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.

027. Dearly Devoted Dexter (2005).

Dearly Devoted Dexter by Jeff Lindsay (2005).

          

 The weirdest detective of entire world.

The true justice who turns villains into victims, 

literally chops them off into pieces,

sending them to what he called “Dreamland”. 

Very very Cool.

P

layers. – Dexter Morgan.   The world’s only known serial killer.

Since all the serial killers try really hard to hide their activities, it requires true Sherlock-like ability to track them down and that's what our man Dexter has: uncanny sense to identify the fellow serial killers.

He has a day job working as a forensic in Miami Police Dept. Being a serial killer himself, he excels at his job as a blood analyst. At night, he turns into his other self, Dark Passenger.

Due to an unbelievable insanity in his early age (bloody murder tragedy), he is completely devoid of emotion/empathy and is well aware of it. Therefore, whatever expression he wears on his face is carefully prepared acting, a complete fake!!

Because of this, Dexter is constantly debating in his head what kind of FACE he has to flash on his face or what to say depending on the situations.

He collects a drop of blood from his “PLAYMATES (victims)” to small glass panels, and the collection reaches 42 at the end of this book. For our delights, Miami is flourishing with psychopaths!!

Harry Morgan.   Dexter’s step father. He adopted Dexter at 7 and being a great cop, immediately found out Dexter’s need. Once he realized there was no way to deter Dexter’s taste, he trained Dexter to channel his urge toward only certain kind of people,  people who could not be reached by the law. Dexter calls it Harry’s Law and follows it religiously no matter what.

He loved Dexter and truly cared for him and is the only reason why Dexter is surviving in this world. 

Dexter only puts on a human face because he wants to be like Harry.

Debora. Dexter’s sister. The only living human being who knows what Dexter is made out of.

Like her father, Harry, she is good/tough cop.

Rita. Dexter’s girl friend and a future wife. A mother of two: Cody(6) and Astor(8). 

At some point in his “fake” human life, Dexter realized that in order to look normal, he needed a girl friend for cover and he found a perfect answer in Rita who was as much damaged inside as Dexter.

Sergeant Doakes. Every superhero needs archenemy and he is Dexter’s. A cop, but a cold killer inside.

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lace. – Miami, the land where everyone comes to die, according to Dexter.

Hot and humid air and party-every-night atmosphere is just perfect for Dexter and his Night-Dance.

Also, being a center for drug trafficking business in East-coast helps Dexter find his next playmates relatively easy because there are unlimited supply of weirdoes and monsters and pedophiles and on and on….

P

lot. – There is a new and brilliant serial killer in town whose technique makes even mighty Dexter jealous.

All Dexter wants to do is track down the killer and “play” with him, but the story gets complicated when a hot shot FBI agent who is here to take care of the killer starts dating with his sister and his archenemy Sergeant Doakes is on his trail 24/7. 

So Dexter has to suppress his urge and learn to work with Debora’s boy friend(FBI) and also acts like normal human in front of Doakes’ surveillance. On top of this, Dexter has to catch the killer before FBI’s so that he can have true fun with him. This book is so good.

                    

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erdict. –A truly remarkable work of art.

A reverse Sherlock Holmes who locates and kills his client before he/she inflicts more damages to the society. Sherlock tracks down the bad guys and put them away in jail, whereas Dexter makes takeout menus out of bad guys and put them away in his secret burying ground under the sea. And they are both awesome.

Much funnier and darker than TV series.

Dexter’s view of society and human behavior is so completely off the mark, yet accurate, in spite of all the gore, this could be the funniest mystery I’ve ever read. Serious.

026. The Postmortal (2011).

The Postmortal by Drew Magary (2011).

          What would you do if someone finds “THE CURE" for aging?

Would you take “THE CURE” and stop aging from that moment till eternity

Or

Choose to be a natural product and face the death?

Very creative and amazingly well imagined answers are here.

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layers. – John Farrell.   A very regular guy with no distinct feature nor special ability, just one of those guys, which works so well with this book. You see, because this book has full of wild ideas and crazy imagination, it needs a person we can safely related to, getting into the story and all that. And that person is john. 

A successful divorce lawyer (for the first two chapters) who later changes his career as an end specialist (for the last two chapters).

End specialists are people who are basically given licenses to kill by government to take control over population growth. They are started as simple suicide assistants, and then later expand their services to bounty hunter business and everything else that involves guns and violence. 

Government’s legal henchmen are what they become.

This book is the correction of the journal entry written by John for the period of 6 decades started from 2019 ( the year he gets THE CURE) till 2079.

Solara Beck.   John’s dream girl. The one person whose image is imprinted in his memory till the day he died.

Others.   There are a few characters in this book that are worth mentioning here.  John has a sister and a few nieces and nephews. His father is still alive, so as his two girlfriends and a son. Other than his son, David, everyone else get the Cure.

 Beause John’s Cure Age is 28, which means he stops aging at 28 yrs old, and his appearance stays exactly same since then, his son David who refuses THE CURE and stays organic, looks older than his dad in the later chapters. What a creepy world.

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lace. – It all starts from the center of the universe, New York where John practices his specialty, the divorce law. 

After spending couple of decades in NY and another few in abroad, John starts his new career as End specialist in Virginia.

Even if John’s entire story is based in USA, there are lots of articles John picks up from net or news network which explains what is going on around the world. And that is the juice of this book. You won’t believe what China or Russia is doing to their people to control population.

         

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lot. – In 2019, Dr. Otto, a humble researcher, accidentally discovers “THE CURE”, the method to stop aging process completely which is hailed as the greatest scientific discovery in the history of mankind. And naturally everyone go highlander!! Except chopping off the head part, of course.

Immortality creates all sorts of things, changes everything we know about this world. Classic religions disappear cause nobody’s worrying about the after life.  All the  marriages disappear cause however you love your partner, you just can’t live with the same person for 200 yrs. No medicare, no social security cause government can’t support them anymore. 

Then of course, all the pro-death cults spring up from everywhere and terrorists are having great time bombing everywhere for no apparent reasons. 

Welcome to the future with no future.

The story is divided into four parts.

1.      Prohibition. June, 2019 – How the cure is discovered and how we deal with it. Government, at first, tries really hard to ban it, but fat chances!  At the end, everyone gets it.  

2.      Spread. June, 2029 - Earth becomes the big village of Highlanders. The big, happy generations of people who look exactly the same everyday. The beginning of the end.

3.      Saturation. March, 2059 – Humans are slowly but surely running out of everything. Resources, morality, human-value, love, you name it! Everything!!

4.      Correction. June, 2079 – Officially, the planet is nearly bankrupt with millions of people turning into hobos. By way of preserving whatever they have left in their territory, all the countries turn into some sort of totalitarian governments and are getting rid of people they think are not important to their survival. Criminals, hoboes, seniors are all going to be disposed for the name of their country.  
Logan’s run plus Bladerunner.

                   

V

erdict. –With the rate Hollywood is pumping zombie and apocalypse movies these days, I won’t be surprised if some producer in some studio had already bought up the movie right and been working on the final script for the inevitable The Immortal movie. 

Transition of John, from skinny pencil pusher to deadly bounty hunter is quite interesting and what carries the story.

This book is a page turner not with thrill/suspense but with everything else: story, characters, history, love and even humanity.

Only con is for some really annoying reason, the writer or editor insert the date of the each journey at the end of the paragraph. 
So, in order to get the better hold of the story(to see if there is any gap between each entries), whenever I get into the new chapters, I have to flip pages, sometime several of them, to check the exact time the story is written which is just ridiculous.

However, that was the only flaw in this otherwise wonderful book.

If you have even a slightest interest in living-forever concep, like the rest of the entire human race, please do yourself favor and read this book. It's will give you something to think about, not to mention frighten you like burning in hell.