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Mostly Harmless Douglas Adams | |||||||||
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Further adventures of Trillian, Ford Prefect, misplaced
earthling Arthur Dent, and that wacky thing we call the universe.
Not to mention, more problems for The Guide.
Get your towel at the ready: Tricia McMillian still exists on Earth, Earth still exists, Arthur can't find it, but manages to find brief happiness making sandwiches out of Perfectly Normal Beasts on a remote Bob-fearing planet. Of course, all of this is short lived, because, as always, Hitchhiker Ford Prefect shows up, and soon everyone is being recruited to save the galaxy as we know it. The nature of time and space, parallel universes, the phenomenon we know as a "sequel." I do not pretend to understand any of these. I do not know if Douglas Adams does either, but he writes about them most convincingly. One of Adams' distinct charms is his ability to continually bring us over the same ground, without boring the pants off his readers. Mostly Harmless is by no means anywhere near the joy or genius of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, but for anyone who ever saw a great movie and pined to be able to see it again with the same innocence, this book is for you. The narrative may start always in the same place, and end in the same spot, but never has a circular journey been such fun since the Mad Hatter's Tea Party at Disneyland. The fifth book in the increasingly innacurately named Hitchiker's Trilogy. (Not reccommend as an independent read.) | |||||||||
| 277 pp. |
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"So what would the engineers not be expecting someone
sitting on the ledge outside the window to do?
He [Ford Prefect] wracked his brains for a moment or so
before he got it.
The thing they wouldn't be expecting him to do was to be
there in the first place. Only an absoloute idiot would be
sitting where he was, so he was winning already. A common mistake
that people make when trying to design something completely
foolproof was to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools."
"A few of the villagers wondered why Almighty Bob would
send his only begotten Sandwich Maker in a burning fiery chariot
rather than perhaps in one that might have landed quietly without
destroying half the forest, filling it with ghosts and also
injuring the Sandwich Maker quite badly. Old Thrashbarg said
that it was the ineffable will of Bob, and when they asked him
what "ineffable" meant, he said look it up.
This was a problem because Old Thrashbarg had the only
dictionary and he wouldn't let them borrow it. They asked him
why not and he said that it was not for them to know the will
of Almighty Bob, and when they asked him why not again, he said
because he said so. Anyway, somebody sneaked into Old
Thrashbrag's hut one day while he was out having a swim and
looked up "ineffable." "Ineffable" apparently meant "unknowable,
indescribeable, untterable, not to be known or spoken about."
So that cleared that up.
At least they had got the sandwiches.
One day Old Thrashbarg said that Almighty Bob had decreed
that he, Thrashbarg, was to have first pick of the sandwiches.
The villagers asked him when this had happened, exactly, and
Thrashbarg said it had happened yesterday, when they weren't
looking. "Have faith," Old Thrashbarg said, "or burn!"
They let him have first pick of the sandwiches. It seemed
easiest."
Send your comments.
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