Customer Reviews

Life, the Universe and Everything (Hitch-Hikers Guide to the Galaxy, No. 3)

5 star:		(48)
4 star:		(41)
3 star:		(19)
2 star:		(13)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

This is the third book from the famous 'trilogy' (actually consisting of five books) written by his high majesty - Mr. Douglas Adams. Quite an interesting read after all, with no similarities to other famous books. The writing style of Douglas Adams is something that has been (and surely will be) one of the most popular topics when people sit around the table. There are numerous famous citations from his books that act (and will surely act) like pieces of wisdom for rebellios generations. Here is one of my favourites: 'Sounds bad. With little more of luck I hope I will be drunk enough, so that I don't notice it.'

This book is somehow innovative from the previous two, mainly due to the fact that it has a plot and after finishing it you have a story in your head, unlike after reading previous two. Is this bad or good - everyone decides for himself. I like it. The story is about our guys Ford Prefect, Arthur Dent, Zaphod Beeblebrox and the girl Trillian being lead on a mission by the old man Slartibartfast to save the Universe from being distinguished by the people of Krikkit who are as funny as well as every other character in the book (including the thunder god from the Scandinavian mythology - Thor). You will get an alternative look to the popular english sport game cricket after you finish the book.

There are a lot of funny tales that are not directly connected to the main story but add additional absurd humour that sometimes made me laugh histerically while reading. One of my favourite was about Zaphod getting drunk on his ship and Trillian leaving him, as well as the one about the poet Lallafa and his famous poems that after time travelling was discovered were used for marketing purposes and that changed the past so that these poems had never been written. And not to forget Wowbagger who insists on insulting every living creature personally.

I had great fun while reading this book and am quite enthusiastic to read the forth and fifth part of the 'trilogy'. Douglas Adams proved once again to me that he is unique and his stories are unpredictable.

I have no idea why no one seems to give this book good reviews! It is uber funny, just as much as the first two. I liked the exclusive terms for the actions of matresses and the whole Agrajag thing, which was honestly the funniest thing I have ever read! As for the Krikkit peoples, this line is one of Adam's most memorable, besides the number 42: "It's got to go." Also, I have established Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged as an all time favorite literary personality, because, well, seriously people, his dream is to insult the universe! Original. Personally, I don't see what all the fuss is about.

This is my third hitchhiking trip, and although my thumb is getting sore, I have no choice but to keep on truckin'.

Coming from the larger part of the world, where "krikkit" is a national obsession, I found this one particularly clever, even though the aficionados will shudder at the abuse of the hallowed ashes.

Always willing to throw a stinging barb here and there, I also loved the immortal Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged, who is on a quest to personally insult every individual being in the Universe - in alphabetical order.

Add in the flying lessons, the many-times-reincarnated Agrajag (not an Arthur Dent fan by any means), and of course my favorite robot Marvin, and you have an easy reading fun hike across the galaxy, with less of the sci-fi stuff, and more of the humor.

There's less Zaphod Beeblebrox than usual, but as he spends most of this story in a drunken stupor while Trillian flirts with the God of Thunder, we won't bother him at this particular time.

Sticking my sore thumb out now for the next adventure in hitchhiking - see you there!

Amanda Richards, March 12, 2005

It is some time after the second in this great sci-fi/comedy series. Arthur Dent and Ford Prefect are marooned on Earth during the caveman times. It seems they will die in this time period, but this suits them. But suddenly there appears a travelling couch that whisks them away to save the Universe from an evil race of aliens bent on universal destruction. While the first two books are excellent comedy gems, they consist of no real plot. This book does, and also maintains the deadpan humor and absurd realities. It's barrells of fun and a great, quick read. When the book needs to be suspensful, it is. When it needs to be funny, it's hilarious. This is Douglas Adams' very best work and this book is the best in the series.

With the exception of "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" this is, in my opinion, Adams' most talented work. The story is amazing, but definitely not for skeptical readers. To fully appreciate his books you should not be asking questions such as "What does an italian restaurant have to do with mathematics?" In short: a great book for those who do not think long and hard about every event in the tale.

After being marooned on prehistoric Earth for several years, Arthur Dent and his alien chum Ford Prefect are rescued by the sudden appearance of a runaway sofa, which transports them millions of years into the future to a cricket game in England, a mere days before the Earth is due to be demolished by the evil Vogons. From here, the duo are reunited with their old friend Slartibartfast (from the first book), with whom they must embark on a mission to save the Universe. And yes, Zaphod Beeblebrox, Trillian, and Marvin the paranoid android all have roles to play, too.... Book 3 in Douglas Adams' "Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy" series, "Life, The Universe, And Everything," is certainly an amusing, occasionally hilarious entry in the zany intergalactic adventures of Arthur Dent and friends. Unfortunately, it falls short in comparison to the briliantly funny pair of books, "The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy" and "The Restaurant At The End Of The Universe," that preceded it. This may be because Books 1 & 2 were adapted from Adams' hilarious BBC radio play that started the whole "Hitchhikers" saga, while "Life" is a "Hitchhiker's" work that's not based on any previous material. Therefore, Adams' writing style for "Life" feels very different from the first two books, and doesn't flow as well. It's still funny, it's just not AS funny. The jokes are more fragmented, and Adams breaks apart *many* of the sentences that the characters speak in Book 3, which gets tiresome after awhile (ex: "The difficulty with this conversation," said Arthur, after a sort of ponderous look had crawled slowly across his face like a mountaineer negotiating a tricky outcrop, "is that it's very different from most of the ones I've had of late."). Therefore, some of the jokes miss the mark. Also, there's less excerpts from the Hitchhiker's Guide book itself, so often quoted in the first two books, so that's missed as well.And yet, "Life, The Universe, And Everything" still has some great comic moments, such as Zaphod Beeblebrox's drinking binge, Arthur's encounter with the creature Agrajag, the chapter on how to play Brockian Ultra Krikkit, and a pretty outrageous dinner party in space that Arthur & the gang crash. Overall, "Life, The Universe And Everything" is a decent entry in the "Hitchhiker's Guide" saga, and it's funny enough for me to give it a passing grade. Thankfully, though, Douglas Adams gets things right back on track with the brilliant fourth book, "So Long, And Thanks For All The Fish"....

Life, the Universe, and Everything is rather different from the preceding two books in the Hitchhiker's Trilogy. It's quite funny, particularly in a few rather memorable sections, but it is not consistently funny from beginning to end. Parts of it were so unspectacular that I barely remembered what I had just read, and one aspect of the concluding scenario is still rather incomprehensible to me, a case of deus ex machina I just can't place in the context of the whole story. All of our favorite characters are back: Arthur Dent, Ford Prefect, Zaphod Beeblebrox, Trillian, Marvin the woefully depressed android, and even Slartibartfast; unfortunately, they are rarely together, and I sometimes lost track of Zaphod in particular after reading a number of chapters that ignored him entirely. Much of the action is also rather contrived, such as the sudden appearance of a couch on prehistoric earth upon which Arthur and Ford travel forward in time to the last two days of earth's existence. On several occasions, characters seemed to zap to another place and time by no discernible means. The game of cricket is particularly important here, to the point that I really wish I understood what the sport is all about, but I admit it was a clever plot device to tie the sport to a particularly nasty, universe-threatening planet ten billion years in the past. The planet of Krikkit, you see, set out to destroy the rest of the universe because its people basically just wanted to be left alone. Throughout the novel white Krikkit robots appear out of nowhere to seize special items needed to unlock their planet from the Slo-Time envelope established around it at the end of the Krikkit Wars. This is a bad thing because the people of Krikkit still want nothing more than to destroy the entire universe. In a rather murky way, Arthur Dent is called upon to save the universe, and that is also not a particularly good thing.

There are a few highlights to the story. The subplot involving Agrajag is particularly good. In the course of Arthur Dent's journeys through space and time, he has been responsible for the deaths of a great number of creatures-insects, flies, at least one rabbit, etc. Quite coincidently, as Arthur tries to argue, every single one of these creatures was Agrajag in his multiple reincarnated forms. Naturally, a body develops a hatred for the brute who keeps killing it time and time again, but Agrajag has gone so far as to build a veritable shrine to the entity he hates most in the cosmos, complete with a gigantic statue of Arthur Dent simultaneously killing him in a great number of his past life forms. I also particularly enjoy Adams' take on learning to fly; it takes a special knack, one which consists basically of throwing yourself to the ground and missing-the easily distracted Arthur Dent is a natural at it.

Overall, the plot just meanders too much to suit me. Transitions of characters from one time and place to another make very little sense, major characters are abandoned for too long at a time, and the plot is not laid out neatly enough for it all to make sense to me. On the whole, much less seems to happen in this book than often happened over the course of a few chapters in the first two books of the trilogy. This is still an entertaining read, but even the comedy lacks some of the satirical and witty zest that typified Adams' earlier successes.

So far I have read the first 4 books, and they have many many problems with words missing, wrong, bad formatting, etc. It looks like they scanned the documents in with some character recognition software and then didn't proofread it (or even run a spell-check). I would like to know if I can get a free update if/when the publisher releases a corrected copy? First-time readers will be very disappointed. I know the books well enough that I (almost) always knew what the words were supposed to be, which is why I gave it 2 stars instead of just 1.

Though many criticize this book for not being as strong as the first two, this is an excellent book. For starters, this book has some of the most memorable moments of the entire trilogy: Agrajag(a brilliant idea to have, absolutely hilarious), Arthur learning to fly(another wonderfully hilarious idea to have flying actually just "Falling and missing the ground"), Marvin's conversation with Zem, Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged's quest, and Slartibartifast's new ship. The novel shows some of the character's personalities very well and develops them further(particularly the poor, neglected Trillian). Ford is wonderfully displayed by showing that he doesn't care about saving the universe when he can attend a party. Zaphod's drinking habits was a very nice little section. Marvin's unhappiness was further displayed by showing it infecting an entire army of robots. Arthur is still as dumbfounded by everything as ever, but at least shows some guts and sensibility. And I've always been a big Slartibartfast fan, and thought it was nice to see him back. I particularly likes his dialogue in this novel, where he will begin a very short sentence and after a large amount of description he will finish it. His "Bistromathic" ship was a funny idea also. The book adds well to the series and provides the major events for the next books(So Long, thanks for All the Fish = God's Last Words; Mostly Harmless = Arthur, Ford, and Trillian's final resting place). It's an excellent read and rests well in my heart because it was the first book in the 5-part trilogy that I ever read(I didn't understand much of it, but loved it anyway). And I believe this is the only Adams novel that a character from another SERIES of his novels comes into play(The Thunder God in this may very well be Thor from "The Long, Dark Tea-time of the Soul," which also got its title from this book!)

And it's a real shame given the potential of the first two books, which are both fun, quick reads. As the featured review states, this title is less focused on the sci-fi and philosophical underpinnings of the first two books. Instead, Adams here maintains sequences that hinge on bizarre chains of events and silly, ponderous exchanges between characters who have less and less of an idea as to what exactly is happening around them. These felt a long 200+ pages indeed.

The bon mots and clever passages are fewer and further between than the previous two installments. In fact, much of this book is rather uninspired and infuriating... the Krikkit robots, the Bistromathematics, the reincarnations of the hapless multiple-murder victim Agrajag, none of the set pieces gave me more than a brief chuckle. Much of what aims to pass for characteristic Adams whimsy feels perfunctory, and the string of coincidences that form the crux of the plot are truly slapdash.

The highlights for me here are Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged's perpetual misanthropy and what amounts to the only real meat of the book--the story of the reason why the ultimate question and answer of the universe are (putatively) mutually exclusive. Thus leading to "So Long and Thanks for All the Fish". But nothing here matches the humor of, for instance, the truly inspired chapter containing the Hitchhiker's Guide's entry on The Universe in "Restaurant at the End of the Universe".

When Adams is working with less inspired ideas, his inability to write characters as anything but vehicles for punchlines and guttural confusions is trying. Vonnegut, while a weak painter of convincing personalities, instills a sense of humanity and pathos in the proceedings that eludes Adams. Some sense of feeling and sympathy, perhaps, plays foil to the general absurdity of exposition and content in Vonnegut. This is why he's a better read if you're comparing the two as I feel prone to do, and one of several reasons I'm not too concerned with making it through the fourth and final book in this series.