Customer Reviews

Mostly Harmless Mostly Harmless

5 star:		(59)
4 star:		(48)
3 star:		(17)
2 star:		(31)
1 star:		(21)

 

 

It is impossible not to have some mixed feelings about this novel. It does stand as a return to the wild frivolity and cuttingly biting humor of the first three books, yet it is certainly less than upbeat, all things considered. Despite all kinds of evidence to the contrary, I always had the feeling that things would work out, even for poor Arthur Dent-the universe might not make a bit of sense, of course, but these characters I love so much would ultimately at least find a sense of peace if not happiness in some forgotten corner of the cosmos. It's something of a downer to find out this is not really the case. Two characters who very much made up the heart of the series for me, Marvin and Zaphod, are not even present in these pages. Then you have Fenchurch from the fourth book, a character I really came to love, thrown out of the saga like so much spoiled Perfectly Normal Beast meat. It's nice to have Trillian back, albeit in a couple of transdimensional forms, as well as Ford and Arthur, but it's hard to say who the story is really about. Arthur's new life as a Sandwich Maker on a remote planet his ship crashed on is rather pitiful but totally Dent-like. Ford's attempts to undo the tragic consequences of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy company having been taken over by unscrupulous business men is interesting. The introduction of a Tricia McMillan who did not leave the party with Zaphod because she decided to go back for her handbag ends up just muddying the waters of the fictional time stream. Then there is Random, the biological daughter of Arthur Dent by Trillian; she is even more mixed up and generally confused about life than the father she only meets as a teenager dumped by her too-busy mother. It might be said that this is Random's story, but all she really does is provide the means by which the principal actors Ford, Arthur, and Trillian are eventually brought together for the final conclusion.

Adams did do an impressive job of bringing things together in the end-characters and situations not only from this novel itself but from the start of the whole Hitchhiker's saga (think Vogons). Why a pesky number of loose threads were allowed to hang out, though, while so much work went into resolving other looming storylines, is beyond me and did much to mar the satisfaction I got from the rather abrupt, unfortunate conclusion. I am particularly bothered by the fact that Fenchurch, a character important enough for Adams to have written the entire fourth novel about, is summarily dismissed with little thought and even little grief from Arthur Dent himself. I should not complain about the way Adams chose to end this delightful series of novels of his own imaginative creation, yet I cannot help feeling disappointed if not a little cheated by the way in which everything ended. All in all, while I did enjoy parts of this book immensely, I would rather have ended things with the happy note of So Long, and Thanks For all the Fish, and be left free to imagine what kinds of messes Ford and Arthur might be getting themselves into somewhere in the universe and wondering what really ever happened to Trillian and Zaphod.

If there were some laser device I could use to eradicate the memory of this entire novel from my brain, I would use it. I, too, love all of the previous books in the series. When the fact that I loved _So Long and Thanks For All the Fish_ the most is taken into consideration, anyone who's read this will understand why I HATED this one! I have no problem with miserable, defeatist endings (and that's a bit of an exaggeration when applied to this book) but when compared to the whimsical, light-hearted, good-humored satirical tone of the first four this just doesn't fit. It seemed uneccesary to me. I think there should be a warning on the cover...a sort of anti-DON'T PANIC label that lets people who are expecting what the series seemed to be leading to that this is not at all what they were expecting! My advice is, if you loved _So Long...._ for the same reasons I mentioned above, don't bother with this one. Pretend the series ended with number four. And anyone who has read it and feels as bereft as I do, any leads on that memory eradification device?

Always a lovely read - Adams is very user friendly. He seems to almost have his own genre of which he and Pratchett are the leading exponents. I can't say I laughed out loud too often (although the picture of a drunken Zaphod sticking a birdcage over his second head and badly pretending to be a pirate is hilarious), but it was a very pleasant ride - even if the conclusion is surprisingly bleak for what feels like a light comedy. Like Pratchett (and there are so many `like Pratchett's, although that's probably in the wrong comparative order) Adams throws in some agnostic themes with his humour, although here the ultimate meaninglessness of life is treated a little less whimsically.

It's an interesting hotchpotch of action (and cutting between various cliff-hanger scenes), philosophy, stand-up comic perspectives of the everyday, domestic sit-com, satirical SF, and Douglas' own pleasure in blithely hurling his characters through six impossible things before breakfast. The plot is surprisingly coherent although occasionally incidental.

I still would almost be surprised if Adams didn't cite Pynchon's Crying of Lot 49 as a thematic and stylistic influence. Here he lets his sensible and considerate astrologer state the theme that it doesn't matter so much what you believe in (`truth' is irrelevant), but you need something as a structure, a lens, to enable you to live satisfactorily. Adams unsurprisingly explains this much better:
"I know that astrology isn't a science ... of course it isn't. It's just an arbitrary set of rules like chess or tennis ... The rules just kind of got there. They don't make any kind of sense except in terms of themselves. But when you start to exercise those rules, all sorts of processes start to happen and you start to find out all sorts of stuff about people. In astrology the rules happen to be about stars and planets, but they could be about ducks and drakes for all the difference it would make. It's just a way of thinking about a problem which lets the shape of that problem begin to emerge. The more rules, the tinier the rules, the more arbitrary they are, the better. It's like throwing a handful of fine graphite dust on a piece of paper to see where the hidden indentations are. It lets you see the words that were written on the piece of paper above it that's now been taken away and hidden. The graphite's not important. It's just the means of revealing the indentations. So you see, astrology's nothing to do with astronomy. It's just to do with people thinking about people."

`Discuss', huh.

Yet another author struggles to reconcile loss of faith in major, particularly religious, concepts of truth with the inner conviction that there are important, good and beautiful things all around - that it's not all just meaningless.

And it is a struggle, as in the climax (spoiler warning) Trillian explains to her traumatised daughter who desperately wants to know who she is, where her home is, where she `fits':
This is not your home ... You don't have one. We none of us have one. Hardly anyone has one anymore. The missing ship I was just talking about. The people of that ship don't have a home. They don't know where they are from. The don't even have any memory of who they are or what they are for. The are very lost and very confused and very frightened.

Yeah, ha ha, good one Douglas - hardly Wodehouse light humour. Human condition anyone? I wonder if Adams and Pratchett self-consciously have wanted to be taken `seriously'? I could see that it could be frustrating for them to be dismissed as merely lightweight because they're so popular. They often contain more articulate thought than works by more academic writers, and shouldn't be seen as lesser merely because they happen to also be very good at amusing and entertaining (quite the opposite). That being said, their books should also come with a flyleaf caveat: "Warning - strong post-modern agenda permeates the following jokes".

It all started so great, sigh.... The original Hitchhicker's guide was awesome. My mom hates Sci-Fi and even she picked that one up. "Mostly Harmless", though, is something entirely different. I guess that Adams should have stopped with the series after "So long and thanks for all the fish". The first parts with Ford Prefect and his exploits with Collin the security robot were rather good, but after he met up with Arthur Dent again things took a turn for the worst, although things had alread gone bad after Trillian and Arthurs daughter showed up. In the main part of the book the great, typical Adams sense of humor is replaced by a weak attempt to write a semi-serious(family) drama with random outburst of rather corny jokes.

In short: this novel is a greater disaster than the final destrucion of planet/supercomputer Earth woul be. Do yourself a favor and don't buy this book. If you have already bought it, burn it and burry it.

The ending for this book was so bad that I vowed never to read another Douglas Adams book. Adams was obviously sick and tired of the series and used this book to kill it off with absolutley no chance of its ever returning (as a matter of fact, its probability function is null). If you liked the other books in this series, don't go anywhere near this one. I rate it at a terrible 1 star out of 5.

Don't let my 2-star rating for "Mostly Harmless" fool you---I miss Douglas Adams very much. He was a brilliantly funny author, and I'm a huge fan of his first four "Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy" books, his pair of "Dirk Gently" books, and his writing for the "Doctor Who" TV series. But sadly, I must confess, I'm not a fan of Adams' final "Hitchhiker's" book, "Mostly Harmless." The reason is simple: the fifth book, in my opinion, is totally unnecessary. Adams originally intended for the fourth book, "So Long And Thanks For All The Fish," to be the definitive final book in the "Hitchhiker's" saga. There's a *reason* why the fourth book has a farewell title to it, folks! And, like the three books that came before it, I totally loved it---I read the entire "So Long And Thanks..." book in a single day, and I thought that it was a marvelous "conclusion" to the adventures of Arthur Dent & company.Then along came "Mostly Harmless," which, by Adams' own admission, he only wrote on a whim---just for fun, in other words. He came up with a way to extend the series for one more book, which I'm sure delighted some "Hitchhiker's" fans, but I, personally, was so disappointed with the direction of it. Arthur's ladylove, Fenchurch, is gone, and now it turns out that he & Trillian had a daughter (though not by natural means), and that's just for starters. Oh, Adams' writing is still sharp, but despite a very humourous adventure with Ford Prefect & a companion robot toward the beginning, the fifth book, to my dismay, turns surprisingly serious. What can I say---this is simply not how I wanted the "Hitchhiker's" saga to end.I have on my bookshelf a "complete" hardcover edition of "The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy" that only goes up through "So Long And Thanks For All The Fish." That's fine with me. To me, "So Long" IS the definitive ending of the series. I just don't feel it was necessary for Douglas Adams to extend the story any further. Don't get me wrong, I greatly mourn the man, and I will always treasure his other works of genius, but "Mostly Harmless," for me, came up short. My advice: read the "Hitchhiker's" series through book four ONLY, and you will get a much more satisfying conclusion. But the misstep that is "Mostly Harmless" takes nothing away from the man's great literary gifts---and great laughs---that he gave us throughout his incredible writing career. So long, Douglas, and thanks for all the fish.

This book is by far the worst of the series. The plot is weak and cobbled together. The characters are out of character. While reading it, one gets the feeling the adams is wringing the last dollar he can get out of his masterpiece series. Buy one the others.

There was a connection that Arthur Dent made with his readers that carried one seamlessly through the first four books. The state of temporary immortality that he reaches in this book simply makes him less interesting.

The appeal of the Hitchhiker series was always the conflict of normalcy and the extraordinary (like trying to get a spaceship to synthesize tea). This book just didn't find the right balance and the writing in this book gave off the general feeling that you might get from an unsatisfied sexual partner - that they are simply doing what they can to make the event end without hurting your feelings. This is the feeling I got from Adams' novel and it was all the more terrible because I always loved Adams.

This book is not a fit end to the man's career. If you feel as though you have to read this to finish the series then please read the Dirk Gently books afterwards (even if you've already read them).

After I read the fourth book "So Long and Thanks for All the Fish" I checked the reviews for this one and decided I didn't like it and shouldn't read it. But then I decided a couple weeks later that I might as well read it in case it wasn't as disappointing as I thought and just so I could get my merit badge for having read the entire series--except for the short story included in the "Ultimate" edition and "Salmon of Doubt." And just like one of those horrible standardized tests, most of the time you should go with your first instinct.

Reading the end of this book felt exactly like the outrage expressed by fans of "The Sopranos" after the infamous "fade to black" ending. The first reaction was "Huh?" This was followed by reading over the last pages a couple times to see if I'd missed something. This was followed by disbelief that I didn't miss something. Finally, the outrage of "THAT's how it ends?!!!" (Unlike some other books at least I didn't throw it against a wall, it being a library copy in already shoddy condition.)

Like those Sopranos fans, I feel like I was duped, like I had a practical joke played on me. I read these books and followed it all the way to the end and then--THAT. Really all I needed then was for the ghost of Douglas Adams to appear to point and laugh at me and then flip me the bird. I think when you follow a series, even one that isn't terribly long like the Hitchhiker books (about 1,100 pages in all) you want that "Lord of the Rings" ending with all the farewells or the "Harry Potter" ending where we check up on everyone years later. Because let's face it, when you read an entire series you become emotionally invested in it to some extent so they're maybe not a spouse or brother/sister, but at least an aunt/uncle who appears regularly. So when it comes to the end, you want the closure, not so much of a funeral but more like a graduation or wedding where one journey ends and another is beginning. When that's lacking, you're left with disappointment and resentment that leaves a bad taste in your mouth.

What saves this book is that you read "Hitchhiker" books for the same reason people watch "Family Guy" on TV, for the ridiculous asides more than the actual main story. That's what makes the books readable even when the story and especially the character development is disappointing.

The story concerns the complexities of space-time, which is always very confusing. Fenchurch, the love Arthur discovered in the previous book, disappears in a hyperspace accident without so much as a line of dialog, thus rendering the last book pretty moot. Arthur then roams around the Galaxy by donating hair, fingernails, and of course sperm to DNA banks. (Whatever happened to the, you know, hitchhiking?) He does this to find a place where he can fit in, trying a few places like another version of Earth called NowWhat that is a swampy hellhole. (If you want to take a romantic interpretation, you could also say that by constantly traveling in hyperspace maybe he's hoping Fenchurch will reappear.) He finally crashes on a remote planet and becomes a revered Sandwich Maker until he meets his daughter, produced by some of that sperm he gave away. The child's mother is none other than Tricia McMillan or Trillian. She comes from another Earth (or is it the same one as the fourth book?) where she never went with Zaphod at a party and thus never became Trillian and instead became a news reporter who's visited by aliens who crash-landed on the tenth planet called Rupert, which technically now would be the ninth since Pluto is no longer a planet. Meanwhile, Ford Prefect discovers that a big corporation has bought out the Hitchhiker's Guide and developed a new version with the power to destroy the universe. Is any of this making sense? Probably not. It doesn't make much more sense when you actually read the book either.

All this naturally leads to the really disappointing ending that I went on and on about above. Like pretty much all the Hitchhiker books, there's little in the way of character development and after spending 90% of the story getting everyone together, the author rushes the unsatisfactory conclusion. If not for those funny asides and the humorous tone of Adams's writing, this would have been far more disappointing. Still, if you've read and enjoyed the rest of the series you may as well read this one for the complete set.

That, mercifully, is all.

With Adams' whimsical interpretation of space, time, probability and parallel universes; it's really silly to assume that the 'Mostly Harmless' will fit in with the plots of the four previous books cohesively. The fans of the series know that lack-of-coherency is one of the more charming aspects of the trilogy. Actually, this is one of the few redeeming literary points of the book... Adams seems to enjoy playing with the kind of ridiculous corner he has painted himself into with all the traveling across time and parallel universes.

Anyway, my real disappointment with this book comes from the characters. I could deal with Fenchurch and Zaphod disappearing... but really no character rises to fill their place. Yes, we know Arthur is not a 'take charge' guy; but really his character doesn't change at all in this book... and after all he's been through, it is frustrating that he is still 90% reactionary. He worked in the first three books because of strong supporting characters, and he was a more dominant character in the fourth book than he was in this one. Trillian was never really a well developed character in the series (IMHO); and in this book, it's hard not to really dislike her. Tricia McMillian is pretty well developed in the story but her presence plays more a part in the story than her character does. As for Random, the angry teenager cliche I thought was a bit below Adams' creative abilities; it really felt like she was forced into the story to bring everyone together at the end. That being said, I like Ford and Colin; unfortunately, they aren't enough to make up for the other characters though.

I think the major appeal of these stories lies in the attachment the reader feels to the characters. In the original three books, the main characters were a good mix of personalities and played well off of one another. You cared for them, the attachment you had to them made their antics seem more funny, etc. In this book the characters have become monotonous and/or cliche. Taking this with a weak ending and a not particularly strong plot arch... well, this was a dissapointment to me.

Yes Adams may have wanted to make these characters be a little more 'real' but since when has reality had anything to do with the Hitchhiker Universe? In the end, it feels like this book was written more like a tragic final episode to a sitcom rather than an end to one of the best sci-fi trilogies written.