The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy

Author: Douglas Adams

This book was quite funny, and I learned it was the origin of the whole “meaning of life is… 42” joke that I heard so much growing up.

In terms of plot, not that much happens. There is a lot of space left for funny anecdotes and moments within the story.

The premise is this:

The main character (Arthur Dent) is mad because some people are going to demolish his house to put a bypass road through it. Apparently the notice for this has been posted in the basement of some government building for years, so he should have known. Ironically, only a couple hours later, we learn that earth is similarly set to be destroyed so an alien society can put a bypass system through it as well. A notice of this has also been posted somewhere deep in the galaxy for the last tens of thousands of years, and the aliens believe humans had plenty of time to read the notice.

Arthur is rescued by an alien who has been living on earth for a while, and they go into space just in time to not be destroyed along with earth. From there, as they adventure through space, they meet a few different interesting people. They learn that a supercomputer had been in development that they designed in order to tell them what the meaning of life is. That computer concluded the meaning of life is 42. It took that computer several million years however to come up with that answer. So then they started developing a computer that could figure out what the specific question is, that comes up with the answer 42, because obviously “what is the meaning of life” is a bit broad. It turns out that supercomputer was the earth, which was annoyingly destroyed just a few minutes before the computer finished its calculations that it had been working on for millions of years as well.

But, since Arthur was a human (ie – a piece of earths DNA), he may hold some of the answers for unlocking the solution, and I expect that is the premise going into the next books.

There are three other books for a total of four books in the “Trilogy in four parts”.

It definitely has some good laughs, and uses a lot of dry British humour. I don’t feel overly compelled to read the rest of the books after this first one, but I may give them ago at some point. It was short enough of a book to be worth it.