Originally written: 20/12/19. Contains spoilers (ensure that you bring a towel for your own personal safety).
“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.”
Well, I finally got to this book! It’s been on my TBR shelf for months now, but I’ve just spent the last week reading through my nice omnibus copy. (I don’t plan on checking out the other two books, but if you’ve read them and think I’m making a massive mistake, let me know!)
Now that I’m at the end of my Hitchhiking journey, I feel safe in ranking the books thusly:
- The Restaurant At The End Of The Universe (2)
- The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy (1)
- Life, The Universe & Everything (3)
- So Long, & Thanks For All The Fish (4)
In fact, Restaurant might be one of my favourite books now, full stop. I had a great time with the whole trilogy (I’ll get to So Long), but especially with the second. Should you read these books yourself, you may find yourself saying “poor Marvin!” every other line or so. This is normal. Do not panic. But Marvin definitely has the worst time of it in Restaurant, so you can feel sad for him if you want to (not that he would appreciate it).
“The story so far: In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.”
This is the opening line to the second book and is often shopped around as the ultimate selling point of, if not just this book, the entire series. I have to say I disagree; there are so many brilliant lines in the second book that I think are better than the one above that I can’t even begin to decide on one to post. I’ll give it a go anyway…
“He paused just long enough to make them feel they ought to say something, then interrupted”.
Or perhaps, “How are you?”
“Fine if you like being me, which personally, I don’t”.
How painfully relatable of you, Mr Adams!
The true ruler of the universe is a genius character, and is only one of many examples in these books of Adams being a wonderful interpreter of the absurdities of the world around us.
My weirdest take away from these books, apart from the discovery that the best variety of found family is “university roommates who never really connect but always end up back together”, is that I kind of ship Arthur and Ford now. I didn’t expect this result, but hey ho. Their characters gel in a weird way, and I guess I’m there for it.
While the first three books were each brilliant in their own ways though, I felt that So Long fell completely flat, which was saddening. I just didn’t care for Arthur’s love interest, Fenchurch, at all, and I missed the original squad aboard the Heart Of Gold too much to care about Arthur going back to Earth. I think it could have been done in a way that gelled with me, and yes, there were aspects to the book that I liked, but unfortunately I glazed over a lot of So Long.
Still.
Zaphod Beeblebrox is an icon, I adored Marvin, Trillian was certainly there, and despite the short amount of time spent aboard the Heart Of Gold, I feel an affinity for the ship, and am oddly attached to it. It’s also plain to see Adams’ influence on Doctor Who now; the Tenth Doctor is Ford Prefect, with added love interests and a bit too much self-righteousness at times. (If I’m not mistaken, Adams actually did write for the show, so I guess that influence runs even deeper.)
Ford is now one of my favourite characters in all of fiction. But that Zaphod… What a guy.
Now, if you will all excuse me, I’m off to spend a year being dead for tax reasons.
The Tea Room 