The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

I think that The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (1980) was the weakest of the series, but a necessary read to get to Life, the Universe and Everything, which is fantastic. Not unlike the fact that let’s face it, folks, The Empire Strikes Back was a major yawn at best, but The Return of the Jedi was awesome; and Back to the Future II outright sucked and should not have only been made, as a ten-minute public service announcement so that we could properly enjoy Back to the Future III, which was at least as good as the first and in some ways even better.

That’s my opinion, anyway. You know what they say about opinions…or you do if you’ve read my earlier posts.

Zaphod sucking antidepressants off of Roosta’s towel isn’t nearly as funny as Adams thought it was, but maybe it was in 1980. No, I remember the 80's. I'm pretty sure it wasn't funny then, either. A cow that invites you to eat itself; the hyperbole of snooty people picking out their lobsters at snooty restaurants—maybe that is funny to you, but it didn’t really work for me. On the other hand, the “songs” in chapter 22 are brilliant.

The IDEA of the restaurant is much funnier than its execution. The fact that it was the closest place, temporally, which means Marvin was waiting millions of years…now that I thought was both brilliant and hilarious.

As far as literary quality, this is Adam’s weakest. As far as humor, the same. The rest of the series rocks.

Even though I dream of somday channeling Douglas Adams*, even though there are reasons why The Hitchiker's Guide is an important and ingenious breakthrough in SciFi/humor, there are weakness in this particular book in the series. In fact, this is the weakest of all of them. Sometimes I can forgive weakness in style for the sake of the humor, but in this book, the humor is not good enough to compensate for the literary weaknesses.

In pains me to give my hero less than a 90, but this book gets an 86.
My advice? Read it. Read it because the rest of the series is worth it.

*Adams and I are (were) both atheists, so  find the likelihood that I will get to channel him to be somewhat slim, but given the opportunity, I would gladly do it anyway.