The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Rating:
Summary: Don't forget your towel...
Review: You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll throw yourself at the ground and hopefully miss. A bit on the bizarre side but I figured this is something everyone who wants to think creatively should be reading. In fact just read the whole series and then go on to read "The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul" and see if you start noticing street lamps going out as you pass them by at night.

Rating:
Summary: Entertaining and irreverent.
Review: This novel is a wonderfully paced comical satire on ... life the universe and everything. Filled superb writing and quirky storyline this book is short enough to read in one day. Thankfully there are four sequels in this trilogy there is no shortage of adventures and insane situations for Arthur, Zaphod, Ford, Trillian, Marvin and whoever is met page to page. I recommend this book to anyone who enjoys rambling humor. While the book is confusing, it only makes you want to turn the pages more. The writing style reminded me of Joseph Heller. I may be one of a handful of people who have ever compared Heller to Adams, but the irreverence and the quick chatter gave me a definite feel of Heller. One of these reviews said that this book was a great work of British comedy, don't let that scare you, it is really a great work of comedy. Also don't let the Science Fiction genre scare you either. This novel is so snappy and "plausible" that you get so caught up in the characters and story that you forget it is science fiction.

Thanx for your time.
T

Rating:
Summary: You cannot, ever, read this book without at least smiling
Review: This is one of the greatest books to me. It starts serious, you can just imagine someone reading aloud, then you get to this sudden, simple line, and you are rolling on the ground. One of the things that really got to me was that I thought of someone reading very well, completely serious, and all the jokes and simple one liners seem like they are completely normal in their world (universe), but they really stick out. It is brilliantly written, and though when you get into the series it is a bit hard to follow, it's worth reading multiple times. It kinda makes you realize that our simple lives could easily get so complicated, or just stop, and you think "God am I glad I'm not him, but that would be so fun".

Rating:
Summary: Best book ever
Review: It is the best book ever and anyone who hasn't read it is a loony

Rating:
Summary: A Great Writer, But This is No Epic!
Review: Perhaps this is just another unfortunate example of the hype exceeding the final product, but despite the ubiquitous praise and, more importantly, the highly entertaining book, I found myself ultimately disappointed with the final experience. Sure, Douglas Adams is a funny guy. Sure he's got an astounding imagination, with a gift for the turn of phrase, not to mention the idiosyncratic character. But the absence of one aspect of the experience truly depleted for me what could have been the grand sci-fi/humor classic that The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy had been portrayed to me as: the lack of an epic feel.

Adams quickly throws us into the midst of the absurd, yet entertaining events of his first novel. If any one thing can detract from this book more than another, it is the pace. It moves fast. It moves very fast, and to an extent I can comprehend how this is necessary. Adams needs to take the reader for a ride, from one local to another, one character to another, one hilarious punch line to another. But in the mean time, the flow of the novel is sacrificed, not to mention coherence, character development, and valuable descriptions of what are certainly some of the most imaginative environments. Instead, Adams takes it on faith that we will fill in all of his numerous blanks. It's no surprise that this novel reads more like the radio show from whence it was born.

As far as the story goes, Adams must be commended. He notes in the foreword that he only figured out the plot as he went along, and nonetheless, the structure of the plot certainly doesn't feel that way. The ultimately problem resides in the fact that the entire novel seems unfinished--as he states in his foreword, it was. This is not to criticize his strategy to turn the book into a series (or a trilogy of five books, as he prefers to call it), but more a comment on the conclusion of the first book. It is all well and good to prolong a story over several novels, but the way to make up for it is to give each novel its on independent narrative arc, making it more of an episode in a series rather than the first act. Unfortunately, any reader whose interest is remotely piqued will be forced to buy the subsequent novels simply to understand the first.

But ultimately, the novel--and hopefully the remaining books in the series--are purely entertaining and fun. Indeed, there is much I can criticize, but nonetheless it is oftentimes overshadowed by the fun and funny style and story presented in the text. At the very least, I can say that Adams has a grand gift. Narrative humor tales are few and far between today, and so The Hitchhiker's Guide takes the tally as certainly one of the better representatives in that genre. The book still possesses all the potential to be a truly great masterwork, even the sci-fi/-humor epic that Adams intended. Comprehensively, however, it fails to encapsulate the image of the galaxy rather than just the style.

Rating:
Summary: Towels, Mice, and Spaceships
Review: 'The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy,' by Douglas Adams, is a spontaneous comic adventure. To bring out the humorous characters and events, Douglas Adams uses a lot of satire to attract the reader's attention. A scene that brings out much of the satire is at the beginning of the book. Arthur Ford lies in front of bulldozer to stop the demolition of his house so the city can build a bypass. Arthur, having just found out the day before, is annoyed because the plans were buried from the public. To emphasize the satire, Adams destroys Earth to build an intergalactic bypass whose plans were also buried. This is all going on while the construction workers are trying to find a way to get more money out of their union for working with insane people. Adam uses this satire throughout the entire book to give it an added flavor and to persuade changes on earth with certain situations. As Arthur and Ford start hitchhiking their way around the galaxy to find the ultimate answers to life and the universe, they encounter worlds full of trouble.

The story starts out with Arthur Dent protesting his house from being torn down for a bypass, when his friend Ford Perfect, an alien who has been posing as an out-of-work actor on earth for the past fifteen years, drags Arthur away to tell him the world is going to be destroyed. He warns his disbelieving friend Arthur that the planet is soon to blow up, and rescues both of them seconds before its destruction by hitching a ride from the Vogons. After Ford and Arthur are tortured by hideous poetry, Zaphod Beeblebrox, the president of the galaxy, and Trillia, the only other surviving human being, save them. Together they travel the galaxy to lead to the ultimate answers to life.

I would say this book is Random. Sinister. Funny. 'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy' covers everything from galactic space monsters to far-off planets no one has ever of. This completely random book has the reader on his toes from the very first page to the last. Totally unpredictable. If you want a joyful, whimsical ride through space, then read 'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Rating:
Summary: Very smart mice.
Review: The Hitchhiker's guide to the Galaxy is the funniest science fiction brief novel I've ever read. Dialogs are funny, descriptions are comic and the argument is hilarius. Most of all, this is a smart novel where the casuality is masterly managed. Actually, nothing that happens in the novel is casual but just very, very improbable. These very improbable events produce a world where, for example, humans are only part of a ten million years long experiment done by the most intelligent species in the universe: mice, of course.
I'm looking forward to read the other two parts of the "incresingly inaccurately named Hitchhiker's Trilogy".

Rating:
Summary: The Hitchhikker's Guide to the Galaxy--Huh?
Review: This is by far the funniest book ever written. Between the action, the characters, and the dialogue, there is hardly a paragraph that dosen't get a laugh. With Ford Prefect (ha) and Arthur Dent in the main spots, a romp across the galaxy is a great form of entertainment. I don't want to give away too much of the rudimentary plot, seeing as there's not that much to give away in the first place, so I'll end the review here.

Rating:
Summary: Crazy and Wonderful!
Review: If you like science fiction-or even if you don't-you have to read this book. It is hilarious right from the first chapter. I was never really into the whole Aliens-are-taking-over-the-planet thing until I read this. I got all six stories in one album (The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) and tried to read all six books at my average rate, about two weeks for all six. Big mistake. But if you go slowly enough to enjoy it, it is one of the best books ever written!

Rating:
Summary: Just A must!!!
Review: I did not read all of the hundreds of reviews of this book here at amazon.com, but if you read mine, I just can tell you, if you are into SciFi or even if you are not, this book is a must have.
Its just "mind-boggling". A SciFi-Satire-Bible. Not made for this earth (how wonders, it starts with the destrucion of it hehe). If you are a shrink and interested in androids minds, a water bag who is asking himself, what the purpose of all THIS is or just a regular guy who does not want to see his house demolished... This book will have the answers for you.