Don’t Panic. These are the comforting words written on the cover to the guidebook – “The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy”. Still, these words provide relatively little comfort to Arther Dent who is having a very bad day indeed. The book opens with an everyday morning for Mr. Dent, brushing his teeth, getting dressed, etc. Then, out of the corner of his eye he notices a bull-dozer about to knock down his house. This leads to one of my favorite scenes in a novel, the recollection of his discovering the permit to destroy his house (for a high-way, must make way for progress) despite it being hidden in a locked filing cabinet, in the basement of the development office, where the light is broken, and the stairs are out….
Soon his house is moot as his friend Ford Prefect (really an alien who failed in his attempt to pick a normal sounding name) whisks him off to outer space. And then the fun really begins. This is the first in a series of five novels, each slightly more absurd then the last, following different characters at different times, but always intersecting back again, as the characters bounce around various galaxies, guided by their own mischief, and Ford’s book (now available on a machine and the original got too big – possibly the first e-reader!) – The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galexy. As an example of the whole project, according to wikipedia, the series was described as “a trilogy in five parts” because it was described as a trilogy on the release of the third book, and then a “trilogy in four parts” on the release of the fourth book. Beautifully absurd – you can’t really argue with the logic, and yet you are left with the feeling that something is not quite right.
One of my all time favorite books – I had the book on CD and spent a LOT of time listening to it while driving to/from college because it was the only book on CD I had – its light, amusing, a great read and a part of pop-culture.
