Rating: 4/5
“Can we drop your ego for a moment? This is important.”
“If there’s anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.”
I just finished Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, an absolutely hilarious, insanely bizarre and wonderfully random book so unlike anything else I’ve ever read that I don’t really know quite what to say.
The opening to the book was probably one of the funniest parts. We meet Arthur Dent, a hopeless and hapless young Earthman, as he struggles to fend off a large yellow bulldozer whose intent is demolishing his house; then Arthur’s friend Ford Prefect arrives on the scene, a man who really isn’t what he seems; and minutes later, Ford has whisked Arthur off the planet just moments before it’s destroyed to make room for an extraterrestrial bypass.
Throughout the book, but especially in these opening scenes, Adams subtly mocks various people, including the hopeless council who are intent on destroying Arthur’s house.
“But the plans were on display…”
“On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.”
“That’s the display department.”
“With a flashlight.”
“Ah, well, the lights had probably gone.”
“So had the stairs.”
“But look, you found the notice, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” said Arthur, “yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.’”
Arthur Dent, a boring and insignificant human being, was actually the largest source of entertainment throughout, along with Marvin, a chronically depressed robot. The aliens which Arthur shares a good portion of his life with are often unable to understand Arthur’s mopey musings, and yet Arthur and Marvin manage to form a unique and absolutely hilarious friendship by means of their shared depression.
“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.”
An absurd and, safe to say, very unique storyline punctuated with laugh-out-loud humour and moments of crazy insanity almost too much to cope with, I look forward to reading the next book in Douglas Adams’ series.
“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.”