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 20th 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 20th 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!!
