The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (by Douglas Adams)
You know, I am not entirely convinced that I ever read this book before. I know I read Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency and The Restaurant at the end of the Universe and I think Life, the Universe, and Everything. But I don't think I ever read this one. When I saw the movie, a lot of the material was unfamiliar to me. Of course Arthur Dent, the towels, and 42, I knew all of that. But Slartibartfast and the mice at the end? No.
(I do know that at one point I knew the ultimate question, and now I don't anymore. Can anyone remind me? It was very clever, as I recall.)
Pretty fast read, and I'm surprised by just how much of it ended up in the film. (Although why we didn't get to hear any of to Vogon poetry I don't understand.) There's a big controversy about the leopard line, which I don't really get. I mean it's not that important. (Yeah, I went there.) There's nothing I can say about this book that hasn't been said before, really. Funny, fast, entertaining. I think a few of his other books are better, though. Am I allowed to say that, or is it blasphemy?
(I do know that at one point I knew the ultimate question, and now I don't anymore. Can anyone remind me? It was very clever, as I recall.)
Pretty fast read, and I'm surprised by just how much of it ended up in the film. (Although why we didn't get to hear any of to Vogon poetry I don't understand.) There's a big controversy about the leopard line, which I don't really get. I mean it's not that important. (Yeah, I went there.) There's nothing I can say about this book that hasn't been said before, really. Funny, fast, entertaining. I think a few of his other books are better, though. Am I allowed to say that, or is it blasphemy?
posted by mo pie at 9:18 AM
10 Comments:
I agree with you that Adams got better later on. Considering the conditions it was written under (Adams had enormous trouble with deadlines) I think Hitchhiker holds together surprisingly well.
SPOILER
You might be remembering "God's Last Message to his Creation" at the end of So Long and Thanks for all the Fish. It's what was revealed by inspiration to the girl in the Islington café at the beginning of Hitchhiker, later revealed to be Fenchurch. It was going to solve all mankind's problems at a stroke. She then forgot it and they had to rediscover it.
It was "We apologize for the inconvenience". We never do find out what the Question was, though.
Aargh, I'm such a geek!
By the way, I'm really Kirsten who comments sometimes on Ointy and BFD.
If I'm not mistaken, at one point Arthur starts drawing his homemade Scrabble tiles randomly to see if his subconscious contains some hint to the Ultimate Question, and draws out:
SPOILERish
W H A T I S S I X T I M E S N I
before something happens to interrupt him, can't remember what.
Nothing interupts him but you don't find out the question until 'The Restaurant at the End of the Universe' and it leads to much laughter.
SPOILER AGAIN
Oh, dear, I'm going to reinforce my own geekishness by pointing out that the question "What do you get if you mutiply six by ni-" drawn out of the Scrabble bag was, indeed, not the Question, but merely a question. As Arthur is in fact descended from the colonists on the Golgafrincham "B" Ark (as are we all) and not an aboriginal Earth-inhabitant, he isn't part of the Earth computer's hardware and thus can't actually come up with the right question by the "Scrabble" method.
It hardly matters, then, that six times nine is in fact 54, a fact which completely bypassed me for quite a while.
Sorry. And some evil person (and I know who it is) has half-inched my copy of Restaurant, so I can't check what happens there, but I think it's much the same idea. Of course, the Golgafrincham plot doesn't make any sense with the events of the film, so I don't know whether they'll be able to use it in any sequel.
Ah, I am duly corrected. Thanks!
Ahhh. I haven't got to the third book yet.
The whole thing is highly random anyway, based on whether you go by the book, or the radio play, or the scripts to the radio play, or the BBC TV miniseries, or...
At some point, some impossibly clever mathematician found out that six times nine does in fact equal 42, if you do the maths in base-thirteen (which no sane or rational person would ever do).
Well, I can't do the maths in base 13. I can just barely do binary (on my fingers. Or rather, my thumbs).
I deduce that you, Anonymous, are a countryperson of mine, since you make your maths plural.
I think it works like this:
We apologize for the inconvenience -- 42 (For tea too)
Why apologise for tea? Tea is good.
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