steals the show most of the time. What makes this book so enjoyable are not the actions taken by the characters but the perception of their actions by the narrator.

The random thoughts always tie back into the narrative and the adventures continue to grow more and wilder. Poor Arthur lol

Oh also flight!!!!!!!!!! Sorry for the lack of punctuation I just had a lot of thoughts and no structure.

اتمام..
۳۰ تیر ۱۴۰۰
ساعت ۰۲:۲۶

I've just read the most extraordinary thing. In the US version of the third novel of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Life, the Universe and Everything, the word 'Belgium' is used to replace the word "fuck" which was in the British publication.

Apparently Douglas Adams' American publishers thought that some of the language in the book was too crude for Americans and asked him to take out the words 'fuck', 'asshole' and 'shit'. Adams' replaced asshole with kneebiter, shit with swut and fuck with Belgium! Sheer genius.

American publishers are pussies.

But you can kind of understand why when every now and again in the Feedback group someone whines that books need to be rated for language (not to mention amount of sex and violence) and there are groups devoted to letting people know if words that might upset their members are used. I remember one review where the woman said she went through the book and used a black marker on every single curse word. I hope it wasn't a library book.

But still, using Belgium, that was a low blow.

برای خوندن جلد چهارم و پنجم واقعاً احتیاج به استراحت دارم، مغزم کاملاً در مقابل کتاب داره مقاومت می‌کنه.
افت محسوسی هم حس میکنم، داگلاس آدامز هم به جفنگ افتاده یا نه؟ در جلدهای بعدی خواهیم دید.

2.5
Ha sido el peor hasta el momento. No le veía gracia a nada y la historia se me hizo muy lenta. Creo que voy a dejar de lado un poco estos libros hasta más adelante. Espero que el siguiente mejore, aunque, no estoy tan segura.

واقعاً نمی‌دونم چرا شروعش کردم وقتی هیچ امیدی به ادامه‌ش نداشتم:))
البته این جلد رو که اصلاً ۲۰ صفحه هم نخوندم ولی توی همون صفحات اول احساس می‌کردم می‌تونه جالب باشه.

اما نه، این مجموعه برای من نیست.
کاش می‌تونستم دوستش داشته باشم، کاش یه معنا و مفهومی برام داشت.
شاید بعداً؟ شاید دوباره بیام سراغش و اون موقع خوشم بیاد؟:)
الان خیلی براش بی‌حوصله‌م...

تو رو به خیر و ما رو به سلامت.
خداحافظ مارتین، آرتور، فورد، تریلیان و زاپود که من آخرشم نفهمیدم کدومتون مرده یا زن:)