The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Omnibus: A Trilogy in Four Parts by Douglas AdamsMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
What a crazy book! What a fabulous book!
I always thought it was a sci-fi book and somehow never read although I relish that genre. Off late, somewhere I saw it classified it in the humour genre and that surprised me. Hence, started the book which is 5 parts long and each part is better than the previous.
The book starts with Arthur Dent staging a protest against the civic authorities who come to demolish his house. To take a break from the protest he goes with his friend Ford Prefect to a bar and everything changes. He finds himself in a spaceship and realizes that the earth has been demolished. He survived because his friend, Ford is an alient and has helped him to hitchhike a ride across the galaxy in the same spaceship that destroyed earth.
And so begins his journey across the galaxy where he travels along the space line as well as the time line.
The one liners, the anecdotes, the analogies are too awesome and extremely difficult to explain via words. But the meaning is unusually deep and one needs to read the book to fully grasp the fun the writer had thinking and writing this. 'Somebody Elses Problem' phenomenon is one such example.
Some fab lines from the book:
- If they don't keep exercising their lips, he thought, their brains start working. [Ford's obseravtion about the human race]
- I refuse to prove that I exist", said God, "for proof denies faith and without faith I am nothing".
"But", says man, "the Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isnt it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own argument, you don't."
"Oh dear", says God, "I hadnt thought of that", and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.
- Isnt it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?
- There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizzare and inexplicable.
- Thats not just stupid, that is spectacularly obtuse.
- The quality of any advice anybody has to offer has to be judged against the quality of life they actually lead.
- You live and learn. At any rate, you live
The five parts to the book:
1) The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
2) The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
3) Life, the Universe and Everything
4) So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish
5) Mostly Harmless
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