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Fiction. Science Fiction. Thriller. Humor (Fiction.) HTML:Now celebrating the 42nd anniversary of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, soon to be a Hulu original series! “Wild satire . . . The feckless protagonist, Arthur Dent, is reminiscent of Vonnegut heroes.”—Chicago Tribune The unhappy inhabitants of planet Krikkit are sick of looking at the night sky above their heads—so they plan to destroy it. The universe, that is. Now only five individuals stand between the killer robots of Krikkit and their goal of total annihilation. They are Arthur Dent, a mild-mannered space and time traveler who tries to learn how to fly by throwing himself at the ground and missing; Ford Prefect, his best friend, who decides to go insane to see if he likes it; Slartibartfast, the indomitable vice president of the Campaign for Real Time, who travels in a ship powered by irrational behavior; Zaphod Beeblebrox, the two-headed, three-armed ex-president of the galaxy; and Trillian, the sexy space cadet who is torn between a persistent Thunder God and a very depressed Beeblebrox. How will it all end? Will it end? Only this stalwart crew knows as they try to avert “universal” Armageddon and save life as we know it—and don’t know it! “Adams is one of those rare treasures: an author who, one senses, has as much fun writing as one has reading.”—Arizona Daily Star.… (more)
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I love this series and am enjoying them thoroughly!
I listened to this on audio so here is a review of the audio portion of this book:
The
On to, So Long, and Thanks For All The Fish
While good, the focus on a single plot to drive at dragged down what could have been another classic. Average with occasional flashes of brilliance
The inhabitants of planet Krikkit find out that they are not alone in the universe and so they plan to destroy everyone who is not them. Our heroes (Arthur Dent, Ford Prefect, Slartibartfast, Zaphod Beeblebrox, and Trillian) must try to save the universe from
A few of my favorite parts: Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged, who is on a quest to personally insult every individual in the Universe - in alphabetical order; Arthur's flying lessons, where he tries to throw himself at the ground - and miss; Agrajag, who keeps getting reincarnated, only to be accidentally killed, repeatedly, by Arthur.
The book starts with Arthur and Ford Prefect being stuck in prehistoric earth for a number of years, when they are saved by a Chesterfield sofa that transports them to the future. The two of them end up in England in the middle of a cricket game, just a day before the Earth is destroyed by the Vogons. There they meet Slartibartfast and Arthur and Ford find themselves embarking on a mission to save the Universe. During their journey, planet Krikkit is introduced and the characters delve into Krikkit's history to learn how the Krikkiters became xenophobic and their plan to destroy the entire Universe. Ages ago planet Krikkit was imprisoned in a slo-time envelope, however there is a force behind all this and it wants to set Krikkit free.
The beginning was was quite vague, but this is normal for these books and I thought it would start to make sense soon. I am disappointed though that this book never really cut it, it is silly to the point that it started to annoy me. The jumping from one thing to another lost me, sometimes it went on and on about something that doesn't have anything to do with the story until it picked up where it left off. There is not much action going on in this book, and it did seem to drag for a while. I am also not happy that my favorite character, Zaphod Beeblebrox, has been pushed to the side and is turned into a sad, much less interesting character. Having said that, the story still has its funny moments, but nowhere as amusing as the previous books. Oh, and good job Marvin is still there to save the day.
I am not sure what Adams was thinking when he wrote this book, the first two books were so much fun but this one just doesn't have the edge. It feels like he ran out of ideas when he wrote this one. Nonetheless I will continue to read this series, and hope that the next book will be better!
Unfortunately the third Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy book is nowhere near as entertaining as the first two installments. The tone of it changes considerably to somewhat this side of maudlin, apart
As is true of all the Hitchhiker books, the plot is merely a framework upon which to hang the humor, parody, and satire. This book is the first int he series to begin to show the cracks as old jokes start to become tired and worn, the satire begins to become a little shrill, and the parody begins to become a little wearying. However, starting from as high a point as The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and The Restaurant at the End of the Universe allows Adams to show a little drop off in quality while still producing an excellent book.
I haven't read beyond this point in the series. Too bad, I didn't get to experience the book that has the best subtitle ever: The fifth volume in the increasingly misnamed trilogy
Dascienceguy.wordpress.com
On the bright side, the same sort of humor is still there. The negative is that you (or at least, I) spent so much time trying to figure out what is happening that I kind of glossed over many of the jokes.
On the plus side, the idea for the plot of this one is quite good, and once I finally got a hang of what was going on I really enjoyed it, but it took a bit more time to get into it. We find out that there is an intriguing alien race trying to destroy the world by recovering a number of items, and of course it's up to Arthur Dent and friends to stop them. These aliens, the people of Krikkit, are quite interesting as well. It is their fear that causes them to lash out so harshly against whatever is different from them. We, as humans, sometimes experience something very similar, and as scary as it is, some relations can be drawn here.
Life, the Universe and Everything begins where The Restaurant at the End of the Universe left off with Arthur Dent and Ford Prefect trapped on prehistoric Earth. Just when Arthur decides he will go mad Ford shows up to
The plot on this one meanders and completely strays off course quite often. Those tangents are still clever and some are laugh out loud funny to read.
I like when Arthur accidently teleports to Agrajag's lair and discovers that he has been killing Agrajag over and over again in
I also like that the Norse God Thor has a part in the story. I'll be reading the fourth in the series next.