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Don't Panic: collected together in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Boxset are the five novels comprising Douglas Adams' hilarious "Triology in Five Parts." Wildly popular and wholly unique, this bestselling series needs no introduction and is indispensable for would-be galactic travellers and Douglas Adams fans, old and new.The Hitchhiker's Guide to the GalaxyOne Thursday lunchtime the Earth gets unexpectedly demolished to make way for a new hyperspace bypass. For Arthur Dent, who has only just had his house demolished that morning, this seems already to be rather a lot to cope with. Sadly, however, the weekend has only just begun. The Galaxy may offer a mind-boggling variety of ways to be blown up and/or insulted, but it's very hard to get a cup of tea.The Restaurant at the End of the UniverseWhen all questions of space, time, matter and the nature of being have been resolved, only one question remains - 'Where shall we have dinner?' The Restaurant at the End of the Universe provides the ultimate gastronomic experience, and for once there is no morning after to worry about.Life, the Universe and EverythingFollowing a number of stunning catastrophes, Arthur Dent is surprised to find himself living in a hideously miserable cave on prehistoric Earth. However, just as he thinks that things cannot get possibly worse, they suddenly do. An eddy in the space-time continuum lands him, Ford Prefect, and their flying sofa in the middle of the cricket ground at Lord's, just two days before the world is due to be destroyed by the Vogons. Escaping the end of the world for a second time, Arthur, Ford, and their old friend Slartibartfast embark (reluctantly) on a mission to save the whole galaxy from fanatical robots. Not bad for a man in his dressing gown... So Long, and Thanks for All the FishThere is a knack to flying. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss. It's not an easy thing to do, and Arthur Dent thinks he's the only human who's been able to master this nifty little trick - until he meets Fenchurch, the woman of his dreams. Fenchurch once realised how the world could be made a good and happy place. Unfortunately, she's forgotten. Convinced that the secret lies within God's Final Message to His Creation, they go in search of it. And, in a dramatic break with tradition, actually find it... Mostly HarmlessArthur Dent has settled down on the small planet Lamuella and has embraced his role as a Sandwich Maker. However, his plans for a quiet life are thrown awry by the unexpected arrival of his daughter. There's nothing worse than a frustrated teenager with a copy of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy in their hands. When she runs away, Arthur goes after her determined to save her from the horrors of the universe. After all - he's encountered most of them before... Share and enjoy Douglas Adams' mega-selling trilogy in five parts in this retro paperback boxset - charting the whole of Arthur Dent's hilariously strange odyssey through space and time!… (more)
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I have a few complaints about the way it all ends up, but I better get in the bouquets while the going is good: all my quibbling below is not to detract from the fact that the original instalment, The Hitch-Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy, is one of the wittiest books ever written - the combination of a solid science fiction grounding (Adams scriptwrote for Doctor Who) and dead-eye observations about the collision of the British way of life with the Nineteen Seventies, make this little book one of the genuine cultural artefacts of the past century.
Nevertheless, and rather as it has for Floyd and Python, universal admiration for Adams (recently deceased) and the first book has tended to cloud the collective judgment as far as the rest of the series is concerned. While Adams is clearly a master of the dead-ball, the entire package is a pretty tiring affair, as if it were a good idea which ran out of steam about halfway through. Which, according to Adams himself, it was.
If you read even the first three stories back to back a few things begin to emerge. Firstly, the original (and undeniably brilliant) premise has completely evaporated by the end of the second book. Until this point the story drifts from set piece to set piece, but is guided fairly firmly by the central quest. When this runs out of gas, the linear narrative disappears, and the characters drift pointlessly between scenes with no apparent connection. What starts out as a clever concept album ends up as a sketch show. As long as the sketches are funny this is ok, if not necessarily ideal. But they too begin to run out of steam.
Whenever Adams needs to restore a semblance of continuity, he reintroduces Marvin the Paranoid Android, who turns up having been stuck somewhere for millions of years (waiting to save the author's bacon?): no bad thing, as Marvin is the most enjoyable character of the lot. Adams obviously realised the mess he'd created by the end of Life, The Universe and Everything: So Long and Thanks For All The Fish is an attempt to pull everything back together. Alas, it's wholly unsuccessful. So unsuccessful, in fact, that Adams felt obliged to have another go at the same job in Mostly Harmless, and was equally unsuccessful second time round.
After a time you also begin to realise that Adams' famously brilliant writing style consists largely of taking figures of speech and deliberately subverting them - a technique which after a while, to paraphrase it, more or less exactly fails to please the eye. By So Long..., Adams is rather arch about the whole affair - consciously introducing "the chronicler" into proceedings and on one occasion (not a little arrogantly) telling readers to re-read a seemingly incomprehensible sentence, until it is understood.
The series certainly gave him the chance to work on his storytelling, and the results are plain to see from Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, which is a superbly plotted, focussed and realised story. But, rather like his characters, for the most part in this Series Adams flounders around with the Answer, but never really gets to grips with the Question.
Mostly Harmless.
As a carbon based bipedal life form I guess humour is like art, everyone has their own likes and as a first time reader of 'The Hitcher Hikers Guide' I guess it is not to my taste. A few amusing paragraphs were not worth for me the slog of
'If I asked you where the hell we were,' said Arthur weakly, 'would I regret it?'
Ford stood up. 'We're safe,' he said.
'Oh good,' said Arthur.
'We're in a small galley cabin,'said Ford, 'in one of the spaceships of the Vogon Constructor Fleet.'
'Ah,
I've been a fan of HHGG ever since listening to the original radio series on BBC Radio 4. It has been one of my favourite books ever since, and although I chose a quotation from early in the book, it is equally funny all the way through.
2) The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
3) Life, the Universe and Everything
4) So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish
5) Mostly Harmless
A book filled with memorable and well written characters. I recommend this book to anyone who likes science fiction and likes to be surprised with a lot of nonsensical silliness and humour.
It's been some time since reading it so will re-review when I have had the chance to re-read
Great book. A must-read for any sci-fi fan.
Oh, and the rest of the books are pretty darn excellent, as well. :)
I also wrote the “perfect sonnet”:
Sonnet 42
That thou hast her, it is not all my grief,
And yet it may be said I loved her dearly;
That she hath thee, is of my wailing chief,
A loss in love that touches me more nearly.
Loving offenders, thus I will excuse ye:
Thou dost love her, because thou knowst I love her;
And for my sake even so doth she abuse me,
Suffering my friend for my sake to approve her.
If I lose thee, my loss is my love's gain,
And losing her, my friend hath found that loss;
Both find each other, and I lose both twain,
And both for my sake lay on me this cross:
But here's the joy; my friend and I are one;
Sweet flattery! Then she loves but me alone.
By MySelfie, the Flatulent Shakespeare
(Bought in 1994)
NB: At the risk of being jumped on and beaten up by everyone who hates such things being mentioned, there is another lovely coincidence here to do with the number 42, and that is that in cultures all over the world 42 is the number of Creation. The Jews believe 42 is the number of permutations of the letters of the name of God with which the Universe was brought into being and in China, both the Tao Te Ching and the I Ching discuss the creation of the Universe in their 42nd chapters. In ancient Egypt, 42 was the number linked to the Goddess Maat (Wisdom) who was the personification of the idea of balance and harmony the Egyptians thought upheld the Cosmos. I offer this up as a piece of anthropological information which makes a nice coincidence for Douglas Adams, whose books I have loved since a child, and not as something which suggests we should all bow to the Pope, become orthodox Jews or take up Taoism, in case anyone starts frothing at the mouth. I just thought it was fun that Adams, in thinking he had come up with a joke comment on the futility of trying to come up with an answer to the question of the meaning of the Universe landed upon the one number which traditionally has been all about the meaning of the Universe! I had always believed that Douglas Adams chose "42" since it was (but no longer is) the Hubble constant. If the number was below 42 then the universe ends in big crunch, greater than 42 we expand into infinite nothingness, but at 42 the universe will reach a state of equilibrium. However the number has been subject to revision and is steadily crawling closer to 43 which (imho) is the ultimate number ....
CLASSIC
Classic
Fine
OK
But the somewhat weak ending can never ever take away from books 1 & 2, they're so many stars that the average still comes out way above 5.