Category Archives: General Foolishness

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.

Douglas Adams – Life, the Universe, and Everything

The third volume of Adams’ Hitchikers of the Galaxy series. The opening scene is classic. The previous book ended with protagonist Arthur Dent back on Earth, but stranded alone, two million years in the past. This book begins with Arthur winding his way through several solitary years. One day, out of the blue, a spaceship lands. Is he being saved at last? An alien being walks out, holding a clipboard. “Arthur Dent?” He asks. “Yes.” “Arthur Philip Dent?” “Yes.” “You’re a jerk.” With this, the alien walks back into his ship and flies off. It is another two years before Arthur finds his friend Ford Prefect and off they go on another adventure with ex-President of the Galaxy Zaphod Beeblebrox, Marvin the depressed robot, and others.

Douglas Adams – The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Book 2)

This book is hilarious, and highly recommended. Not quite as famous as the first book, but just as good and very much in the same farcical spirit. Adams’ jokes are constant, yet still often come as a surprise. He had a knack for making the mundane into the epic, and vice versa. Some of the time travel jokes also verge on Abbott and Costello-style humor.

Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett – Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch

A clever and wickedly funny novel by two famous collaborators, combining a comedy-of-errors plot with literally irreverent satire. An angel and a demon become good friends, and come to enjoy life on Earth, despite its many foibles. They are dismayed when the time for Armageddon draws near, and scheme behind their bosses’ backs to put a stop it.

Meanwhile, a baby-switching accident at a British hospital leads to the Antichrist being brought up in the wrong town by the wrong family; he turns out to be a normal 11-year old boy, though with some fairly major quirks.

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse also put in amusing appearances, though Pestilence retired after modern vaccinations were invented. He was replaced by Pollution, whose youth and incompetence grate on the others. I get the sense Kevin Smith drew more heavily on this book than he should have for his movie Dogma.

The book also contains the famous line, “[C]ourting couples had come to listen to the splish and gurgle of the river, and to hold hands, and to get all lovey-dovey in the Sussex sunset. He’d done that with Maud, his missus, before they were married. They’d come here to spoon and, on one memorable occasion, fork.”