Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy

I have been reading the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy. The book started off quite strong, I was interested and excited to read it everyday. Douglas Adams is an intelligent man and it shows in the way he writes, his style is very childish though and I find myself force reading through some sections.

Arthur Dent is the main character an unfortunate Englishman, he has an alien friend Ford Prefect from somewhere in the vicinity of Betelgeuse, Arthur does not know this however and when the Vogon battle fleet come to destroy earth to create a hyperspace by-pass, Ford is the one who saves Arthur by hitching a ride on one of the starship destroyers. With no home planet to live on and being cast into the vacuum of space after being discovered by the Vogons, hitchhikers guide to the galaxy becomes a story of high adventure into new worlds and undiscovered imagination.

Douglas Adams has an uncanny sarcastic sense of humor that reveals itself differently in every character of the book and you become quite accustomed to it. Probably part of the reason I had to force read through parts of it as it is predicable, the book goes through phases of excitement and suspense, he keeps you reading by telling fragments of the plot at a time almost like a sitcom or a soap. The way he thinks about time and space is like a wannabe cosmologist with a sense humor.

The hitchhikers guide consists of six novels all in all, the scripts originated as a radio show performed by Adams himself in 1978 called 'The ends of the earth' a six episode show, which resulted in the earths destruction every time. Later Adams needed an alien on the planet to provide context and a reason for him to be there. Thus the hitchhikers guide was born, as Ford Perfect is the alien a roving researcher for the guide.

It has an interesting history and it evolved out of a drunkard explorer (Adams being in Greece lying drunk on his back staring at the stars with a hitchhikers guide to Europe) and the idea was born. It has grown to become a multimillion rand blockbuster and a bookshelf favorite. I enjoyed the book as a light read and an escape, otherwise it’s a waste of time!