Arthur Dent is stuck in the past. Literally--he’s been marooned on a prehistoric Earth that isn’t due to be destroyed for another two million years. Then Ford Prefect shows up, and naturally, all hope of normalcy disappears. A floating sofa is explained by eddies in the space-time continuum (whoever he is), and in no time Arthur and Ford are two million years in the future, on the day a cricket game is interrupted by white robots from the planet Krikkit. These robots, it turns out, are out to destroy the world, and it is up to Arthur, Ford, and Slartibartfast to stop them.This was by far my favorite of Adams’ Hitchhiker’s books. I’ve cited his brand of humor far too many times, so I suppose I’ll begin with what made this book so much different from the others.
No detail is wasted. While attention is brought to random details in other books for no other reason than to highlight the absurdity of the situation, the seemingly random details in Life, the Universe, and Everything are, well, not so random. Or rather, they are just as random—if more so—but they are also central to the plot. This in turn leads to some inadvertent foreshadowing to the end of the series.
I also noticed that by the beginning of this book, Arthur seems to have accepted the fact that nothing is ever going to be normal again. He seems to take everything in stride; this is helpful in reinforcing the absurdist nature of the piece. The matter-of-fact nature with which he takes everything that happens to him is certainly refreshing after his unending confusion in the first two books. The result is an increased sense of hilarity when he does become bewildered by little details. In a way, I guess it’s this trait that pulls the rest of the story out of proportion: Arthur’s struggle to find normalcy in the details seems absolutely ridiculous in the face of such huge issues as the impending end of the universe.
That’s pretty much it. It was sufficiently absurd to keep me turning pages. I’d recommend it to those who liked the first two books.
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Notes: Life, the Universe, and Everything was Douglas Adams’ third novel, and is part three of the Hitchhiker’s Trilogy. It was first published in 1982 by Harmony Books, a division of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House. The version I read was softcover, published in 1995 by Del Ray Books.
Adult comedial science fiction, 240 pages, omniscient third person point of view
Topics: The meaning of life, reality (numerous parallels), absurdism, fate
Publisher’s age recommendation: N/A
Warnings: Brief innuendo. Some violence. Talk of alcohol and brief insinuation of alcohol abuse. Indirect descriptions of depression.
Five out of five.
