Today I want to talk about Douglas Adams’ science fiction masterpiece, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I discovered the novel a few years after its publication and fell in love with his irreverent and quirky sense of humor.

I cannot remember where or when I found this book, but what I do remember is the strange looks my wife gave me as I giggled and chortled my way through it. Yes, it is classed as science fiction, but the plot is so bizarre that its fans cross many genre’s.

Trying to describe the plot is something like herding cats. Yes, there is a story, but just when a reader gets comfortable in its progression, the author zigs or zags, throwing everything out of whack.

The novel opens with an introduction describing the human race as a primitive and deeply unhappy species, while also introducing an electronic encyclopedia called the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy which provides information on every planet in the galaxy. The protagonist, an Englishman named Arthur Dent, finds out that his house is to be demolished to make way for a bypass and lays down in front of the bulldozer to stop them. His best friend, ford Prefect, arrives and convinces the top bureaucrat to lie down instead so he can take Arthur to the pub.

Enter a fleet of spaceships, whose leader informs everyone that Earth is standing in the way of a hyperspace expressway and they have come to destroy the planet, which they do. Our hero hitches a ride on the leader’s spaceship and off they go. This all happens in the first chapter, and its just the beginning!

Upon finishing the book, I went looking for other novels by this author and discovered Hitchhiker’s Guide was the first in a series. The names of the succeeding books are as funny as the books themselves:

1. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, A Trilogy in Five Parts
2. The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
3. Life, the Universe and Everything
4. So Long, and Thanks for all the Fish
5. Mostly Harmless
6. And Another Thing…*

Mr. Adams passed away before starting book 6, so that was written by Eoin Colfer, but it is in the same zany vein as the preceding five.

One of the things I love best about this series is that each title directly relates to the novel’s content. My favorite title is No. 4, So Long, and Thanks for all the Fish.

Believe it or not, this is an almost perfect description of the book’s plot. Rather than try and explain my statement, I highly recommend you read the entire series. The few hours you spend are well worth the time.

Another series of his that I love is Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, which includes the title book, The Long, Dark Tea-Time of the Soul and The Salmon of Doubt. Like the Hitchhiker’s books, they leave me in stitches every time I sit down to read them. The ideas and plotlines are so crazy they make perfect sense, if that’s possible.

Hitchhiker was made into a 2005 film, but it was a complete mess. It barely followed the plotline of the original, and the acting was atrocious. To compound the errors, whoever wrote the script tried to combine two or three of the series novels into one movie. The result was a confusing piece of idiocy and, in my opinion, everyone involved, especially the writer, should have been taken out and shot.

If you need a good laugh or quite a few, and who doesn’t, find these books and spend an afternoon or three laughing until you cry. They are available on Amazon and in many local libraries.