So Long and Thanks for All the Fish

Adams is clever an original, as always. There are plenty of good laughs in this book. It is good to see the return of earth to the universe for the first time since the opening chapter of the first book. Conrary to the movie, the earth remains destroyed for a good long while in the book serie.  It is good, in Fish, to see Arthur more richly developed.

For the first 80% of this book, I am struck by how this is Adam’s best literary quality so far. The story actually makes sense without any loss of humor or his usual twisted views on life, humanity and the universe. There is nice prose, realistic dialogue, richer character development.

Then Adams blows it by stepping out of voice for a two-page chapter, commenting on the book itself and the chapters to come. It just didn’t see the point in that, Doug. And shortly after, Arthur flies again. Arthur flies on earth, and his technique is simply ignoring of the laws of physics.

I can suspend a lot of disbelief in SciFi, and even more when it is satire. But this whole flying bit just pushes it too far for me.

If it were not for these two problems, I’d probably give the book 100, it is good for what it is; SciFi satire. So I’ll give it a 95.

L!fe , the Un!verse and Everthing

The process by which Adams un-stranded Ford and Arthur from Earth, two billion years in the past was a little weak. Not unlike the rescuing of Captain Jack Sparrow from the netherworld in Pirates of the Caribbean III. There could have been a lot of better ways to do it.

But after that, the book really improves. Adam’s cleverness is at its best in this book. His description of Somebody Else’s Problem as a phenomenon is a dead on parody of real human nature. I was very happy to see Slartibartfast back again, and this time in a major role. I didn’t feel like we saw enough of him in the first book. Slartiblartfest’s ship operates on Bistromathics, a concept which, as far as literature and humor goes, is almost as good as the Improbability Drive (although according to Slartibartfast it is better as far as ship drives go).

The entire story of Krikket, and the involvement of the Krikket wars in the Heart of Gold actually ties in multiple aspects of the plot, the characters, and the story lines from all the book quite well. Much better plot and subplot cohesiveness than book two.

The mattresses that grow on Sqornshellous Zeta is one of the best bits in the entire series. One that I actually remembered from when I read the books twenty years ago. It is another example of how, in Adam’s twisted world of parody and ludicrous concepts, there is an element of plausibility behind much of it. In an infinite universe with infinite possibilities, it certainly would be reasonable to think that there is a planet somewhere that grows mattresses and screwdrivers. We are talking about infinity, after all, so why not? To say it isn’t so places limits on infinity, which is itself oxymoronic. So while the entire concept is a joke, then again, there is some kernel of logic behind it all.

Life the Universe and Everything is at least as good as the first book, and in some ways even better, because of the nice subplot tie-ins and the further development of certain characters, such as Sartibarfest. The humor is impeccable, deriving from characters, situations, irony, and poking fun at humanity.

There are a couple of points in the book where logic in the plot is sacrificed for the sake of a joke.  Okay, I know the entire series is a satire, and it's purpose to poke fun at human dogmas and our own flaws in reason. I'm okay with bizarre events and marathon-lenght stretechs away from reality. In fact, that is part of the funl
But, there are a few stretches that are beyond reasonable maladjusment that become a part of the plot.  And that is what bothers me. If it is too bizarre to be acceptable even for me, and my standards are pretty low for accepting the ludicrous, then don't let plot-dependant events rely on these silly abberations.

For this, I take away only 2 points. He made a good recovery in book 3 from his marginal mediocrity in book 2. I'll give L!fe a nearly perfect -- 98

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.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

This year, I learned that Adams had written a 5th book to the series. I decided to re-read the whole series, since it had been so long since I read them, so that I could have the proper mind set when reading book 5.

Reflecting as I read is what inspired me to start this blog.

I loved the movie, by the way, but as is usually true, the book is astronomically better than the movie. Whether or not you liked the movie; if you like SciFi and humor, this book is a must read. It was a revolutionary piece of work in 1979. But I talk about that in my critique of the series, and this is about the book.

I don’t think I’ll give away too much plot to tell you that it starts with Arthur Dent trying to stop the road crew from tearing down his house to make way for a by-pass. This is, of course, simply a metaphor for what is about to happen to Earth.

Fortunately, his good friend Ford Prefect is really an alien from Betelgeuse. This is fortunate for Arthur, because Ford rescues him from death at the moment of Earth’s destruction. (Arthur didn’t know about Ford’s origins until about the same time as the earth was destroyed.)

Ford was on the planet as a journalist, contributing to a galactically popular reference book, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Ford had spent a decade on Earth to update the HHG’s entry about earth. He managed, in that time, to update the entire description of Earth from “Harmless.” To “Mostly Harmless.”

The rest of the story is a haphazard adventure of Arthur, Ford, the only other Earth survivor, Tricia McMillian, the President of the Galaxy, Zaphod Beeblebrox, and a chronically depressed robot, Marvin.

A lot of the humor is fish-out-of-water (i.e. Arthur off planet). Adams also does a very nice job of poking fun at the foibles of humanity and being British. Bizarre characters and situations add to the humor. He uses the The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy as a very clever literary device; the book itself is a voice of omniscience. It knows just about everything about the universe, and Arthur and Ford often refer to it.

Weaknesses? Sometimes Adams meanders a bit, and his writing could be a bit more concise sometimes. To some extent this can be blamed on the farcical style of his writing, but I think mostly he could just get away with it in 1979, since he was writing on a new frontier; farce/humor/SciFi.

I'll give the book a 98. If it weren't such a ground-breaking book, I'd probably lop off a few more points for the literary weaknesses mentioned, but I have to give Adams a break for his courage to break new ground. Besides, the severity of his shortfalls is mild.