Casual Cogitations

I'm not sure if science fiction had ever seen anything like this before 1979. This is science fiction made to laugh at itself while honoring its rich tradition, but it is much more than that. Adams' peculiarly dead-on humor also draws deeply from the well of sociology, philosophy, and of course science. Whenever Adams encountered a sacred cow of any sort, he milked it dry before moving on. Beneath the surface of utter hilarity, Adams actually used his sarcasm and wit to make some rather poignant statements about this silly thing called life and the manner in which we are going about living it.

This is one reason the book is so well-suited for multiple readings-a high level of enjoyment is guaranteed each time around, and there are always new insights to be gained from Adams' underlying, oftentimes subtle, ideas and approach.

Adams' unique and peculiar sense of humor, rife with gonzo aliens, exploding galaxies, and the infamous Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster, might not have found an audience at all had it not had the good fortune to burst upon the world during the hight of Star Wars mania. George Lucas's box-office demolishing opus had not only brought space opera into the mainstream of pop-culture consciousness, but for SF fans, it had brought some much needed light-heartedness into a genre that had been spending the past couple of decades taking itself very seriously indeed in an effort to rid itself of the stigma of juvenile pulp fiction and be regarded as mature literature.

Where Lucas, through the lamentations of the all-too-human droid C3P0 (of whom Marvin seems a loving parody) and the Mos Eisley cantina scene, had told SF fans it's perfectly okay to chuckle at this stuff now and again, Adams snatched the reins and propelled us into out-and-out farce. In fact it can be said that Douglas Adams probably made the first successful stab at comedy writing in SF in the last half of the 20th century. Sure, other writers had tried their hand at it, but no one really successfully made people guffaw until Adams came along with his inspired melding of Lucas and Monty Python.

The shenanigans began when Arthur Dent is grabbed from Earth by his friend Ford Prefect, whom he just found out is an alien, moments before a cosmic construction team demolishes the planet to build a freeway. They are aided by the Hitchhiker's Guide which offers such insights as "a towel is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have" and as well as galaxy of fellow travelers such as Zaphod Beeblebox, Vogons, and old and tired Slartibartgast.

Given that, it still must be said that there's no point in trying to pretend this is any attempt at high literature, just as it's senseless to make an argument that the Three Stooges created timeless cinema. Hell, just kick up your heels and have a good laugh.

Much of the humor here is impossible to describe; this novel must be read to be appreciated. It seems like every single line holds a joke of some kind within it. The characters are also terrific: the unfortunate Arthur Dent, who basically has no idea what is going on; Ford Prefect, Arthur's remarkable friend from Betelgeuse; Zaphod Beeblebrox, with his two heads, three arms, and cavalier attitude; Trillian the lovely Earth girl who basically flies the Heart of Gold; Slartibartfast the planet builder and fjord-make extraordinaire; and my favorite character of all, Marvin the eternally depressed robot. Life-"loathe it or ignore it, you can't like it" is the Paranoid Android's philosophy.

One brilliant thing that Adams does is to step away from the action every so often to present interesting facts about the universe as recorded in the Hitchhiker's Guide; here we learn about Vogon poetry, the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal, Trans Galactic Gargle Blasters, and other fascinating tidbits about life in the crazy universe Adams created. He even gives the reader the ultimate answer to the question of Life, the Universe, and Everything in these pages.

This novel is just an amazingly hilarious read that will leave you yearning for more; to our great fortune, Adams indeed left us more in the form of four subsequent books in the Hitchhiker's "trilogy." If you don't like science fiction, it doesn't matter; read this book just for the laughs. The most amazing thing about Adams' humor is the fact that everyone seems to "get" it. Adams broke all the rules in writing a novel quite unlike any that had come before it, and he succeeded in spades. This may well be the funniest novel ever written.