I have just heard that author Douglas Adams has tragically passed away at the age of 49. In tribute to him, I decided to write an article on his most famous set of books. They are also the funniest books of all time…
The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, written by British author Douglas Adams, is a “trilogy in five parts”. The original book was so phenomenally successful it spawned four sequels, numerous radio plays, a TV series and a hell of a lot of fans. This book has reached so many people and has been so widely accepted into popular culture, if you ask “what’s the meaning of life?” in a crowded room, you’ll be sure someone will reply “42”.
The series is basically about a motley crew of five characters and their adventures throughout time and space. During all of the books, the gang experience many things that could only be termed as ‘weird’; From Vogons to Babel fish, whales to pan galactic gargle blasters, Perfectly Normal Beasts to Eccentrica Gallumbit (the triple-breasted whore of Eroticon Six).
Characters
Arthur Dent:
The main protagonist. He wakes up one Thursday to find that his house (and his planet) are about to be destroyed.
“I never could get the hang of Thursdays.”
He is the innocent suddenly thrust into a life he didn’t know existed and thus acts bewildered for the majority of the books. As we are finding everything out for the first time as well, the reader relates to Arthur, and we see everything through his eyes.
He is also quintessentially British, loving tea and using a lot of sarcasm and irony. In fact, because the rest of the characters are aliens and so don’t understand irony, this could be a metaphor for witty people surrounded in the world by clueless Americans.
Ford Prefect:
Arthur’s best friend. Arthur only finds out at the beginning of the book that Ford is an alien from somewhere in the vicinity of Betelgeuse and not Guildford as he claimed. He is called Ford Prefect because his research led him to believe it was a “highly inconspicuous name” (it is a name of a popular car in England).
Ford is the world weary traveler of the group. He has been everywhere and done everything. He introduces Arthur (and therefore the reader) to the world of Hitch Hikers Guide. He is the teacher role.
Zaphod Beeblebrox:
The president of the universe. He is also an old drinking buddy of Ford’s. He is the stereotypical male bachalor/jock. He does whatever and whoever he wants, and doesn’t give a fuck about the consequenses. This makes it quite hard to be president of the universe.
Anyway, he sometimes quick-thinking but generally quite stupid, and mostly serves to take the piss out of Arthur.
‘”Something up?” said Arthur.
“Hey, didja hear that?” mutter Zaphod, “the monkey spoke!”
“Pure history, man… A talking monkey!”’
Trillian:
The only other human alive. Trillian is the token woman in the group. Although she is supposed to be seeing Zaphod, she continually takes the piss out of him and exists purely as sexual tension for Arthur (and therefore the reader). She is supposedly hot.
‘One of the major difficulties Trillian experienced in her relationship with Zaphod was learning to distinguish between him pretending to be stupid just to get people off their guard, pretending to be stupid because he wanted someone else to do the work for him, pretending to be outrageously stupid to hide the fact that he didn’t understand what was going on, and really being genuinely stupid.’
Marvin the paranoid android:
Marvin is perhaps the best character in the whole series. Terminally depressed, nothing excites him and he despises all of mankind. I really like him. Perhaps I like him because he is so like me, perhaps I like him because he is so unlike the other characters, deadpan to their panic. Whatever it is, he is pretty funny.
‘”But that’s sunset!” said Arthur, “I’ve never seen anything like it in my wildest dreams… the two suns! It was like mountains of fire boiling into space.”
“I’ve seen it,” said Marvin. “It’s rubbish.”
“We only had the one sun at home,” persevered Arthur, “I come from a planet called Earth you know.”
“I know,” said Marvin, “you keep going on about it. It sounds awful.”
“Ah no, it was a beautiful place.”
“Did it have oceans?”
“Oh yes,” said Arthur with a sigh, “great wide rolling blue oceans…”
“Can’t bear oceans,” said Marvin.’
Anyway, the beauty of this series of books is not the characters - funny as they are - but the writing style of Adams. This is the real star on show. He combines common everyday observations brilliantly with sci-fi reasoning and Monty Python-esque humor (Adams actually worked closely with the Python team at one stage, although his scripts were never used on the show). Great examples of his prose can be found in the Guide entries scattered throughout the books.
‘Vogons: They wouldn’t even lift a finger to save their own grandmothers from the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal without orders signed in triplicate, sent in, sent back, queried, lost, found, subjected to public inquiry, lost again, and finally buried in soft peat for three weeks and recycled as firelighters. The best way to get a drink out of a vogon is to stick your finger down his throat and the best way to annoy him is to feed his grandmother to the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal.’
See? It’s funny stuff. There are way funnier parts too, but they are usually running gags or of the rambling variety. I can’t think of anything else to say. Read them, and read them NOW…
Book-ography:
-The Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy
-The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
-Life, the Universe and Everything
-So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish
-Mostly Harmless
