029. The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy(1979).

The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy by Douglas Adams (1979).

          

 This is one of these book that makes you keep chuckling from page one to the very last sentence.

Funny, gentle, enormously creative

And

thoroughly entertaining,

this is a pure MASTERPIECE!!

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layers. – Arthur Dent.   Our hero. Sort of. One of only two remaining members of the planet Earth.

He is a really unique character in this book. He is not only an extremely ordinary guy but also possibly the only normal living creature in entire Galaxy created by Douglas Adams.

Not just that, even if he is the only human being from this planet (other than Trillian) and is supposed to be the main guy, he is actually NOT!! He just disappeared from the story line around the middle part and in the second book, "The Restaurant At The End Of The Universe", he is even more obscure!!

One thing right about him is that even if he is ordinary or maybe because of that,  he is HIRARIOUS!! he is just outrageously funny. You see, being normal is not right in this book. He just doesn't fit in. Cool.

Ford Perfect.   His cover is an out of work actor on Earth, but he is actually an alien. 

Arthur’s best friend and also from galaxy far far away called Betelgeuse.

He confesses his identity, an alien and hitchhiker, to Arthur in the beginning of the book right after when the Earth was blown away by Bogons.

He is a galactic traveler and a part time researcher for the electrical book-a-like device called “The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy” which he carries with him everywhere.

Also for an alien, he is relatively sane. 

       

Trillian. The other surviving member of the planet Earth. She actually left Earth about 6 month ago with Zaphod just for the heck of it.

A vaguely Arabic looking , slim, darkish girl with long black hair. She has no reason to be in this book because she does nothing. But then what do I know…..

Zaphod Beeblebrox.   The famous ZAPHOD BEEBLEBROX!!

He is 200 yrs old and an adventurer and ex-hippy and crook..etc.

Also, the president of the one and only all mighty Imperial Galactic Government, whose job does hold no power at all and is actually meant to attract all the attention away from it. And being an unpredictable crazy alien, he is amazingly good at his job!!

He intentionally freezes part of his brain so that he can act and think with no coherence. He makes all his judgments with either instinct or impulse and even if he is actually incredibly smart, stays unpredictable and crazy. 

He has one smaller head attached to his shoulder and now has one more extra arm under his right one to help improve his ski-boxing, whatever that is.

One of the best characters ever created in 20^th century.

Marvin.   The first really high quality ( personality prototype, they called) robot with exceptionally large mind (50000 times smarter then humans). And that naturally makes him a philosopher who keeps wondering the meaning of life (as a super intelligent robot).

All of above make Marvin manically depressed and he is completely aware of it.

Not just that, he, in return, depresses every kind of species(including robots) he happens to chat with. Kind of like anti-psychologist. He is without a choice, so spectacularly funny. 

He calls himself “PARANOID ANDROID”.

The best character in this book

and

One of the best characters ever created in 20^th century.

Vogons.   Barbaric, powerful, bad-tempered, dumb, stubborn, bureaucratic and extremely ugly aliens from planet Vogsphere.

They somehow evolved out of the planet and migrated to Megabrantic Cluster, the political hub of the galaxy and took over the galactic civil service.

They are the one who wipe out Earth for some stupid bureaucratic reason.

They are run by “Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz” the king of them all.

Heart Of Gold.   A spaceship powered by “The Infinite improbability Drive (?) ” which is discovered not by the committees of top physicians of entire universe, but by the student who was ordered to sweep the floor after the party by accident.

It has its own mind and tries really hard to please everyone!!

And for “The Infinite improbability Drive ”, just read the book. I still couldn’t figure it out yet.

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lace. –Earth for the first 10 pages till Vogons blow it away. Then from there, to the unlimited space called Galaxy!!

In this book, the crews go to long forgotten treasure planet called Magrathea which once build the custom designed planet for the outrageously rich aliens and meet its only functioning resident Slartibartfast who is also one of the prized designers of the planet.

And he reveals all the background knowledge of how the earth was built and who own it.

Then at the end of the book, the crew head to the “The Restaurant At The End Of The Universe” for a bite.

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lot. – On ordinary Thursday (no specific date is given), Arthur’s home is about to bulldozed for the interstate bypass. Two minutes later, the earth follows the same path (demolition!) for a hyperspace express route by space alien Vogons of the Galactic hyperspace planning council.

From there, Arthur’s epic quest (?) to bring back his beloved home and home planet begins, I think. At least I hope that’s the story for the rest of the series because so far with first two books (this one and the next one called “The Restaurant at the end of universe”), nothing really happens for the story wise. Other than, of course, tons of jokes and incredibly funny aliens.

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erdict. –This is not your regular Si-Fi book. For one, nobody would read this book for the story ‘cause entire storyline could fit into one paragraph as you can see above. Neither for the characters ‘cause other than Marvin and maybe Zaphod, there is not much here.

However what this book has is everything else. Flood of concepts, ideas, everything!!

You see, because Douglas Adams spent years creating the entire universe with all kinds of rules, planets and creatures, all he had to do after inventing the space was just place a few characters in it and see what developed. And since he was Monty Phyton kind of funny guy, he based everything he created on JOKES!! 

Also, it just happened that Douglas Adams was a writer with a tremendous talent, he not just pulled out this amazing task of creating Galaxy with nothing but JOKES, he thrived on it and made his entire comfortable-living out of this ONE SERIES ( actually, a trilogy with five books and nobody is sure why he called it trilogy since there are five books all together and he was working on the sixth volume when he passed away.). 

From top to bottom, this book is filled with brilliant but absolutely stupid imaginations.

One of a kind masterpiece that everyone should read and re-read.

Also

 the best entertainment money can buy!! Ever!!

028. City of Tiny Lights (2005).

City of Tiny Lights by Patrick Neate (2005).

         

 London’s best and only Ugandan-Indian private eye,

Tommy Akhtar’s first book.

He is a handsome, tough, smart and hard-drinking war-veteran

Who believes in karma. 

And

even after all these years of troubles and near death experiences,

still don’t know how to  draw the line.

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layers. – Tommy Akhtar.   The private eye.

Ex-soldier. When he was young, he for no apparent reason just joined the army and went to Afghan civil war shooting down Russians with CIA which earned him certain amount of respect in his neighbor.

After the war, he had suffered with war-related trauma for couple of years staying at home and doing nothing. 

Now, he is making decent living by doing all the stuffs that private eye is supposed to be doing, up until a prostitute named Melody walks into his tiny office.

As a narrator of this book, Tommy gives his opinion of everything (from prostitutes, Mid East politic to immigration and terrorists) from immigrant’s point of view. His voice, which is accurate, sharp, cynical yet funny as hell, gives us a lot of insight 

knowledge of what is London street made of and how the world is working.

If only you can get past his heavy London slang…

Farzad.   Tommy’s father. One of these old, drunken, grumpy wise man.

He used to be a lot of things but now, he settle down to become a relatively famous painter who keeps painting nothing but his late-wife with different styles and colors.

A very toght man who made lots of enemies when he was young, but now he just drinks and paints all day.

Others. There are a few interesting characters here. Tommy’s brother, Gundappa, who owns small Taxi company, is an total ass. Couple of his employees, Swiss Chris and Big John, are both crazy and hilarious. Swiss Chris has a dig the size of big banana and enormously proud of it, of course. And Big John literally shits like an elephant and constantly plugging his washroom, driving his wife crazy!!

Then there is Melody, 22 yrs hooker with huge boob job, Av who is his neighbour’s son and wannabe gangster, Carl Donnelly who is his cop friend. 

Also notable is an inspiring terrorist Al-Dubayan who after years of doing nothing essential but talking funny, finally decides to live up to his reputation as a world’s most notorious terrorist.

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lace. –London, England, the city of tiny lights, where cops, gangs, prostitutes, politicians and terrorists all co-exist in the same pot called multiculturalism. 

The city street portrayed here is gritty, grimy and totally unfair to regular citizens.

But good for the readers because it is filled with wild peoples with all sort of different background which of course makes a great reading meterial.

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lot. – You can read this book as a regular mystery but there is more than that in here. It is kind of book where the story is just there to supply the platform to write something other than the actual plot line.

As a sharp Ugandan-Indian detective, Tommy has a lot in his mind and never hesitates to express his feeling for everything surrounds him: from big things like culture, history, war, politics, immigration to tiny stuffs like the best way to get rid of hangover or how to spot pimp and things like that. He also have things for the street girls and passionately talks about the origin of popular prostitute names and where they come from. This book is half essay, one quarter history lesson and mystery the rest.

OK. Here is the basic storyline.

1.      A prostitute, Melody, is looking for her roommate, also a prostitute name Natasha, who is missing after the last gig.

2.      A former MP who paid for her roommate’s service got brutally murdered with a broody HAMMER!!

3.      From there, slowly but surely, it reaches outrageous but quite realistic climax.

4.      And then, as if that is not shocking enough, there is one more matter to tie up before the final “peaceful” ending. The ending is absolutely fantastic!!

                    

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erdict. –This book is more about social study than mystery it claims to be. Over half of the book is filled with information that has nothing to do with the story but THAT is the reason why this book notched Critics Award in 2004, I think. 

The information contained here is quite unique. If you like to know about immigrants’ life story in London or how to manage successful terrorist units in Britain, just pick up this book. Of course, this book is much more than that: it actually finishes with crazy ending at the end which is shocking and hilarious at the same time. Exactly my kind of book.

The only problem I had was that British has tendency to give away literary award to the writers who use lots of street language. Which is OK except that for non British guy like me, it takes while to get use to the language they are speaking. It takes me about 30 pages to get the feel for Tommy’s dialogue and after that, it was smooth ride.

 

This book is not for everyone but if you are tired of just plain good old mystery and looking for little more feed for your intelligent side, this book will help you understand little better on what is going on in the world inside out. 

And don’t forget. It has nice ending and the spectacular climax!! before that.

Overall, very good book to spend a few days.