The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a science fiction novel written by Douglas Adams in 1979. You can see the book influenced science fiction in a popular cultural aspect, just take a look at Dr. Who and this book is that. The idea of the actual book in the novel, entitled The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, a book with so much information compiled into it that it could be city, this idea is in a book I'm currently reading, Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age Or A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer. In this book an electronic book is given to a girl of a lower social class, a book compiled by men in government. That idea is much more serious than this book however. But Hitchhiker's is good fun. 

The plot follows a cast of characters (one human with a bunch of aliens) following the destruction of the planet Earth. This alien who was living on Earth for fifteen years and got stranded and this human are the only Earthlings that lived through it and now they've gone out into the Galaxy as sort of space dandy ronin, thus hilarity and shenanigans ensue.

It must be mentioned that Douglas Adams also wrote for Monty Python and it is evident here. There's lots of off the wall wacky descriptions of things (often with made up words), hilarious comedy dialogue, all the while being descriptive in a quasi literary way. 

I thought the ending was kind of funny. So basically because the Earth man had been on the Earth right before it was destroyed, somehow he knew the meaning to life (or something like that), and these mice (who were the secret overlords of the Earth, although they allowed themselves to be tested on by humans) needed his brain to access it and give this Universal Truth to the entire Universe, which needed to be said by this millions of years old Computer. They needed to remove his brain. Got that?

Its just funny that ultimately they found themselves in a sort of popular science fiction cyberpunk moment, which was a change of pace from the rest of the book, which is mostly descriptions of things and evolution of plot. There's a part where our gang of misfits meet two liberal cops who say they're just regular guys, liberals who embrace their girl friends in the fact that they feel bad when they shoot or kill people, and that they like to write poetry but haven't had anything published. It was an over the top moment like most of this book, but this part in particular had a Zen feeling, we can humanize our enemies, even within the contexts of this fun space adventure. That's probably the best thing I can say about it. Its not quite like the science fiction I mostly read, which is all serious works about class and society but it was a fun alternative for something to read in between my usual readings. Right now I'm reading through Octavia Butler's Kindred and I gotta say it is phenomenal, I'll be writing about that novel next. 

"In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move."