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The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy #4

So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

douglas adams

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Back on Earth with nothing more to show for his long, strange trip through time and space than a ratty towel and a plastic shopping bag, Arthur Dent is ready to believe that the past eight years were all just a figment of his stressed-out imagination. But a gift-wrapped fishbowl with a cryptic inscription, the mysterious disappearance of Earth's dolphins, and the discovery of his battered copy of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy all conspire to give Arthur the sneaking suspicion that something otherworldly is indeed going on. . . . God only knows what it all means. And fortunately, He left behind a Final Message of explanation. But since it's light-years away from Earth, on a star surrounded by souvenir booths, finding out what it is will mean hitching a ride to the far reaches of space aboard a UFO with a giant robot. But what else is new?

0 pages, Audio CD

First published October 12,1984
Series
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

This edition

Format
0 pages, Audio CD
Published
January 1, 2001 by Phoenix Books, Inc.
ISBN
9781597770057
ASIN
1597770051
Language
English
Characters More characters
  • Arthur Dent

    Arthur Dent

    Arthur Philip Dent is a fictional character and the hapless protagonist of the comic science fiction series The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams.In the radio, LP and television versions of the story, Arthur is played by Simon Jones (...

  • Ford Prefect

    Ford Prefect

    Ford Prefect is a fictional character in The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by the British author Douglas Adams. His role as Arthur Dents friend – and rescuer, when the Earth is unexpectedly demolished to make way for a hyperspace bypass at t...

  • Marvin, the paranoid android

    Marvin The Paranoid Android

    Marvin is a robot (android) that has been programmed with a "Genuine People Personality" unfortunately he is therefore genuinely depressed.more...

  • Fenchurch

    Fenchurch

    One Thursday afternoon at a small café in Rickmansworth, a young woman found the solution for the human race to live in harmony. Unfortunately, _The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy_ was not her story, we never learned her name, and we thought she wa...

  • Russell

    Russell

    ...

  • Rob McKenna

    Rob Mckenna

    ...

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About the author

Profile Image for douglas adams

douglas adams

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Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Douglas Noel Adams was an English author, humourist, and screenwriter, best known for The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (HHGTTG). Originally a 1978 BBC radio comedy, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy developed into a "trilogy" of five books that sold more than 15 million copies in his lifetime. It was further developed into a television series, several stage plays, comics, a video game, and a 2005 feature film. Adams's contribution to UK radio is commemorated in The Radio Academy's Hall of Fame.
Adams also wrote Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (1987) and The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul (1988), and co-wrote The Meaning of Liff (1983), The Deeper Meaning of Liff (1990) and Last Chance to See (1990). He wrote two stories for the television series Doctor Who, co-wrote City of Death (1979), and served as script editor for its seventeenth season. He co-wrote the sketch "Patient Abuse" for the final episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus. A posthumous collection of his selected works, including the first publication of his final (unfinished) novel, was published as The Salmon of Doubt in 2002.
Adams was a self-proclaimed "radical atheist", an advocate for environmentalism and conservation, and a lover of fast cars, technological innovation, and the Apple Macintosh.

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Community Reviews

Rating(4.1 / 5.0, 99 votes)
5 stars
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99 reviews All reviews
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Huangi
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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1. You will never read anything so British again in your lifespan.

2. If you're a writer, try underlining every adverb in this book. Then, read a book on fiction writing that advises you to avoid using adverbs. (Any ironic chuckling afterwards is optional.)

3. This book should be rated "Mostly Harmless."

4. Thanks, Mr. Adams. So long, and thanks for all the fun.
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Tsubakiaka
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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Addio e grazie per il buonumore

Se alla quarta puntata della serie iniziata con la “Guida galattica per autostoppisti” sono ancora a svagarmi nei romanzi di questo sottovalutato geniaccio di Douglas Adams è soprattutto per il buonumore che ogni volta la sua lettura mi procura.

Pur essendo ben lontano dai vertici della narrativa, questo humour tipicamente inglese, che flirta col non-sense e richiama lo spirito dei Monty Python e la fantasia creativa di Kurt Vonnegut (che non è inglese ma in qusta compagnia ci sta…) ha la sottile capacità di divertire, divertire e divertire.

Attraverso episodi abbastanza brevi da evitare lo sbadiglio, ma sviluppati a sufficienza per andare oltre la facile battuta e la situazione semplicemente buffa, si procede a buona andatura e alla fine il giudizio dipende più dalla propria disponibilità a farsi portare un po’ in giro con leggerezza che dal valore intrinseco del libro, pressoché analogo agli episodi che lo hanno preceduto. Da qualche parte devo averlo già scritto, ma ribadisco che, se si è trovata insoddisfacente la lettura della “Guida Galattica”, è meglio lasciar perdere…
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quagmire2
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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Running on empty: Following a highly productive breakthrough period when he was simultaneously knocking out scripts for both Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and Doctor Who, Douglas Adams famously struggled with writer's block during the later half of his career as a novelist. Previous Hitchhiker novel Life, the Universe and Everything was itself a re-worked Doctor Who story, and by the time of 4th Hitchhiker novel So Long, And Thanks For All The Fish you can feel the author struggling to find a story to tell.

If there is a problem with this novel, it's that there simply isn't enough story here. Previous instalments in the Hitchhiker's series may have been short, but they were packed with fantastic mind bending SF concepts, which are almost entirely absent here. The main storyline consists of Arthur Dent returning to a mysteriously no-longer-destroyed Earth, and having a romance with Fenchurch, the girl who in a throwaway line in the original Hitchhiker's novel had a divine revelation on how to achieve world peace just before the Earth was destroyed by the Vogons. Arthur and Fenchurch's romance is touching, especially a chapter where they both fly through the clouds together, but storywise it doesn't really go anywhere - the identity of Earth's saviours is fairly evident from the books title (though incidentally, why is there a picture of a sea lion on the cover - misdirection?), and Fenchurch never remembers her divine plan for world peace.

At the end Adams tags on a coda where Arthur and Fenchurch meet up with Ford Prefect and Marvin (who dies, again) to read God's Last Message To His Creation, following up on the finale of Life, the Universe and Everything, but if anything this feels almost tagged on simply to please the fans of the previous novels. The only ideas that are original to this book, such as the unwilling Rain God, or Wonko's inside-out asylum, are mildly amusing but nothing more.

So Long, and Thanks For All The Fish is by no means a bad novel, and thanks to Adams prose it is engagingly readable, but it is a novel all about character - specifically having a few nice things happen to Arthur Dent for a while- and sorely lacking in plot, so don't expect anything much to actually happen beyond Arthur's romance. A pleasant read for fans of the previous 3 novels in the series, but by this stage Douglas Adams just seems to have run out of ideas, and was grinding a novel out for the sake of it.

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rokkugoh
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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We apologise for the inconvenience.

I'll let you find out the significance of these words by reading almost to the end of this fourth book in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series.

I read this book many years ago and I found it funnier then than I do know. Something has changed and it's not the book, so it must be me. Has my sense of humour changed or have I read many more books since then which are similar to this one, and so the genre is no longer as interesting?

Anyway, a synopsis of the plot is that Arthur Dent returns to Earth, finds it wasn't destroyed by the Vogons, learns all the dolphins have gone (the title is their parting message) and meets and falls for a girl called Fenchurch (Fenny). Ultimately his desire to return to the stars with Fenny becomes too strong. Before leaving, Arthur meets the Rain God, Rob McKenna and Wonko the Sane. He is also
reunited with Ford Prefect.

At the end of the book, Arthur and Fenny meet the marvellous character of Marvin the Paranoid Android, who is still as funny as ever he was.
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AraragiKoyomi
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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خب خب خب!
درباره معنای زندگی که هیچ ابهامی وجود نداره. از همون جلد اول جوابو داریم، "۴۲" عه مقدس! ( لطفا تفسیر شخصی نکنید، فلسفه زندگی که مسخره بازیه یه مشت تفسیر کننده نیست ) این از این.

بعد ممکنه سوال پیش بیاد: رویا جون! چرا اصلا باید این جلد رو هم بخونیم؟
جوابش اینه که: چون این جلد چهارمه و برای خوندن جلد پنج، لازمه اول این جلد خونده بشه.( این اواخر خیلی منطقی شدم و دارم به مشکل برمیخورم.)

حالا که تا اینجا رو خوندید احتمالآ بدجور مشتاقید بدونید ماجرای این جلد چجوریه. ( خواهش میکنم حتی اگر شده تظاهر کنید مشتاقید چون خیلی برام مهمه تحت تاثیر قرارتون بدم)
باید عرض کنم که این جلد در دسته‌بندی علمی_تخیلی_کمدی_رمانتیک قرار میگیره. چون همه چیزایی که توی اون دسته بندی وجود داره رو توی خودش جا داده ،اونم به شکل خیلی خیلی جذاب که بنظرم فقط از عهده داگلاس آدامز بر میاد و لاغیر.
تفاوت این جلد با سه تای قبلی اینه که رمنسش بیشتر و طنزش کمتره.

می پرسید از کدوم قسمت داستان بیشتر خوشم اومد؟ ( ناامیدم نکنید لطفا)
خب اون قسمتی که " مرشد و مارگاریتا" رو ریخته بود توی کتابش واقعا واقعا برام الهام بخش بود. ببینید واقعا صحنه سورئال و بی نهایت احساسی بود ، پرواز آرتور و فنی توی آسمون شب( این دوتا قهرمان های خل و چل این جلدن)، هم آغوشی و معاشقه بین ابرها و بعد هم روی بال هواپیما... خیلی دوستش داشتم، تا اونجا که چشمام اشکی هم شد حتی!

و جمله‌ی طلایی کتاب، آخرین پیام ایزد به مخلوقاتش:
((بابت مزاحمت‌های ایجاد شده پوزش می‌طلبیم))
قلب منکه با خوندنش آروم شد، شما رو نمیدونم.
...........
ببینید، همه این مزخرفات رو بریزید توی توالت. فقط اگر می خوایید یکم طنز درست و حسابی بخونید که ارزش وقت گذاشتن داشته باشه، بنظرم این مجموعه انتخاب خوبیه. البته زیادم وقت نمیگیره خوندن هر جلدش.
طاقچه داره توی کافه بینهایت
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Darkmagic160
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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It might be speciesism, but I thought that dolphins would be funnier

Never change a running system
Adams had to write this one because he needed another part of the series, but instead of integrating it in the metaplot like the second and third part, he made a whole new, but sadly not better,
reading experience out of it.

This can be good for friends of less interwoven stories that focus on one main topic, but strangely that´s the opposite of what the other parts of the series have been. It´s less funny, not so complex, not so intensively dealing with the events of the other parts and how they influence the present, and just not feeling as what the reader expects.

The other parts finished by combining integrated elements into a real aha-wow-moment, but this time the end felt bleak. This critique would be inappropriate because, for an average joe author, it would still be very good quality, but the problem for ingenious people is that it can get very tricky to come up to the expectations. Personally, I would have wished for more of the elements that made the series great instead of this wishy-washy whatever thing and it should have stopped me from reading the fifth part which is even worse, according to what people say. And that´s true.

A final roast: The humor seems to have gone from ironic and deep to more trivial and situational slapstick and why there is so much space for useless character description is a mystery to me too.

Tropes show how literature is conceptualized and created and which mixture of elements makes works and genres unique:
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...
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winsmoke124
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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“Scientist must also be absolutely like a child. If he sees a thing, he must say that he sees it, whether it was what he thought he was going to see or not. See first, think later, then test. But always see first. Otherwise you will only see what you were expecting.”



This is my favorite of all the "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" books.

I know it kind of defies the whole travel the Galaxy and see the universe idea, but I love that Arthur is content and happy; that he found a like-minded being that likes him back.
Call me a Romantic.
And who can't love John Watson (Wonko the Sane)? He is the first-ever person I know that knows exactly where we live and he is not afraid of being called a fool.

Honestly if you have not read these books; just go pick them up!
You'll laugh so hard... and if you don't what's wrong with you?
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