A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
A wildly inventive, absurdly funny ride through the cosmos.
Tindol got me The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy for Christmas a few years ago. We exchanged gifts on Christmas Eve, and I ended up finishing the book that same night.
Arthur Dent, a perfectly ordinary Englishman, wakes up to find his house is about to be demolished to make room for a bypass. He tries to stop it by lying in front of the bulldozer, but his friend Ford convinces a bureaucrat to take his place instead and suggests they head to the pub. On the way, Ford casually mentions that “the world’s about to end” and tells Arthur to grab a towel, an essential item for any intergalactic traveler.
Not long after, Earth is destroyed by a fleet of alien ships clearing for a hyperspace expressway. Hitching a ride off the planet, Arthur learns that Ford is actually a researcher for The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Together, they’re launched into a bizarre journey in search of the ultimate answer to life, the universe, and everything.
Supposedly, Douglas Adams came up with the book idea after lying drunk in a field somewhere in Europe with a copy of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Europe, thinking someone should really write a galactic version.
Adams takes on the long tradition of using comedy to bring attention to things we actually need to think about. Through absurd situations and relentless bureaucracy, he satirizes the way we overcomplicate life and take ourselves far too seriously.
Style-wise, it definitely isn’t for everyone. It’s science fiction but with a huge dose of dry British humor. You’ll read a few perfectly normal sentences and then suddenly get hit with a line like, “The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don’t.” You can usually tell within the first few pages, or even just by reading a handful of quotes, whether it’s your kind of book or not. It’s not meant to be a serious read, so if you’re not in a playful mood, you might want to skip it. Or maybe don’t: it might be what turns your mood around. Some quotes are featured on the home page of this site, but I’ve included a few more here that make me chuckle:
“So this is it,” said Arthur, “We are going to die.”
“Yes,” said Ford, “except… no! Wait a minute!” He suddenly lunged across the chamber at something behind Arthur’s line of vision. “What’s this switch?” he cried.
“What? Where?” cried Arthur, twisting round.
“No, I was only fooling,” said Ford, “we are going to die after all.”
“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.”
“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.”
“Why, what did she tell you?”
“I don’t know, I didn’t listen.”
At around 200 pages and an easy read, you might as well give it a shot — especially since it’s widely considered a classic of the science fiction genre and is included on my list of the Best Science Fiction Books of All Time.
