Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

This classic was written in 1978 and has since been adapted to stage shows, comic books, a 1981 TV series, a computer game and a 2005 theatrical movie. I must have read it the first time shortly after its publication, and I remember watching it on television. However, it’s been decades since I took another look at it. Driven away from political podcasts by the sad state of the world, I was inspired by the New York Times list of the 30 best audio books ever produced, as well as a wish to do something irrelevant.  The writing is incredibly clever. This was one of the suggested novels in the top 30 list. With this novel, I got just what I was looking for.  

 

Reading Hitchhiker was a wonderful distraction. At times, I felt like was indulging in a Vonnegut novel such as Breakfast of Champions. Adams suggested that life on earth was a 10,000,000 year scientific study of earth by mice, who after all are the source of intelligent life in the universe. 

 

Arthur Dent is the protagonist, and he was accompanied by a number of different bumbling alien characters, including a manically depressed robot. When the robot told his sad story to the computer on board an enemy spaceship, the computer then committed suicide, thereby saving Arthur from death (just one of the ordeals that Arthur encountered as he jutted about the improbability of the galaxy).

 

Given that the book has been well loved in the more than 40 years since its publication, I don’t think a more detailed review is necessary. If your in the right mood, then you’ll find yourself laughing out loud, just as I did.

 

WCD