Douglas Adams – Mostly Harmless
The fifth and final volume of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series. Arthur Dent is finally settling down into a stable life, and even beginning to enjoy it. But then he has to go on one last adventure to save the universe, which is every bit as farcical as one would expect from a Douglas Adams book.
Early on, Adams throws some quality barbs at New Yorkers, such as “In New York, nobody is nice to each other without a reason.” When describing a written message regarding a phone call, “It was a 212 area code number, so it was someone in New York, who was not happy. Well, that narrowed it down a bit, didn’t it?”
Adams also expands the cast. Trillian, another human who escaped Earth’s earlier demolition is joined by her interdimensional analogue Tricia, from a world where she had stayed on Earth, which wasn’t destroyed. Arthur Dent also learns he is a father. He had earlier used sperm donations to fund his interplanetary travels, and Tricia used a sample to havea daughter named Random Dent. Thanks to the vagaries of time travel and interdimensional weirdness, she isn’t quite sure about her age. But she is definitely a full-throated teenager prone to instant mood swings and outbursts, though she does have her sympathetic points.
There is noticeably less joy in this book than in the earlier volumes, something I also noticed to a lesser degree in volume four. The book, and the series, ends with the Hitchhiker’s Guide itself being obliterated, a possible indication that Adams was more than ready to move on to other pursuits.
Inertia Wins! 