The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide (Douglas Adams, 1979-1992)

The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams, 1979-1992)

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

This is the third time I've started on "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" series. Each time I read it, I fell utterly in love with the first book, but would lose some interest by the second book, and wouldn't start on the third. This time I forced myself to read the third, fourth, and fifth book (and a short story), to finally come to the conclusion that the first book is an instant classic that is fun to read the third time as it was the first, and I would probably reread it multiple more times in the future.

"Many were increasingly of the opinion that they'd all made a big mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place. And some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no one should ever have left the oceans."

The rest, not so much. Well, I like the second book just fine, but the rest are not as enjoyable. The first two is a surreal-sci-fi comedy that does not really have a major plotline and has characters bounce from one misadventure to another and I enjoyed that format.

"It is known that there are an infinite number of worlds, simply because there is an infinite amount of space for them to be in. However, not every one of them is inhabited. Therefore, there must be a finite number of inhabited worlds. Any finite number divided by infinity is as near to nothing as makes no odds, so the average population of all the planets in the Universe can be said to be zero. From this it follows that the population of the whole Universe is also zero, and that any people you may meet from time to time are merely the products of a deranged imagination."

But the third book is just a Save-the-Universe plotline, which wikipedia seems to tell me was original a "Dr Who" story that author Douglas Adams turned it into the sequel for his franchise. The fourth book somehow loses most of it weird science-fiction and becomes a romance story! The fifth is so unmemorable that I can barely remember much about it, even though I've finished the book less than a month back.

"The major problem — one of the major problems, for there are several — one of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them.
To summarize: it is a well known fact that those people who most want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job. To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem."

In conclusion. First is a classic. Second is a worthy read. The rest not so good. The rest barely has Marvin the Paranoid Android, which is reason enough to dislike the rest of the books.

"For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much — the wheel, New York, wars and so on — whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man — for precisely the same reasons."

3/5