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Life, the Universe and Everything (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) Mass Market Paperback – September 27, 1995
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“Wild satire . . . The feckless protagonist, Arthur Dent, is reminiscent of Vonnegut heroes.”—Chicago Tribune
The unhappy inhabitants of planet Krikkit are sick of looking at the night sky above their heads—so they plan to destroy it. The universe, that is. Now only five individuals stand between the killer robots of Krikkit and their goal of total annihilation.
They are Arthur Dent, a mild-mannered space and time traveler who tries to learn how to fly by throwing himself at the ground and missing; Ford Prefect, his best friend, who decides to go insane to see if he likes it; Slartibartfast, the indomitable vice president of the Campaign for Real Time, who travels in a ship powered by irrational behavior; Zaphod Beeblebrox, the two-headed, three-armed ex-president of the galaxy; and Trillian, the sexy space cadet who is torn between a persistent Thunder God and a very depressed Beeblebrox.
How will it all end? Will it end? Only this stalwart crew knows as they try to avert “universal” Armageddon and save life as we know it—and don’t know it!
“Adams is one of those rare treasures: an author who, one senses, has as much fun writing as one has reading.”—Arizona Daily Star
- Print length240 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherDel Rey
- Publication dateSeptember 27, 1995
- Dimensions4.12 x 0.65 x 6.85 inches
- ISBN-109780345391827
- ISBN-13978-0345391827
- Lexile measure1010L
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Editorial Reviews
Review
“Adams is one of those rare treasures: an author who, one senses, has as much fun writing as one has reading.”—Arizona Daily Star
From the Inside Flap
--The Philadelphia Inquirer
The unhappy inhabitants of planet Krikkit are sick of looking at the night sky above their heads--so they plan to destroy it. The universe, that is. Now only five individuals stand between the white killer robots of Krikkit and their goal of total annihilation.
They are Arthur Dent, a mild-mannered space and time traveler, who tries to learn how to fly by throwing himself at the ground and missing; Ford Prefect, his best friend, who decides to go insane to see if he likes it; Slartibartfast, the indomitable vicepresident of the Campaign for Real Time, who travels in a ship powered by irrational behavior; Zaphod Beeblebrox, the two-headed, three-armed ex-head honcho of the Universe; and Trillian, the sexy space cadet who is torn between a persistent Thunder God and a very depressed Beeblebrox.
How will it all end? Will it end? Only this stalwart crew knows as they try to avert "universal" Armageddon and save life as we know it--and don't know it!
"ADAMS IS ONE OF THOSE RARE TREASURES: an author who, one senses, has as much fun writing as one has reading."
--The Arizona Daily Star
From the Back Cover
--The Philadelphia Inquirer
The unhappy inhabitants of planet Krikkit are sick of looking at the night sky above their heads--so they plan to destroy it. The universe, that is. Now only five individuals stand between the white killer robots of Krikkit and their goal of total annihilation.
They are Arthur Dent, a mild-mannered space and time traveler, who tries to learn how to fly by throwing himself at the ground and missing; Ford Prefect, his best friend, who decides to go insane to see if he likes it; Slartibartfast, the indomitable vicepresident of the Campaign for Real Time, who travels in a ship powered by irrational behavior; Zaphod Beeblebrox, the two-headed, three-armed ex-head honcho of the Universe; and Trillian, the sexy space cadet who is torn between a persistent Thunder God and a very depressed Beeblebrox.
How will it all end? Will it end? Only this stalwart crew knows as they try to avert "universal" Armageddon and save life as we know it--and don't know it!
"ADAMS IS ONE OF THOSE RARE TREASURES: an author who, one senses, has as much fun writing as one has reading."
--The Arizona Daily Star
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
The regular early morning yell of horror was the sound of Arthur Dent waking up and suddenly remembering where he was.
It wasn’t just that the cave was cold, it wasn’t just that it was damp and smelly. It was that the cave was in the middle of Islington and there wasn’t a bus due for two million years.
Time is the worst place, so to speak, to get lost in, as Arthur Dent could testify, having been lost in both time and space a good deal. At least being lost in space kept you busy.
He was stranded on prehistoric Earth as the result of a complex sequence of events that had involved his being alternately blown up and insulted in more bizarre regions of the Galaxy than he had ever dreamed existed, and though life had now turned very, very, very quiet, he was still feeling jumpy.
He hadn’t been blown up now for five years.
He had hardly seen anyone since he and Ford Prefect had parted company four years previously, and he hadn’t been insulted in all that time either.
Except just once.
It had happened on a spring evening about two years ago.
He was returning to his cave just a little after dusk when he became aware of lights flashing eerily through the clouds. He turned and stared, with hope suddenly clambering through his heart. Rescue. Escape. The castaway’s impossible dream—a ship.
And as he watched, as he stared in wonder and excitement, a long silver ship descended through the warm evening air, quietly, without fuss, its long legs unlocking in a smooth ballet of technology.
It alighted gently on the ground, and what little hum it had generated died away, as if lulled by the evening calm.
A ramp extended itself.
Light streamed out.
A tall figure appeared silhouetted in the hatchway. It walked down the ramp and stood in front of Arthur.
“You’re a jerk, Dent,” it said simply.
It was alien, very alien. It had a peculiar alien tallness, a peculiar alien flattened head, peculiar slitty little alien eyes, extravagantly draped golden robes with a peculiarly alien collar design, and pale gray green alien skin that had that lustrous sheen about it that most gray green races can acquire only with plenty of exercise and very expensive soap.
Arthur boggled at it.
It gazed levelly at him.
Arthur’s first sensations of hope and trepidation had instantly been overwhelmed by astonishment, and all sorts of thoughts were battling for the use of his vocal cords at this moment.
“Whh …?” he said.
“Bu … hu … uh …” he added.
“Ru … ra … wah … who?” he managed finally to say and lapsed into a frantic kind of silence. He was feeling the effects of not having said anything to anybody for as long as he could remember.
The alien creature frowned briefly and consulted what appeared to be some species of clipboard that it was holding in its thin and spindly alien hand.
“Arthur Dent?” it said.
Arthur nodded helplessly.
“Arthur Philip Dent?” pursued the alien in a kind of efficient yap.
“Er … er … yes … er … er,” confirmed Arthur.
“You’re a jerk,” repeated the alien, “a complete kneebiter.”
“Er …”
The creature nodded to itself, made a peculiar alien check on its clipboard and turned briskly back toward its ship.
“Er …” said Arthur desperately, “er …”
“Don’t give me that,” snapped the alien. It marched up the ramp, through the hatchway and disappeared into its ship. The ship sealed itself. It started to make a low throbbing hum.
“Er, hey!” shouted Arthur, and started to run helplessly toward it.
“Wait a minute!” he called. “What is this? What? Wait a minute!”
The ship rose, as if shedding its weight like a cloak falling to the ground, and hovered briefly. It swept strangely up into the evening sky. It passed up through the clouds, illuminating them briefly, and then was gone, leaving Arthur alone in an immensity of land dancing a helplessly tiny little dance.
“What?” he screamed. “What? What? Hey, what? Come back here and say that!”
He jumped and danced until his legs trembled, and shouted till his lungs rasped. There was no answer from anyone. There was no one to hear him or speak to him.
The alien ship was already thundering toward the upper reaches of the atmosphere, on its way out into the appalling void that separates the very few things there are in the Universe from one another.
Its occupant, the alien with the expensive complexion, leaned back in its single seat. His name was Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged. He was a man with a purpose. Not a very good purpose, as he would have been the first to admit, but it was at least a purpose, and it did at least keep him on the move.
Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged was—indeed, is—one of the Universe’s very small number of immortal beings.
Most of those who are born immortal instinctively know how to cope with it, but Wowbagger was not one of them. Indeed, he had come to hate them, the load of serene bastards. He had had his immortality inadvertently thrust upon him by an unfortunate accident with an irrational particle accelerator, a liquid lunch and a pair of rubber bands. The precise details of the accident are not important because no one has ever managed to duplicate the exact circumstances under which it happened, and many people have ended up looking very silly, or dead, or both, trying.
Wowbagger closed his eyes in a grim and weary expression, put some light jazz on the ship’s stereo, and reflected that he could have made it if it hadn’t been for Sunday afternoons, he really could have done.
To begin with it was fun; he had a ball, living dangerously, taking risks, cleaning up on high-yield long-term investments, and just generally outliving the hell out of everybody.
In the end, it was the Sunday afternoons he couldn’t cope with, and that terrible listlessness that starts to set in at about 2:55, when you know you’ve taken all the baths you can usefully take that day, that however hard you stare at any given paragraph in the newspaper you will never actually read it, or use the revolutionary new pruning technique it describes, and that as you stare at the clock the hands will move relentlessly on to four o’clock, and you will enter the long dark teatime of the soul.
So things began to pall for him. The merry smiles he used to wear at other people’s funerals began to fade. He began to despise the Universe in general, and everybody in it in particular.
This was the point at which he conceived his purpose, the thing that would drive him on, and which, as far as he could see, would drive him on forever. It was this.
He would insult the Universe.
That is, he would insult everybody in it. Individually, personally, one by one, and (this was the thing he really decided to grit his teeth over) in alphabetical order.
When people protested to him, as they sometimes had done, that the plan was not merely misguided but actually impossible because of the number of people being born and dying all the time, he would merely fix them with a steely look and say, “A man can dream, can’t he?”
And so he had started out. He equipped a spaceship that was built to last with a computer capable of handling all the data processing involved in keeping track of the entire population of the known Universe and working out the horrifically complicated routes involved.
His ship fled through the inner orbits of the Sol star system, preparing to slingshot around the sun and fling itself out into interstellar space.
“Computer,” he said.
“Here,” yipped the computer.
“Where next?”
“Computing that.”
Wowbagger gazed for a moment at the fantastic jewelry of the night, the billions of tiny diamond worlds that dusted the infinite darkness with light. Every one, every single one was on his itinerary. Most of them he would be going to millions of times over.
He imagined for a moment his itinerary connecting all the dots in the sky like a child’s numbered dots puzzle. He hoped that from some vantage point in the Universe it might be seen to spell a very, very rude word.
Product details
- ASIN : 0345391829
- Publisher : Del Rey; 3rd Printing edition (September 27, 1995)
- Language : English
- Mass Market Paperback : 240 pages
- ISBN-10 : 9780345391827
- ISBN-13 : 978-0345391827
- Lexile measure : 1010L
- Item Weight : 4.4 ounces
- Dimensions : 4.12 x 0.65 x 6.85 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #237,965 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #698 in Humorous Science Fiction (Books)
- #2,203 in Humorous Fiction
- #7,530 in Science Fiction Adventures
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
![Douglas Adams](https://cdn.statically.io/img/m.media-amazon.com/images/I/01Kv-W2ysOL._SY600_.png)
Douglas Adams (1952-2001) was the much-loved author of the Hitchhiker's Guides, all of which have sold more than 15 million copies worldwide.
Photo by michael hughes from berlin, germany (douglas adams Uploaded by Diaa_abdelmoneim) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons.
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To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.
Learn more how customers reviews work on AmazonCustomers say
Customers find the humor very entertaining and quotable. They also say the plot has interesting twists and turns. However, some customers feel the plot is thrown together and forced.
AI-generated from the text of customer reviews
Customers find the humor in the book entertaining, clever, and quotable. They also appreciate the excellent social commentary and the wonderful narration by Martin Freeman.
"I absolutely loved it! Another brilliant book! This is so hilarious! This is a must read series! I can’t wait for the next book!" Read more
"Crazy, random, all over the place. Absolutely hilarious with plenty of the dives into little side bits about absolutely nothing it seems at the time..." Read more
"...where "krikkit" is a national obsession, I found this one particularly clever, even though the aficionados will shudder at the abuse of the..." Read more
"...The book's ridiculous hilarity provides a perfect bit of escapism and stretches the imagination to new lengths...." Read more
Customers have mixed opinions about the plot. Some find it interesting, engaging, and unique, while others say it's thrown together and hard to follow.
"Crazy, random, all over the place...." Read more
"...It is replete with the characters' strange encounters, the verbal non-sequiturs, and the dizzying discontinuity of time and space to which the first..." Read more
"...The plot was a bit more scattered for me which probably makes the main contribution to my slight disappointment...." Read more
"...The book's ridiculous hilarity provides a perfect bit of escapism and stretches the imagination to new lengths...." Read more
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I'm not sure what it was about this book that kept me from getting as into it as the first two. The plot was a bit more scattered for me which probably makes the main contribution to my slight disappointment. Not that the other Hitchhiker's Guide books are not scattered - this one just had a different feel.
I am curious to re-read the book though. When I started reading the book, I got through the first several chapters and my kindle wasn't able to save the last read page. I went back through and re-read the chapters I had already read and it was way more hilarious than I had thought the first time around. I wouldn't be surprised if I end up with a much better rating once I give it a second read.
Anyway, I most certainly recommend the book - just read the first two books first. They certainly would give a much better introduction to the characters than this installment.
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
As for Amazon's service, I love it. The ebook is great and has all of the features of their books including x-ray which is extremely helpful. Would buy again
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