The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
by Douglas Adams

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• ISBN13: 9780345391803
• Condition: New
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Book Reviews of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Book Review: Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
Summary: 5 Stars

"This planet has - or rather had - a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy. And so the problem remained; lots of the people were mean, and most of them were miserable, even the ones with the digital watches. Many were increasingly of the opinion that they'd all made a big mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place. And some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no one should ever have left the ocean. And then, one Thursday, nearly 2000 years after one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change, a girl sitting on her own in a small cafe in Rickmansworth suddenly realized what it was that had been going wrong all this time, and she finally knew how the world could be made a good and happy place. This time it was right, it would work, and no one would have to get nailed to anything. Sadly, however, before she could get to a phone to tell anyone about it, a terrible, stupid catastrophe occurred, and the idea was lost forever. This is not her story. But it is the story of that terrible, stupid catastrophe and some of its consequences." (1)

While it is obvious that the author is trying to be comical, if one is to dig a little deeper it can also be seen that Douglas Adams manages to introduce many of our society's different social problems such as technology, economics, evolution and religion. It is typical for his writing to criticize everything in a skeptical and humorous way. But at the same time he never presents any concrete solutions to the problems he deals with. He leaves it up to the reader to decide whether or not it is something they are concerned with. I think that this is important as it allows for each reader to use their imagination and see the story from their own perspective.

His humorous style lies in his objectivity. He doesn't come right out and say, "money doesn't cause happiness", and instead he says that people are always concerned about the movement of small green pieces of paper. Douglas Adams just suggests as to what is going on and leaves it up to the reader to figure things out for themselves. He also uses the example of digital watches in order to criticize technology, which is something that we are very proud of. But if you think about it, you become aware that he isn't actually criticizing digital watches, he is criticizing the whole technology, which is in his opinion not the great thing that we think it is.

Another reason I liked these books so much is that you can read the books over and over again, and each time you manage to find something that you did not notice before. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is so full of jokes. He always manages to find a twisted and unexpected solution to the problem at hand and really keeps the reader baffled as to what will happen next. He looks at things in an original and very interesting manner. For example, he makes fun of the fact that the human race thinks that they are the most intelligent beings on earth, and explains that this isn't quite right. He says that the most intelligent beings are the mice, then the dolphins, and humans are only the third most intelligent beings. The mice are in fact responsible for the construction of the Earth, in order to find the question to the answer of the Meaning of Life, Universe and Everything. Humans used them as laboratory experiments but they actually just used us, not as we thought that we used them. Now to someone not familiar with the book this seems rather strange and doesn't make much sense, but somehow all of it manages to fit together.

Overall, I think that this book really helped to open my eyes as to just how creative and interesting a good book can be. It may not be a classic in the true sense of the word, but it was something that I truly enjoyed and that is not something I can claim about many books.

Summary of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Action & Adventure Books

• Books > Subjects > Literature & Fiction > Genre Fiction
• Comic
• Science Fiction & Fantasy > Fantasy
• Science Fiction > Adventure