The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy began as a comedy radio serial created by Douglas Adams before being released as a novel; expanded to a trilogy of novels; then a series of five novels; then, following Adams death, a sixth novel by Eoin Colfer. The series has inspired and influenced a number of other ventures from Red Dwarf to Space X. Below are my reviews of the six Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy novels.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

Arthur Dent is not having a good day. Having only recently discovered that his house was due to be demolished without his knowledge or consent to make way for a new highway bypass, he has had to resort to lying down in protest in front of the bulldozers that have arrived to begin the demolition as he has no other feasible idea how to stop them. The destruction of his house is swiftly put into perspective a short time later when the entire planet Earth is destroyed by a fleet of alien spaceships to make way for a hyperspace bypass. Continue Reading

The Restaurant at the End of the Universe by Douglas Adams

The Heart of Gold – the ship carrying Galactic President Zaphod Beeblebrox, field reporter for the Hitchhicker’s Guide to the Galaxy Ford Prefect and the universe’s last two Earthlings, Arthur Dent and Trillian – has come under attack from a Vogon ship. The Heart of Gold is completely unable to return fire, defend itself or escape because the ship’s computer has become preoccupied with another task. Continue Reading

Life, the Universe and Everything by Douglas Adams

Leaving Milliways, the restaurant at the end of the universe, is not without its problems. To return from the end of time to your own time is tricky and, it turns out, Arthur and Ford have overshot it and arrived approximately 2 million years in the ‘past’. Then, the ship Arthur and Ford find themselves on, crash lands onto a planet they soon discover is Earth. Living on Earth, 2 million years before his own time, Arthur finds that what he thought were the primitive relatives of humans are in fact dying out, and the real ancestors of Earth’s humans are the useless, redundant, members of the alien species whose ship crashed on Earth. Continue Reading

So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish by Douglas Adams

So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish begins with Arthur Dent returning to ‘Earth’. If this is unexpected for the reader, it is also a surprise to Dent. It is as if the demolition of Earth in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy never happened. In fact, it seems everyone on Earth believes the arrival of the Vogon fleet was some sort of mass hallucination. Arthur is too glad to finally be home and eager to resume his former life to worry too much about it. Continue Reading

Mostly Harmless by Douglas Adams

The Many-Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics suggests that there may be an infinite number of alternative universes each containing different pasts and futures to our own, some subtly different, some profoundly.

Take any decision you have ever made. Now imagine a universe identical to this one in every respect except one – the ‘you’ in that other universe chose differently with regards to that one decision. This is a game we play with ourselves daily; wondering how our life would be different if we had chosen differently. Multiply this by the countless other decisions you and everyone else may have made differently and you get a bewildering myriad of alternative universes. Continue Reading

And Another Thing… by Eoin Colfer

Those who have read Mostly Harmless know that it ends with the Earth about to be destroyed… again, this time by the Grebulons; with no apparent chance for escape for Arthur, Ford, Trillian and Random and with unresolved issues around the new edition of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – the H2G2. Continue Reading