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The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

List Price: $7.50
Your Price: $6.75
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Fall over laughing
Review: I'm not generally into comedies. Sci-Fi and Fantasy are definately my thing though. So when Daddy handed me this book, I was excited.

This book points out some interesting "facts": that if you climb on a roof with a towel, aliens will pick you up since they'll assume you have everything you need to keep from stinking. These "facts" are what keep you reading, along with characters that you can't help but shake your head out.

So if you're in the mood to laugh, I recommend this book and a chair you can't easily fall out of.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Great if you just want a little humor
Review: This is a very funny book showing up some of human nature. This isn't a "sci-fi/ horror" genre, it's just a comic book with space in it. It is philiosphical in a ironic kinda way showing charcteristic errors through the different species of aliens. From the prideful, trying to be sophisticated but truly barbarious, Vogons to the Mice who only care about finding out what the "question" is. A light read.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Outstanding Science Humor
Review: Absolute genius! I first read the series when I was about 14 (20 years ago, or so) It was engaging and entertaining then. Since then, I've read any other Adams literature I could get hold of. Any shape or form you can use to experience this, do it! Old BBC TV broadcasts, or the radio series - all excellent entertainment. I just re-read the series, upon Mr. Adams' passing, and realized how much it really had changed my perceptions. While not earth-moving, Mr. Adams has succeeded in making me look just a little sideways at any 'scientific certainty'. Its a great book / series, currently reminds me a bit of Scott Adams' Dilbert in comedic sensibility, with Star Trek science (and pseudo-science), tempered with dry British wit.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Good, but not that good!
Review: This is another one of those books that is touted as a must read sci-fi classic (like Dune or Foundation). Invariably those books never live up to my expectations. Although I did like the Monty Python British type humor, the story wasn't that great or well written. Sorry, but I've read better (and funnier). The story ends abruptly without tying up loose ends, so I wouldn't consider this a complete story by itself. If anything buy the Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide and read all the books as one novel. If you're looking for a bit of light reading away from all of the serious sci-fi novels and you don't have anything else to read, then give this a look.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: hillarious
Review: The only thing funnier is the old radio program. Funny, funny, funny. Its so random in places while being so serious that you just want to wet your pants. Get it. Read it. Laugh.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: The first and the Best
Review: A trip down lunacy lane. This is a unpretensious riot that along with its THE RESTURANT AT THE END OF THE UNIVERSE makes two great books. Ford Prefect, Zaphod, and Arthur Dent and Co make a great addition to the world of fantasy. More a parody of moden culture that a book of fiction you will do better just sitting back and laughing as each improbable event comes faster than you can count to 42. The last two books in the franchise were rather contrived and not worth a lot of effort. But this book shines. Buy it.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Genius and Humor, a rare combinatinon
Review: The entire hitchhiker's series is a work of comedic genius; it has an ingenious fusion of Sci-fi and comedy that few others have attained. These books are a must have for fans of science fiction, comedy, and books in general.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: All Time Top 10
Review: The entree of a seven course meal must encompass all the qualities of the other seven courses. It must have the type of humor that fills your stomach and makes your body shake. It must bite of spicy satire along with an aftertaste of irony. It must be refreshingly original. Up until this point, I have been tempted by Vonnegut, inhebriated by T. Robbins, shocked by H Thompson, humbled by J Carroll, spiritually lifted by Pirsig, and tricked by Faulkner. The one who combined most of these qualities in my inflated opinion is Douglas Adams. He will sorely be missed.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Laughs & If Nothing Else A Reason To Let Minds Drift.
Review: I read this book after reading a heavy science-fiction, serious philosophical issues, kind of book, which I had enjoyed immensely. I came to this book and thought, how is it possible to do science fiction at the same time as satire? And, as I found out through reading, it was quite simple. The first thing that sticks out in my mind as amusing was that Adams completely threw out the rule book on grammar in book-writing, and just went with whatever fit him. It was such a bizzare break from the norm that it felt quite good, and was also, as a result of making up rules, quite amusing.

Furthermore, the work he did with the characters was quite good. Sure, they were still shallow enough to see the pits by the end of the book, but considering it left enough to be desired to buy the next book at the same time as giving enough to fit in the original, that's forgivable. And really, they were all extremes, except for the humans, weren't they? That made it all the more funny, to me.

If you don't trust me, which is entirely possible, trust the other 400+ people that have already posted reviews. Surely that many people unanimously can't be that wrong about a judgement.............. or maybe they can, in the wrong Universe...

RIP DNA :-(

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
Review: I read this book several months ago to fulfill an independent reading requirement for my high school English class. Being the type of person who doesn't really read much, this was something that I was not too excited about doing. I ended up taking a trip down to the library and basically grabbing a book at random. That book was The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. What really amazed me was the fact that I actually enjoyed reading this book. Since then I have even gone on to read the rest of the "Trilogy". I think that what really got me hooked on this book was the author's, unique writing style. The best way to describe this is to take a look at the first page of the book.

"This planet has - or rather had - a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy. And so the problem remained; lots of the people were mean, and most of them were miserable, even the ones with the digital watches. 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 ocean. And then, one Thursday, nearly 2000 years after one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change, a girl sitting on her own in a small cafe in Rickmansworth suddenly realized what it was that had been going wrong all this time, and she finally knew how the world could be made a good and happy place. This time it was right, it would work, and no one would have to get nailed to anything. Sadly, however, before she could get to a phone to tell anyone about it, a terrible, stupid catastrophe occurred, and the idea was lost forever. This is not her story. But it is the story of that terrible, stupid catastrophe and some of its consequences." (1)

While it is obvious that the author is trying to be comical, if one is to dig a little deeper it can also be seen that Douglas Adams manages to introduce many of our society's different social problems such as technology, economics, evolution and religion. It is typical for his writing to criticize everything in a skeptical and humorous way. But at the same time he never presents any concrete solutions to the problems he deals with. He leaves it up to the reader to decide whether or not it is something they are concerned with. I think that this is important as it allows for each reader to use their imagination and see the story from their own perspective.

His humorous style lies in his objectivity. He doesn't come right out and say, "money doesn't cause happiness", and instead he says that people are always concerned about the movement of small green pieces of paper. Douglas Adams just suggests as to what is going on and leaves it up to the reader to figure things out for themselves. He also uses the example of digital watches in order to criticize technology, which is something that we are very proud of. But if you think about it, you become aware that he isn't actually criticizing digital watches, he is criticizing the whole technology, which is in his opinion not the great thing that we think it is.

Another reason I liked these books so much is that you can read the books over and over again, and each time you manage to find something that you did not notice before. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is so full of jokes. He always manages to find a twisted and unexpected solution to the problem at hand and really keeps the reader baffled as to what will happen next. He looks at things in an original and very interesting manner. For example, he makes fun of the fact that the human race thinks that they are the most intelligent beings on earth, and explains that this isn't quite right. He says that the most intelligent beings are the mice, then the dolphins, and humans are only the third most intelligent beings. The mice are in fact responsible for the construction of the Earth, in order to find the question to the answer of the Meaning of Life, Universe and Everything. Humans used them as laboratory experiments but they actually just used us, not as we thought that we used them. Now to someone not familiar with the book this seems rather strange and doesn't make much sense, but somehow all of it manages to fit together.

Overall, I think that this book really helped to open my eyes as to just how creative and interesting a good book can be. It may not be a classic in the true sense of the word, but it was something that I truly enjoyed and that is not something I can claim about many books.


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