3.5 Stars

I checked out the audio and I loved Stephen Fry’s narration. I love him anyway. I also checked out the book digitally so I could see Chris Riddell’s artwork which I loved of course and seriously, Stephen Fry makes it great with his voices.

Don’t forget your towel!!!

Mel

من خیلی ازش لذت بردم. امروز صبح یه ذره حالم خوب نبود و تا حالم اوکی بشه خوندمش. بلافاصله می‌رم سراغ جلد بعدی.
فقط یه حس دوگانه‌ای دارم، از یه طرف می‌گم کاش انگلیسی خونده بودم و از یه طرف می‌گم ترجمش خیلی خوب بود. نمی‌دونم.

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!

What does Kim Jong-Il, a thong-wearing mechanic and this missing link furry fellow have to do with The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy?
n  n
...you owe it to yourself and your family to find out.

With the plethora of wonderful reviews already written for this book by my fellow GRs, I decided instead to provide some helpful, practical advice on why reading this book might benefit my fellow goodreaders. Therefore, as both life management tool and a safety warning, I have compiled my:

Top 5 Reasons Why You Should Read Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy:
.
.
n  Number 5n: It’s a pleasant diversion to keep your mind occupied and pass the time while you are getting electrolysis to remove those areas patches blankets of unwanted hair:
n  n
…Yikes, somebody please get that man a Klondike Bar.

n  Number 4n: The book is smart, funny, well-written and full of wonderful commentary on the human condition and clever humor:

n   …The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't.

t… ‘You know,’ said Arthur, ‘it's at times like this, when I'm trapped in a Vogon airlock with a man from Betelgeuse, and about to die of asphyxiation in deep space that I really wish I'd listened to what my mother told me when I was young.’tt
‘Why, what did she tell you?’tt
‘I don't know, I didn't listen.’

… Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mindboggingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as the final and clinching proof of the non-existence of God. The argument goes something like this: `I refuse to prove that I exist,' says God, ‘for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.’ ‘But,’ says Man, ‘The Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED.’ ‘Oh dear,’ says God, ‘I hadn't thought of that,' and promptly vanished in a puff of logic.

t …For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much - the wheel, New York, wars and so on - whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man - for precisely the same reasons

t… ‘Ah,’ said Arthur, ‘this is obviously some strange usage of the word safe that I wasn't previously aware of.’n

Number 3: This gentleman DOES NOT appear in the book:

n  n

Seriously, isn’t the absence of thong-boy reason enough to give this book a chance?

Number 2: North Korea's Kim Jong- il hates this book
n  n
...and the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

And finally….

Number 1: Understanding the deep, nuanced meaning at the heart of this novel will help better prepare you should you ever find yourself in a situation like this:
n  n

Don’t wait until it’s too late…for yourself and your loved ones, read The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy today.

If through sharing the above bit of meaningless nonsense wisdom, I have: (i) introduced someone to a worthwhile read, or (ii)provided a means of dealing with the agonizing pain of having chunks of fur ripped from their body, or (iii) shown people a picture of a man in a thong changing a tire, or (iv) pissed off a despotic assclown, or (v) simply provided a safety tip regarding avoiding unsolicited sexual advances in the guise of impromptu gift-giving, than I feel I have accomplished something.

I only did this because I had a collection of funny pics and couldn’t figure out what else to do with them so I bootstrapped them in to a review I care.

3.5 stars.

I don't know how many times I've read this masterpiece of perfectly logical nonsense but there is a reason I try to read it every year for Towel Day (25th May). This year, I've decided to finally read the entire "trilogy" (which is also why I started a bit early).

Today must be a Thursday (funny that it actually is) because Arthur Dent has never gotten the hang of those. As it were, this particular day was when a demolition crew came to demolish his house to make way for a bypass. Shortly after, planet Earth follows its example for a hyperspace bypass. But not to worry, Arthur survives thanks to his friend Ford Prefect, who's actually an alien. They end up hitchhiking through the galaxy with a copy of the titular book, some babel fish and - of course - at least one towel. After all, there is more to the blue marble than meats the eye and it has to do with the answer to the question of Life, the Universe and Everything.

Along the way, we get overenthusiastic spaceship computers, a depressed robot, a Galactic President that would make the current one in the White House look perfectly ordinary, some mice and an award-winning engineer.

This is one of those books that you either love or hate. Not least because humour is a fickle thing. Douglas Adams managed to perfectly capture the silliness, ridiculousness and nonsense behind human existence, bureaucracy and the many questions we tend to philosophize about and wrapped them all up in a space adventure. He managed to put his finger exactly on the stupid stuff and emphasized the things we probably should pay more attention to. Such as gorgeous fjords.

As light and funny as this book seems on the surface, it is a deeper analysis of all of us; an attempt at making sense of a couple of things while not taking anything too seriously because life's too short for that (the author, sadly, proved that).

Definitely a classic that deserves all the different adaptations (it actually started out as a radio drama and was only turned into a novel later). Looking forward to finally finding out how the journey continues.

I was quite afraid I wouldn't take to the book considering how many people close to me -- as well as at parties -- would rage, rage, RAGE at my never having read Hitchhiker's Guide. What would the fallout be? Would I be shanked at the next party I went to if, when asked about my liking of the book, I were to shrug? Oh, the anxiety!

But I'm happy to report I did like it.

A lot, too, once the sperm whale and petunia chapter came up, and then all the more when the old world builder (or award-winning fjord artist) wandered in. And then I felt as if I might come to possibly have a crush on the book after Zaphod gave his monologue about how he thinks.

The absurdity in the story and its world was of the specific kind I care about -- an absurdity that manages to parallel this world's absurdity but tinged with mystery, whimsy, and wonder, of course. It's the kind of absurdity that exists in the stupendous Doctor Who, which makes sense, and exists somewhat in Dead Like Me. I don't find much purpose for the other kind of absurdity. You know the kind, that ragged, empty, cold, fraught, and menacing absurdity that lives in the Batman's Joker and performance art projects by people with bold, asymmetrical hair cuts. Shudder.

It's all right. I've found my way back.

I'll now take joy in reading Chris's hefty and timeworn Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide, rather than approach it with the dread of potentially being shanked. Which is a good thing, no?

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.

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)

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.

یک ۵ ستاره‌ی واقعی.

طنز قوی‌ش رو خیلی دوست داشتم. جنسی از بی‌در و پیکری ای که بهش می‌گن ادبیات پست‌مدرنیستی. شلوغی و قاطی‌پاتی بودن‌اش، اتفاقات‌اش و روابط علی معلولی‌ش، شخصیت‌پردازی و گیردادن‌هاش، همه و همه طوری بود که می‌خواستم من هم همینطوری بنویسم. عده‌ای نویسنده هستند که آرزو می‌کنم من هم می‌تونستم مثل اونا بنویسم و داگلاس آدامز شد یکی از همین نویسنده‌ها.

قصه خیلی خوب جلو می‌رفت و اتفاقات خیییلی بالای مرز تخیل‌ام حرکت می‌کرد. طوری که نمی‌شد حدس زد. تئوری‌هاش و بینش‌اش به هستی و جهان. دیدگاه جدیدی که بهت می‌داد. و وقتی یکم مکث می‌کردی، عمقی که توی نوشته‌ها می‌دیدی.
شاید این کتاب باعث شد بیشتر بخندم و بیشتر به سخره بگیرم چیزهایی که دور و برم هست و مهم می‌پندارم. یادآوری‌ای بر کوچیک بودن و ناچیز بودن و هیچ نبودن‌مون. خیلی وقتا نیاز به اینجور تلنگر‌هایی داریم. هی بهمون یادآوری بشه که هیچی نیستیم.

به‌زودی بپرم برای قسمت بعدی، یعنی رستورانِ آخر دنیا!

n  Summaryn
n  n

Along with his friend, Arthur Dent escapes from Earth before it was demolished and goes for a hilarious yet intriguing trip through the galaxy.

n  Some fascinating facts related to this this book n
I thought that this was a book mainly for the younger audience, and I wouldn't enjoy it. Then I accidentally came across an interview of Elon Musk where he discussed his Hitchhiker’s-Guide-inspired Design Philosophy and told that it was this book that inspired him to make SpaceX. That, at last, convinced me to read this book. And it was an absolute joy to read.
n  n

n  Why are so many people obsessed with this book? How did it influence Elon Musk’s design philosophy?n
For knowing more about it. I am sharing the excerpts from Elon Musk's interview here.

n  Science Fiction to Realityn
Here Elon beautifully lays out the philosophical points from Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, which have shaped the way he thinks through tough engineering challenges.

n  Elon Musks’ Hitchhiker’s-Guide-inspired Design Philosophyn
1. "Question everything, including the question".
As Hitchhiker’s Guide teaches us, if you are given access to the Universe’s most powerful supercomputer—a system that can answer any question you throw at it—don’t waste its time with a question you haven’t properly thought through. The same goes for a beautiful human brain.
When approaching any challenge, first ask yourself, “Am I asking the right question?” Alternatively, “Am I being asked the right question?”

2. “Take ages to form your question.”
The climax of the first book in the series focuses on relaying this lesson to its readers: If you don’t understand the question in the first place, you won’t understand the answer it produces.

3. “Question your constraints.”
The world of rocket science comes with a load of constraints: Time, physical, budgetary, the list goes on. But, Elon warns, “Don’t design to your constraints without calling into question those constraints.”

4. “Don’t optimize a thing that shouldn’t exist.”
We all find ourselves in the midst of a task that suddenly seems silly. “Why am I doing this?” We are creatures of habit, and we are great at following orders. But, sometimes, we forget that orders come from creatures of habit. And, sometimes, habits must be broken in the name of efficiency and progress. SpaceX’s extremely fast-paced innovation makes it clear that they are great at putting this lesson into practice.

5. “The product errors reflect organizational errors.”
To be a great leader, you have to understand the trickle-down effect of your organizational errors. They will flow all the way down the chain, injecting themselves right into your products and services.
That goes for any level of organization, all the way up to whole societies. Starting on page 1, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy does a wonderful job poking fun at the absurdity of error-filled bureaucratic processes that trickle all the way down from a government body, forming persistent issues in the daily lives of its citizens.

n  My favourite lines from this book n

n  “Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.” n  
n  
n  "For a moment, nothing happened. Then, after a second or so, nothing continued to happen.” n  
n  
n  n    “Don’t panic.”n  n

n  Verdict n
4/5 This is one of the best Science Fiction classics out there that can make us laugh and think at the same time.

I have spent almost six hours in the delightful company of Stephen Fry, reading the satirical science fiction classic with incredible skill and humour.

As I had read it before, I had to bow to Fry’s ability to speak the strange, evocative names of the characters without giving away his amusement more than with a tiny rise in the voice.

The story starts with a bleak outlook on life on Earth, of course. While Arthur Dent, a regular human being, is in a rage over a bulldozer which is about to tear down his house to make space for a bypass road, a slightly bigger construction project in space causes an alien company to erase the whole planet Earth for the same reason. Gone is our home, just moments before the extraterrestrial company receives information to the effect that the demolition of Earth is unnecessary.

Well, it is not the first time unnecessary things have happened in the construction business, and Earth is not that important anyway, from a universal standpoint, as Arthur realises while travelling with an alien journalist researching for a book called “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”. After 15 years of studying Earth, he is able to expand the entry on our planet by adding a “mostly” to the previous one-word comment summing up our entire globe: “harmless”. Arthur, reflecting on the loss of Trafalgar Square and McDonalds as the planet is destroyed, has a moment of hardship accepting that all that is left of his previous home now is a redundant note on it being “mostly harmless”.

Thus thrown on an odyssey in space, the pair makes acquaintances of diverse kinds, always learning something new about how not to take life too seriously, while still trying to understand it. One fabulous scene features the travellers on a hostile space ship, subject to the so-called vogons’ Poetry Appreciation Chair, where they are kept in place while inundated without mercy with the unbearably horrific Vogon poetry, the third worst in universe. I imagine it a bit like being strapped to a chair and forced to listen to and appreciate some famous twitter that is produced on our mostly harmless ex-planet.

When asked to choose whether they prefer to be thrown into space or to appreciate the value of what they have heard, the two heroes deliver a duet of superb poetry appreciation bullshit bingo, leaving the mean vogon wondering whether he might really have talent after all: but being heartless and cruel, he kicks them out of the spaceship anyway. Escaping certain death yet again, with a second’s margin, the hitchhikers are picked up by another ship in an act of major improbability, which is accurately calculated for them.

The most impressive character in the book is the supercomputer Deep Thought, whose sulking voice is brilliantly interpreted by Stephen Fry. He has a godlike attitude, and is preparing for the arrival of the messiah of computers, which will ultimately trump him, even though it is to be designed by Deep Thought himself.

While awaiting the time of the new supercomputer, Deep Thought agrees to give the answer to life, the universe and everything. As the recipients of the answer are not happy with it, not being able to understand what it means, they set out to find the proper question to make sense of it. Deep Thought himself can’t do it, and tells them they have to wait for the new messiah computer.

However, being inventive, they try different questions that match the answer in the intermediate time, acting very much like true philosophers.

Their first try is a bit too straightforward:

“What is six times seven?”

Then they have a touch of genius, and find the perfect interim question for the answer:

“How many roads must a man walk down?”

“Brilliant!”

“The answer, my friend, is Forty-Two, the answer is Forty-Two!”

All universe must have conspired to make them come up with that deep question for the hard-to-understand answer. It could almost be a song, if you changed the lyrics a bit? Or maybe the kind of horrible Vogonian poetry that ex-Academies would award?

While our characters are off to have lunch at the end of the universe, Deep Thought is preparing for the arrival of his son, the new supercomputer. He has given him a name already:

“The Earth!”

And the most intelligent creatures on the old, demolished planet say:

“Thank you for all the fish!”

Delightfully irreverent journey through the nonsensical human existence!