Customer Reviews

The Hitchhiker's Trilogy

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I typically think of books as a spectrum with one end being the character novel and the other end the plot based novel. Really good novels are balanced in the middle, fantastic and engaging characters with a plot that builds and pulls you in. Take a Robin Hobb novel and you know you are going to get amazing and deep characters, but the plot may be lacking. Take a Michael Crichton novel and you know that the plot will flow like an action movie, but the characters will be forgetable. The best novels combine the both of these two worlds.

The Hitchikers Triology is neither. It really isnt. It caused me to make a whole new spectrum when I look at novels: the idea novel. Imagine someone with an interest in and lots of ideas about science fiction, space, time travel, ect. Now give that someone a very quirky sense of humor. Instead of writing a typical sci-fi novel that revolves around amazing plots, each chapter in this book revolves around some interesting idea.

Imagine a planet where matresses are creatures that live in swamps- thats a chapter. Imagine a planet where all the alien species want to do is destroy the universe- thats a chapter. Imagine a tree with creatures on it that never leave that tree unless they question whether there is life in the universe outside of the tree (in which case they get kicked out of the tree)- thats a chapter. There is a very loose plot and some very weak characters that move throughout the universe, not for the purpose of telling a plot or developing the characters, but purely for the purpose of exploring these ideas the author had.

The strength of the novel is the humor. It is quirky, understated, sarcastic, hilarious... To enjoy this novel, I had to get into the right mindset and read purely for the entertaining ideas. Once I got this and abandoned any desire to find a plot thread, I loved it. These books know what they are, if you can embrace that, they are a great read.

I was fooled by the title (which is of course a joke on the author's part) so be advised that this volume contains all FIVE volumes of the series and don't go buying volume 4 and 5 before receiving this one in the post... like i did...
Otherwise, fabulous story and nice compilation...
^^

Okay, for those of you who haven't read the book yet but did watch the movie you guys missed out on a lot the movie didn't include all the scenes that I personally though was very well.
Now that that's out of the way. Douglas Adams in his one of his possibly best know books really out did himself. In this adventure a boring simpleton named Arthur Dent living on the planet we call earth has befriended a guy named Ford Perfect, who is not as he claimed from earth but from a planet called Betelgeuse. Where he was sent from to do research for "The Hitchhikers Guide to the Universe" (it's a book where it has everything and anything that you could possibly need to know about the universe). Ford tells Arthur that he isn't from around here. He isn't from Earth. In telling Arthur this he also tells him that the earth is about to end.
And since they have gotten to be really close friends he takes Arthur with him when he hitches a ride with the Vogan ships (these are what the aliens are called that destroyed our planet earth). Vogan's in particular don't like hitchhikers very much. So they kick them off the ship, shortly after they get on. And by pure chance they get picked up. And the story goes from there.
Now that I've told you how the book starts I'll leave it up to you to read the rest of the book. And if you read this book, then watch the movie. You'll see that the movie is hardly based on this incredible book .

It's great to know these books if you work with technology workers since a lot of us read them. I was thinking about a scene from one of these books just yesterday:
The characters had hiked up to view God's Last Message to His Creation, all the while dragging along their clinically depressed, halfway-to-the-scrap-heap robot, Marvin. The message was written in 100 foot tall burning letters and took up the whole side of a mountain. It read:
Sorry for the inconvenience.

Marvin sighed and felt a little better after having seen it.

I'm probably misquoting so you'll have to read it for yourself. I thought they were charming. The writing is nice. Although it is all clearly done for laughs, there are a lot of existential questions approached from the silly side in these books. The real villain in these stories is bureaucracy (how great is that?). I read them all in high school.

I can't believe what a bargain I found. This book for $5 - and it's a hard copy? It's official. I love Amazon!

The books are wonderful, but if you think that the books are gonig to be like any other version of The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy, you are dead wrong. If you read the introduction to the books you know that each version is meant to be different than the others. That is the beauty of Douglas Adams work. They are all unique but all worth you time.

the shipping was quick and it was a good copy. The book itself was very very long and seemed to drone on.