I just finished The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. It was a pretty easy read and a fairly short book. I did not know when I started reading it that it was part of a “five-part trilogy” (This is the sort of humor you are in for). This book is written as a sort of a science fiction meets Monty Python type epic storytelling. Absurdist humor is always the go-to. It starts off with the main character, Arthur Dent, a typical, snobbish, living-alone, middle-aged Englishman, trying to prevent his house from being bulldozed to make way for a new highway bypass. His quirky friend, Ford Prefect, convinces Arthur to leave his home and have some ales at the pub while his house is being demolished and informs him that the earth is about to be destroyed. It turns out that Ford Prefect is actually an alien that has been living on earth for 15 years and is trying to help his earth friend, Arthur, escape the planet before the Vogons destroy it. The Vogons need earth out of the way to create a hyperspace bypass.
Previous to this, Arthur had no idea that his friend Ford is an alien. Ford gets both of them off the planet just before earth is destroyed by hitching a ride on a Vogon ship. After a short time, the grumpy Vogons learn of Arthur and Ford’s freeloading and eject them into space. Fortunately for them, another ship happens to be in the area and rescues them 29 seconds after they were hurled into space.
The rescue ship is piloted by Zaphod Beeblebrox and an earth woman named Trillian. In a twist of fate, both Arthur and Ford know Zaphod. Arthur through a chance encounter at a party on earth and Ford as a distant cousin of Zaphod. Arthur also knows Trillian. It is a woman he had a crush on and made unreturned advances on at a party on earth. Zaphod, disguised as an earthling, left said party with Trillian.
Zaphod is on the run and has stolen the ship they are in. It turns out that Zaphod has a good reason for stealing the ship, he just doesn’t remember what it is because he did a sort of targeted, self-lobotomy, so that his thoughts could not be read regarding this information.
In their travels, they end up at what is thought to be a planet of folklore. Magrathea is populated with a race of beings that used to build planets, but when a recession hit, they decided to sleep until it was over. No one can afford new planets during a recession. They had been asleep for five million years when Ford, Trillian, Arthur, and Zaphod arrive on the planet. It is revealed that the Magratheans had built earth for mice, which ran it until the Vogons destroyed it. The mice had been using earth as a sort of laboratory to determine the Ultimate Question to Life, the Universe, and Everything. The answer, it turns out, is 42, which provides no one with any meaningful information.
At the end of the book, the mice feel that they could perhaps get some meaning from the answer through one of earth’s former inhabitant’s brains, namely Arthur Dent. Arthur and his mates are appalled and make a run for it just as the galactic police arrive to try and apprehend Zaphod. With no hope of escape, and the galactic police blasting at them with their space weapons, the shooting abruptly stops and it is revealed that the galactic police’s life support computer committed suicide after a short conversation with Zaphod’s perpetually depressed robot, Martin. With this, they board their ship en route to the Restaurant at the End of the Universe for a meal. Restaurant at the End of the Universe is name of the next novel in the series.
If my description of the plot of this book seems ridiculous, it’s because it is. The plot is fairly absurd, but nonetheless captivating. If the biography of Elon Musk, see previous post, is correct, this book is the impetus for Elon Musk’s creation of SpaceX and desire to travel to Mars. Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction – even absurd science fiction.